Skip to content

Lakehead University awarded funding to help reduce barriers to post-secondary education

This funding supports experimentation and innovations in credit transfer processes, helps gauge the sector’s readiness for change, and identifies realistic models: officials
Lakehead Orillia - Simcoe Hall
Lakehead Orillia - Simcoe Hall. Supplied photo

NEWS RELEASE
LAKEHEAD UNIVERSITY
*************************
Lakehead University has been awarded $367,708 from the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer to explore new seamless transfer projects and to continue working on software that will automatically analyze curriculum gaps.
 
ONCAT’s Seamless Transfer projects focus on policy and practice changes and interventions that affect the credit transfer system as a whole. This funding supports experimentation and innovations in credit transfer processes, helps gauge the sector’s readiness for change, and identifies realistic models that can be scaled province-wide.
 
“ONCAT is thrilled to be collaborating with Lakehead University,” said Yvette Munro, ONCAT’s Executive Director.
 
“We are excited to see how these new projects – spanning cultural, analytic, and administrative supports – will serve the needs of diverse student groups while leveraging data and cutting-edge technology to improve student access to, and navigability of, transfer pathways.”
 
Dr. Lana Ray, Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning, has been awarded $114,094 over the next two years, for a project entitled Indigenizing Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR): Exploring how post-secondary institutions can recognize Indigenous community-based knowledge during credit and degree-granting processes.
 
Dr. Ray will partner with Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen Employment and Training Services, and Nokiiwin Tribal Council to explore how post-secondary institutions can recognize Indigenous community-based knowledge during credit and degree-granting processes, and support institutional readiness to implement prior learning assessment and recognition.  
 
Denise Baxter, Vice-Provost Indigenous Initiatives, has received $105,666 for a project called Actioning and Expanding Commitment to Indigenous Learners.
 
This project will work with northern Indigenous institutes and colleges to explore how to identify, locate and begin to disrupt colonial structures and pedagogy in post-secondary education in terms of both transfer credit pathways and transitioning students between different types of institutions. 
 
Lakehead University is looking forward to further collaboration with Anishinabek Employment and Training Services, Confederation College, the Oshki-Pimache-O-Win: The Wenjack Education Institute, and Seven Generations Education Institute.
 
Dr. Heather Murchison, Vice-Provost Institutional Planning and Analysis, will receive $77,448 for a project entitled Understanding Transfer Student Experience & Outcomes through Business Intelligence Analytics.
 
The project will leverage existing transfer student data sets developed with ONCAT support to enhance its understanding of transfer student experience and outcomes through development of enhanced analysis of transfer student data and development of data visualizations.
 
ONCAT has also extended and provided an additional $70,500 for the PathwAI Project led by Dr. Vijay Mago, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science.
 
The PathwAI Project is online software to automate curriculum gap analysis processes using modern natural language processing algorithms and post-secondary learning outcomes.
 
The platform will serve as an online database where all users can upload and store their course content, run analyses on programs, and customize the domain and content areas for generating and recommending articulation agreements between Ontario post-secondary institutions.
 
“Thanks to funding from ONCAT, these projects assist Lakehead University in its goal to create effective pathways to post-secondary education for people who face barriers to accessing higher education,” said Dr. Michel S. Beaulieu, Associate Vice-Provost Academic.
 
“They also play a significant role in Lakehead’s commitment to developing consistent and transparent transfer processes that remain student-centred.”

*************************


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.