This year, we improved the student club affiliation process to promote continuity and engagement of student clubs within the LA&PS Colleges system.

We are increasing engagement between our College Councils and LA&PS Colleges to promote a more seamless engagement experience for LA&PS students.

This year, our Academic Advising team completed a retention assessment of our petitions processes and portfolio to better understand the impact on LA&PS students to improve student success and retention. We will be revising the petitions model and process to better support the needs of students.

In March 2025 the Faculty proudly launched CoLearn: Collaborative Learning Space, a new hyflex active learning hub in 117 South Ross, thanks to funding from the Ontario government's Training Equipment and Renewal Fund (TE&RF) intended to help modernize post-secondary facilities. CoLearn includes three active learning classrooms and a one button recording studio, supporting student-centered learning and eLearning.

• Updating job postings to include more inclusive language to encourage a more diverse pool of qualified applicants and ensure that Black staff members have access to internal growth opportunities.
• Prioritizing internal promotion opportunities, including Black managerial hires, to ensure that Black staff are supported in their career development goals.

Intentional steps have also been taken to ensure Black staff feel valued and that their wellbeing is prioritized. We are cultivating, prioritizing and enforcing leadership accountability, commitment and transparency across the Faculty.

We also facilitated integration of LA&PS staff into the organization-wide Black employee engagement resource group to ensure they have access to University-wide resources and engagement opportunities.

We launched a Financial Hold Early Alert campaign this year to help support students' understanding of their financial status. The campaign helped prevent 265 at-risk students from being put on financial hold.

Each year we support President’s Awards nominations recognizing the excellent student services our staff work tirelessly to provide to our community.

This year, we had nominations across the different categories from the President’s Voice of York Award to the Ronald Kent Medal and the Excellence in Decolonization, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Award.

Their nominations are a strong reflection of the meaningful contributions our staff are making, exemplifying the University’s and our Faculty’s mission, vision and values.

This year, we continued to foster a culture of diversity and inclusion through knowledge sharing and professional development. 90% of LA&PS staff completed Decolonization, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (DEDI) and well-being training.

The curriculum team has strengthened its capacity to work faster and more efficiently by integrating AI tools-developed through various YU Learn trainings into its workflow, while also fostering a culture of collaboration, support and trust.

We continued to build on a culture of environmental sustainability while driving administrative efficiencies across the Faculty. This included automating and digitizing several paper processes from job descriptions to course evaluations.

The Curriculum team collaborated with the LA&PS Advising team, FC team, RO Office, VPA Office, University Secretariat, other Faculties and academic units to share curriculum updates, policies and supports, ensuring smooth governance approvals and enhancing the student experience.

The Curriculum team also completed a tailored training session on Clifton Strengths developed by YU Learn focused on strengthening team development and fostering effective teamwork.

Despite ongoing financial constraints, we continue to renew our physical environment where possible with inspiring, sustainable and purpose built spaces for our students, faculty and staff to promote community, while ensuring the implementation of health and safety principles. This includes renovations in our History and Philosophy Departments, renewing our graduate and undergraduate spaces, and upgrading our lighting in Vanier College Productions.

To further sustainability efforts, we streamlined software purchases by leveraging central resources, renegotiated contracts with vendors to achieve further financial savings, and established a cost recovery model leveraging Associated Course Fees to fund the purchase of new teaching software.

To improve accessibility and transparency on governance matters at the Faculty level, we have relaunched our Faculty Council website and are working collegially to revise our Council Rules and Procedures.

In the 2024-25 year, all Faculty Council Standing Committees were fully populated and council meetings were well attended with quorum achieved at every meeting. An additional 3 special meetings of Council convened to give special attention and dialogue to the University budget, AI and curriculum development.