Dear Colleagues,
I hope you have had a restful and refreshing summer, and enjoyed some quality time with friends and family. I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible in person this year, and working together to advance our Au Large priorities of a more virtual, sustainable and equitable Seneca.
One of the reasons I am so excited about the upcoming term is the fact that we are in the fortunate position of welcoming a number of new full-time employees. You can learn more about them in the first item of this month’s newsletter. I am looking forward to the new perspectives, approaches and insights they will bring to our already-great team.
For a more in-depth update for FCAD, please have a look at our Welcome Back Video. You can find specific topics using the list below.
Stay well and stay safe.
Kurt
- Grad Celebration - 00:20
- Flexible Work and Hoteling Spaces at Seneca@York and Newnham - 00:46
- Masking and Vaccinations - 02:43
- New Programs - 03:48
- The Marketing Agency - 04:32
- New School of Media Chair - 04:46
- Update from Doug Hammond, Director of Customer Support - 04:57
- New Capital Projects - 07:31
- Remote Teaching Spaces - 08:35
- One Button Studio - 08:55
Raunica Ahluwalia
Professor Raunica Ahluwalia joins as faculty at School of Marketing and Media. She has a PhD in Entrepreneurial Marketing, MBA, and Post Graduate Diploma in International Business. She has extensive postsecondary teaching experience with more than 12 years in the college and university sector and five years in Advertising and Branding industry across Canada and India.
Raunica’s experience as an Account Planner in Advertising agencies, Brand Manager with Corporates, and Learning Specialist with not-for-profits provided her with rich industry knowledge which she translates into her teaching. Her passion is to support small businesses with marketing expertise. Hence, she enjoys collaborating with entrepreneurs for student projects to enrich the students with applied marketing skills.
She volunteers with Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) as a mentor to new immigrants and is part of the Advisory Committee at the Canadian Marketing Association.
Raunica is a mother to two young children. Outside of work, she enjoys exploring nature, reading, cooking, and learning new games with her kids (Competent in Roblox and novice in Minecraft!).
Robert J. Ballantyne
Professor Robert J. Ballantyne joins the School of Marketing and Media. He is a journalist, filmmaker, web developer, and graphic designer. He has been a cross-platform journalist for over two decades, including positions with the Toronto Star and CBC investigative TV news programs Marketplace and The Fifth Estate.
Shirley Chan Bell
Shirley joins FCAD as Manager of the Marketing Agency. She most recently worked at Pearson as a Marketing Manager in the Online Learning Services division. She collaborated with academic partners and internal teams to acquire students for a variety of online master's programs. She also served as the marketing lead for the Pearson Pathways recommendation engine, a tool that generated program recommendations based on the prospective student's personal preferences.
Shirley has a passion for learning and gaining new skills. She enrolled in skiing lessons for the first time early this year and looks forward to continuing with lessons during the upcoming winter season.
Alisha Carr
Alisha joins the School of Marketing and Media as an Academic Support Officer in the scheduling department. Previously she held several roles at Conestoga College including Academic Scheduler, scheduling for the School of Health and Life Sciences, along with the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Additionally, she supported the School of Business – Continuing Education as a Program Assistant. Prior to working at Conestoga, she was a part of the Management Team at the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market, supporting vendors and managing the office. She completed a Business Administration degree at Wilfrid Laurier and is currently wrapping up my Project Management Graduate Certificate at Conestoga College. She loves to spend time outdoors, and in the warmer months you will find her camping or hiking, with her pup Charlie!
She looks forward to working with everyone at Seneca and supporting the students!
Tina Cortese
Tina joins FCAD as the new Acting Chair, School of Media. She has extensive experience as a professor and as a media executive. A two-time Gemini award winner, Tina was part of the launch team for one of the country's most widely recognized news channels, CP24. She also served as executive producer for Breakfast Television, CityLine, and multiple New Year's Eve broadcast specials at Nathan Phillips Square.
Tina has been teaching at Seneca since 2013 in the School of Media and is currently the coordinator of the Journalism program.
Tina's educational achievements include a Bachelor's degree in Radio and Television Arts from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Master of Education from Ontario Tech University.
Donna Gall
Professor Donna Gall joins the School of Marketing and Media. After more than 25 years of working as a film, television, and media writer, director, and producer, Donna returned to school to earn her Ph.D. in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University. Her doctoral research explored sports media, gender, affect theory, and media audiences focusing particularly on the audience for women’s hockey.
During her studies, Donna began working as a contract lecturer at the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she taught Writing for Factual and Reality Programs, Documentary Production, Sport Media Capstone, and Media Audiences. In between teaching, Donna continued writing for television while running her own digital media production company Docs4Docs. She is very excited to join the dynamic and creative team at the School of Media at Seneca College and looks forward to meeting students, staff, and faculty over the coming year.
Martha Newbigging
Professor Martha Newbigging joins the School of Creative Arts and Animation. They are a visual and media artist working within practices of illustration, comics and animation. They have illustrated over a dozen children’s books and their animations have been screened internationally. A graduate of Sheridan's post-diploma in Computer Graphics, Martha also brings industry experience in graphic design for websites, museum interactives, and database systems. Martha is currently working on an independent animation project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
As an educator, Martha has taught in our Illustration, Art Fundamentals, Graphic Design, and Animation programs. Martha has also facilitated many comics, animation, and digital storytelling workshops for children and youth in school and community settings across Canada, in rural Nicaragua, and recently in Costa Rica.
Martha has provided leadership at Seneca by stepping in as coordinator for both the Illustration and Art Fundamentals programs. They have also collaborated on several special projects at Seneca such as The Live Comics Project hosted by the AGO, the new Mural Project at Newnham campus, and helped to establish our presence at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) and Canzine.
Martha holds a Bachelor of Education and Masters degree specializing in arts-based learning and research-creation using comics and drawing. Currently a doctoral student at York University, Martha's practice-based research focuses on autobiographical comics, critical pedagogy, and queer subjectivity. Martha has contributed to Journal of Illustration (UK), Nat Brut (US) and Conundrum (Canada)
Mary Pretotto
Professor Mary Pretotto joins the School of Marketing and Media. She has over 15 years of experience in Digital Communications and has taught at various schools in the Toronto area. In her previous role as Director, Digital Employee Communications at Rogers, she managed all communication platforms, including internal social collaboration and the external social employee ambassador program.
She joined Rogers Social Media Center of Excellence in 2009, responsible for real-time monitoring, community management, influencer relations, reporting, online issues management, and business intelligence. In 2012, she won the Gold Quill Merrit Award: How Rogers Communications turned Its Harshest Critics into Brand Ambassadors. Mary is a graduate of the Master of Journalism program at Carleton University, holds an Honours degree in English and Creative Writing from York University, and a Technical Writing Certificate from Humber College. Mary is an avid blogger and social media content creator. You can find her on Instagram @MyHouseOfZing or read her blog at www.myhouseofzing.ca.
Esra Kilicarslan Toplu
Esra Kilicarslan Toplu joins the School of Marketing and Media with more than 17 years of experience in sales development and sales finance, having provided strategies and business performance information to the leadership team to drive sales and enable financial targets. Her extensive work experience is in the consumer-packaged goods industry, but she also worked in different industries like information technologies, shipbuilding, tourism, and at major international firms such as Diageo, and Hewlett Packard, which has shaped her practical know-how.
Three Event and Media Production students, Karla Dela Cruz (Stage Manager), Rabab Khan (Production Assistant), and Kevin Tesoro (Pan-format Video Programmer/Technical Assistant), worked with the Seneca Events team to plan and produce the Seneca Graduation Ceremony. They planned for 6,000 graduates and guests per day for two days at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. TV personality and Seneca Journalism graduate Melissa Grelo hosted the event that featured guest speakers such as Masai Ujiri and Chris Hadfield. President Agnew also delivered a keynote address. The large-scale event required six video screens with a pan format video background for the stage and five-camera video support.
A new Professional Selling program in the School of Marketing is launching this winter, filling an industry need for business-to-business sales professionals.
“The Professional Selling Graduate Certificate is designed to build modern skills to create the next generation of sales professionals,” said Professor Gord Smith, who is coordinating the new program. “Due to several factors including new technology, changing buyer behaviour and the pandemic, sales organizations have had to revamp their strategies for B2B sales.”
Gord says sales organizations are struggling with a number of issues, including:
- Labour market shortage for new sales talent
- A shift to more remote selling positions like insides sales and customer success
- Buyers' preference to interact with sellers digitally which creates a skills gap
- Lack of investment in new hire training for entry level sales roles
On a related note, the School of Marketing is also partnering with Salesforce on three Salesforce Administrator microcredentials.
Simulations and Experiential Learning are a major strength for programs at Seneca. Duncan Reith, Coordinator for the Brand Management post-graduate certificate, describes how one simulation is helping students see how their marketing & strategy decisions are interconnected & impact each other, experience real competition, build their teamwork skills and have some fun!
“Like all marketing programs, our challenge in the Brand Management Graduate Certificate program is how to go beyond simply teaching marketing & strategy concepts and theories and have a strong focus on the application of those concepts and theories to real business situations. We also wanted something that is different from the normal approach to assignments and cases in programs so that the class can. That is what the Marketing Simulation has brought to the BMK program." - Professor Duncan Reith
The Marketing Simulation is offered through Harvard Education. Groups of students are given the mandate and a limited amount of financial resources to set up and manage a new marketing division that is introducing a line of carbon fibre bikes into several international markets. Over the course of eight weeks, each team makes a series of strategy and tactical decisions to drive market share, sales and operating income. All the decisions that marketers make in the real world get made in the marketing game including choosing consumer target audiences, product development & pricing, store location, staff & training decisions, media selection & expenditures, etc. Each group reviews extensive financial, consumer and market information to make their quarterly decisions and, as in real life, reports to their “Board of Directors” on a quarterly basis. The simulation is very sophisticated, so it adapts to and reflects the decisions that the groups make. To date, no two simulations have had the same outcome.
Seneca started using the Marketing Simulation in the Winter 2019 and semester and it has become one of the highlights of the entire BMK program for our students. BMK students are highly engaged in the simulation based on the time the spend in the simulation, the number of students that are online when the quarterly results come out, often on a Friday night, how much they talk about the simulation in class to each other, and how competitive the teams are with each other. During the debrief at the end of the simulation, students always remark about how much they learned from the experience and how valuable it was in building their marketing & strategy skills.
"Team building, strategic discussions, creative usability, timely execution, competitive spirit, and the eagerness to win are a few of the most important learnings. The key takeaway from the simulation is developing strategic decisions for increasing profitability with data & metrics at disposal for context, and how do you as a team convert insights, into profit-making strategic decisions. It creates a zeal to win, and a competitive spirit within you." - Vashishth Vyas, BMK Graduate April 2022
Samantha Barber won first place in the “Recycle Design Category” and second place in the “Hairpiece Category” at the Student American Institute of Floral Designers (AIFD) Competition in Las Vegas 2022. Together, Laura Traill and Samantha Barber were awarded “Highest Average Score” of all schools.
Samantha Barber and Laura Traill both graduated from the Floral Design program in June 2022.
Seneca is affiliated with the AIFD, because the college has a student chapter. The student competition was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, during the AIFD national symposium, which ran from July 4th to the 9th, 2022. The student design competition kicked off the symposium on July 4th.
Both Samantha and Laura have been on winning streaks! Samantha won 1st place in the Floral Design program's year end show. During the same event, Laura won the CAFA Award for Artistic Merit.
School of Creative Arts & Animation’s launch of a new program dubbed “ANI 2.0.” was featured in The Animation Magazine.
Excerpt:
Seneca’s longstanding three-year program is now expanding beyond its previous three-stream curriculum of 2D Animation, 3D Animation and Game Animation to include a new Visual Development stream. As Program Chair Mark Jones explains, “The goal is for graduates to be much more aware of techniques like virtual production, the use of game engines or real-time 3D graphics.”
Seneca students were among the 2022 Applied Arts Student Awards Winners that celebrate talented young creatives with bright futures.
"I was very impressed by the quality of work. I had to remind myself these are students. The amount of great work submitted was inspiring," said Student Awards judge Teresa Leung, Associate Creative Director, Will, Vancouver.
Congratulations to Kimberly Reilly, Luca Aguzzi-Toker, Oscar Tellez, and Sammy Ngoc Pham.
The winners' work is published in print in the Student & Advertising Awards Annual. They also received a personalized awards certificate signed by notable designer Georges Haroutiun, Founder and Art Director of Applied Arts.
"We had a campus tour night tonight for anyone who attended the virtual open house last week. I toured this young woman and her dad, she is starting Graphic Design in the Fall, name is Alexandra Heine. Her dad Scott mentioned on our walk that he was a graduate of the old program, and I asked what year. We walked over to the few remaining grad photos in the little hallway here and sure enough he found his picture. He remembers professors Patricia Munro and Johanne Daoust well and fondly, and it was a thrill for them to find out that Johanne will be Alexandra's teacher in 2nd and 3rd semester. Scott still works in the field after all these years. There you go. Multi-generational effect!"
- SCAA Chair, Mark Jones
Ismael Cala - RTVT
RTVT Grad Ismael Cala had a feature story in TuNota, a Honduran News network. On an interview with the presenter of Al Banquillo, Ismael shared his journey.
Excerpt:
Ismael was born in Santiago de Cuba on September 8, 1969. He studied Art History at the Universidad de Oriente and was a radio and TV presenter in Cuba, on programs such as De Cinco a Siete, on Radio Taíno, or on the game program Who Knows on the national channel Cubavisión. He came to Toronto, Canada, in 1998 where he studied Journalism at the York University School of Communication (2001-2003) and Broadcasting -Television at Seneca.
At that time he began to work as a correspondent for the international news network CNN in its Spanish version doing replacements. For 15 years, Cala has been on the channel, interviewing leaders and references from numerous sectors . Her reputation and leadership in the network began to take shape little by little and to earn a place in the competitive world of the media.
Kayla Guerrette - Summer Institute of Multiplatform Journalism
Kayla Guerrette graduated from the Summer Institute of Multiplatform Journalism and is now a digital broadcast journalist at Global Saskatoon. She penned a note to Professor Barbara Caines about her new role.
Hi Barb,
I just wanted to send you a quick note and share my journalist page from Global with you in case you would like to see it!
GlobalNews - Staff Personalities | Kayla Guerrette
It’s crazy to think that in two weeks it will be three months that I am here. I just want you to know that I still find myself guided by you as everything you taught me continues to help me push myself to be better.
“Representation is so important. Maybe when I was younger, if I had seen a piece of art that reflected who I am, it would have given me some comfort to know that there are people like me out there." - Amiel Sandland
Amiel Sandland can draw animals from the Canadian Arctic as told in Inuit stories, but don’t ask the Seneca Illustration graduate what it’s like to be in Canada’s northern territories.
“I’ve not been there yet,” he said. “I’ve only experienced the visuals through photos — the plants and insects, available food and the different kinds of sleds they have there.”
Mr. Sandland is an illustrator for Inhabit Media, the first Inuit-owned, independent publishing company in the Canadian Arctic, based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. He has been working out of the company’s Toronto office since 2015 and has illustrated more than 100 projects, many of them storybooks for children and science books about animals.
“I’ve had the chance to work with some amazing Indigenous artists, including Germaine Arnakauyok,” he said. “These were all positive learning experience.”
One of Mr. Sandland’s most recent contributions, released earlier this month, is Una Huna?: Ukpik Learns to Sew by Susan Aglukark, a Juno-winning Inuk musician and children’s author.
Ironically, the one class he almost failed at Seneca was children’s illustration.
Growing up in an Italian Canadian family outside of the Greater Toronto Area, Mr. Sandland says he had a “really narrowed mindset” of what a children’s book was or could be.
“I grew up around a lot of people like me and families like mine,” he recalled. “With diversity being the goal for many children’s books, it’s interesting to see how narrow my experience was and how I can be open to more diverse ways to tell stories.”
Inhabit, says Mr. Sandland, is “a godsend” as it has introduced him to a whole new culture and new ways of seeing things.
The company also embraced his transgender identity when he came out to them after changing his name this year.
“They said, ‘Whatever you need, we’ll do it — we’ll change your email and name on the books,’” he said. “They were so welcoming. It was fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
It was while at Seneca, in 2013, that Mr. Sandland began exploring issues related to gender.
“At that time, I was in the closet, and it was all relatively new to me,” he said. “I felt that I didn’t belong, but I didn’t have the language for it.”
After meeting other transgender students at Seneca, and finding a supportive culture around him, Mr. Sandland felt comfortable asking some of his professors to address him by a different name.
“They were very supportive of me,” he said.
As a transgender artist, Mr. Sandland feels it’s important that his art includes people who look like him and sound like him.
ASIFA-Hollywood (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation) and UNICEF have asked Seneca to help them with a short 60-second animation promoting safety for refugees - Jasmine’s Story. The crew that worked on previous Seneca 360 films will be picking this up and are set up at home to produce. The director of this project is Tom Caulfield, who worked on Book of Life and Secret of Kells, and the producer is Aubry Mintz of Nothing to Say fame.
The story is of 13-year-old Syrian refugee, Jasmine, who dreams of becoming a doctor to help children who, like her, have fled war.
Isabel Kanaan's sketch comedy show Abroad draws on the culture shock she experienced coming to Canada. The Acting for Camera and Voice graduate, was interviewed about her new TV show on the CBC Radio program Q.
Isabel has a strong background in sketch comedy as a regular on CBC’s Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Abroad, pulls directly from her experience immigrating to Canada from the Philippines when she was 16.
Somveer Singh Rawal, a Marketing Management student, is interviewed about how the weakened Indian currency is causing financial pressures for international students from India.
Excerpt:
“When I took admission in 2021, it was 58 INR and now it is more than INR 60,” said Rawal who is enrolled in a postgraduate certificate course in marketing management at York University’s Seneca College, Toronto. The course costs 15,000 CAD but its equivalent in rupees kept rising.
This reel features a sample of student work using Houdini from the Game Art and Animation post-graduate program at Seneca in Toronto, Canada.
The Game Art & Animation program has been re-certified for another year with SideFX's Houdini! More than 20 judges from major studios reviewed their submission and all agreed that they should be part of the SideFX team. A major benefit of being Certified is that students who recently graduated are eligible for a FREE Commercial Houdini license. They can use these for freelancing or at a studio if they wish. Several students have already landed jobs in the industry in game and production studios like Ubisoft, Soho VFX, Jam Filled and Crooked City Studios.
Service Hubs
Radha Krishnan, Chief Information Officer shares updates from the Customer Support team as they prepare to support the Fall 2022 intake.
Service hubs at Seneca’s four main campuses are now open at the following locations:
- Newnham Campus - D Building, second floor, across from D2000
- King Campus - Garriock Hall (GH2100)
- Markham Campus - main level, beyond the elevators
- Seneca@York - Stephan E. Quinlan building, beside the welcome desk, second floor
The Customer Support Representative (CSR) team will begin training Monday Aug. 15 and will take on the centralized services for the Registrar’s Office and Student Services beginning Monday, Sept. 26
Regular start-up business processes have not changed, and students should continue to be directed to orientation@senecacollege.ca for assistance as they prepare for the fall term
Coming to Campus Resources
Questions: health@senecacollege.ca
Return to Campus Orientation Video
Province of Ontario COVID-19 Safety Recommendations:
Adobe Workshops
New faculty workshop series for anybody looking to make better use of Adobe creative tools in their work and to help teach our students new digital skills hosted by Adobe.
Speed and ease-of-use will be key themes featuring the new Adobe Express—getting faculty and students started with a much lower learning curve.
Finally, these workshops are designed by educators for educators, so it’ll be an exciting opportunity to see how other members of the Higher Education community are weaving creativity into their curricula and impacting student outcomes. Check out the series page and sign up for whatever interests you.
These are 1-hour (free) sessions geared toward all disciplines and backgrounds – not just art, design, or photography.
Sessions Include:
- September 1: Academic Videos and Podcasts with Adobe Rush
- September 22: Research Journals with Adobe In-Design
- October 13: Infographics and Data Visualization
- October 27: Career Branding Portfolio with Adobe Express and Adobe Portfolio
- November 17: Composing Academic Images with Adobe Express and Adobe Photoshop
Attending instructors will have the opportunity to follow along and earn accredited badges, including an Adobe Analytics for Teaching and Learning certification.
Immunization Clinic at S@Y
Details:
- Location: S@Y S1209
- Time: Wednesday, September 21 and Thursday, September 22 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Toronto Public Health offering the following program School Immunization Program & Catch-up Clinics – City of Toronto:
- Meningococcal vaccine (prevents meningitis)
- Human Papillomavirus vaccine (prevents cancers)
- Hepatitis B vaccine (prevents liver disease and cancer)
- COVID Boosters - Those born in 2002 and 2003 are eligible
Appointment – Not necessary, walk in. If you have a health card, bring it but not necessary
Contact Jessica Johnson directly for more information.
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