Office of Quality Assurance
Welcome to the Office of Quality Assurance. We provide leadership and consultation on curriculum change and renewal; new program development; and manage the quality assurance (cyclical program reviews) of current undergraduate and graduate programs. Our team also manages aspects of academic policy and supports special projects within the Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic (AVPA).
Working closely with the Board of Undergraduate Studies and the Senate Committee for Quality Assurance, we assure the ongoing quality enhancement of our academic programs for our students, who are at the core of our quality assurance activities. We liaise with internal and external partners, including the Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance (OUCQA or the Quality Council) and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities (MCU).
We are committed to providing service excellence, to supporting innovative teaching and learning and to working with faculty, staff and students across the University to advance the goals of indigenization, equity, diversity and inclusion in our curriculum.
Our Values
Inclusion
Equity
Collaboration
Accountability
Transparency
Integrity
Our Vision
In the Office of Quality Assurance, we strive to create a safe and inclusive workplace and recognize the systemic barriers created by racism, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of discrimination and oppression that continue to be present in higher education systems. We support innovation in the design, development, assessment, and continuous improvement of curricula, programs, policies, processes, and practices. Working to embody collaborative, inclusive, and equitable lenses, we value quality assurance processes that focus on enhancing student learning and the achievement of learning outcomes – intended and emergent. We support transparent, evidence-based, and data-informed decision-making to empower faculty, students, and staff to make meaningful change from within academia.
Land Acknowledgement
As advocates for the decolonization and Indigenization of our programs, curricula, and educational spaces, we acknowledge the University of Guelph is a multi-campus institution and resides on multiple territories. The Guelph campus resides on the ancestral lands of the Attawandaron people and, along with the Guelph-Humber campus, the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. We recognize the significance of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant. The Ridgetown campus is located on the treaty lands of the Odawa, Potawatami and Ojibwe.
Across these campuses and treaty lands, we offer our respect to the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Wendat people. In order to strengthen our relationships with the First Nations, Metis, Inuit, and Indigenous people with whom we live and work, whether on our campuses or where our scholarship and studies take us, we must actively decolonize our communities, our work, and our curriculum. We ground ourselves in the knowledge that there are multiple ways of knowing and that higher education is a site where we have both the privilege and the responsibility to make concerted change.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is at the core of what we work toward with our faculty, staff and students as they create new innovative programs and review existing ones. It is also a key tenant for our own practices. As a team, we are committed to regularly reviewing the alignment of those practices with our vision and values and to ensure they are further aligned with the Senate-approved policies and the sector-wide frameworks that underpin our work. We are further committed to meeting the evolving needs of the community and identifying how our processes can be improved.
The most recent campus-wide feedback survey of the Office and our team's practices was conducted in Fall 2022. We thank the faculty, staff and students who responded for their thoughtful feedback and have already benefitted from the comments and suggestions. We continue to use it to modify our practices.
We welcome ongoing response from those we work with on how we can further improve our service, strategic alignment, and take the guesswork out of academic quality assurance at the University of Guelph.