The Fourth Decade (2002-2012)

B. George Granger (Executive Director, 2003-2015)

George joined the OUAC as the Executive Director in 2003. His career includes experience as a Trust Officer with The Canada Trust Company (now TD Canada Trust) followed by a move to the University of Guelph in 1980 where he worked as an Admissions Counsellor before moving on to Wilfrid Laurier University as Associate Registrar and Director of Admissions for 14 years. In 1995, George joined McMaster University as University Registrar.

George has maintained numerous professional affiliations throughout his career, including positions as past president of the Ontario University Registrars' Association; past member of the Ontario University Council on Admissions Executive Committee, and Chair of its Committee on Admissions Practices Committee; and past member of Educational Testing Services (Princeton, NJ) TOEFL Advisory Board. Raised in the Niagara region, George is an economics graduate from the University of Guelph.

 

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Trudy Sykes (Director of Operations, 2005-present)

In 2005, Trudy joined the OUAC as the Director of Operations. She began her career at McGill University after graduating from Concordia University with an Honours BA in programming.

Before arriving at the OUAC, Trudy spent 25 years at McMaster University where she first worked as a Systems Analyst and helped develop a new student records system. She went on to the Registrar's Office and continued her career as a Senior Associate Registrar, and, incidentally, became the principle user of the system she previously helped develop.

Since coming to the OUAC, Trudy has introduced project management, business analysis, and quality assurance as part of the OUAC's strategic initiative to modernize many components of its business.

 

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Staff

The OUAC now employs 60 full-time and approximately 10 part-time employees. As George says, "The OUAC's most important asset is its staff. Our commitment to high quality service and results-oriented management can only be realized with the help of our committed and highly skilled employees." Particularly, the OUAC is continually grateful to its part-time staff, who have played, and continue to play a valuable role in the OUAC's success.

Food has continued to be a theme with many of OUAC's milestone celebrations, of which there is more opportunity to celebrate since staff has steadily grown. Marriages, milestone birthdays, retirements, new babies and grandbabies are all celebrated at the OUAC; but staff also finds ways to celebrate on a daily basis.

Fundraising efforts continue at the OUAC with a number of external charities. For instance, after Ron Scriver's passing, the OUAC staff team pulled together to assist with fundraising efforts for the Ron Scriver Memorial Bursary. More recently, the team has held fundraisers to assist with the local Children's Foundation of Guelph and Wellington (Adopt-a-Family program) during the month of December.

• In 2003, the Review & Change option for online applications went live, making this aspect of applying much easier for both applicants and OUAC staff.
• In 2006, the OUAC rewrote web applications using our own framework in order to remove dependence on Websphere Commerce Suite.
• A disaster recovery site was established in 2006 at an Ontario university with plans to develop high availability back-up for critical systems.
• In 2010, the OUAC introduced a new telephone system with a telephone number exclusively for applicant inquiries.
• Work began in 2011 to re-develop applications in PHP (from RPG).
• In 2012, the three existing IBM POWER servers were 12,700 times more powerful than in 1988 at more than 58,000 CPW of processing power. The OUAC also has numerous Windows, Linux and VMware servers in addition to its IBM POWER servers.
  
• The OUAC maintains nearly 1.5 million lines of code that support applicant and reporting systems and more still with regards to eINFO and the Admissions and OUAC websites.

Compared to the first meeting that was held in the OUAC's first meeting room during the second decade, the current Conference Room hosts so many meetings each year that Applicant Services had to initiate a new meeting request process to keep organized.

For instance, from April 1, 2010 to March 30, 2011, the OUAC's Conference Room hosted 68 meetings - 37 of which were for OUAC invitees only, 28 that included OUAC staff plus external guests, and 3 that were for external groups that needed the Conference Room space.

• In 2002, the OUAC printed 128,443 kilograms worth of publications. In 2010, the OUAC printed only 10,544 kilograms.
• The OUAC celebrated the completion of its 30th admissions cycle in 2002.
• By 2003, all of the OUAC's divisions had online applications available and it began processing graduate study applications.
• In 2003, the OUAC's mission and values statements were created - derived from the COU strategic review of the OUAC, concluded in May 2003, and revised by the OUAC Advisory Board on May 29, 2009 and May 27, 2011.
• The online version of INFO Magazine (eINFO) went live in December 2005; a new version was launched in September 2006; and the site was redesigned in 2007.
• In 2010, the OUAC introduced its Green Committee to officially implement environmentally friendly endeavours, both internally and externally, though environmental initiatives have been entrenched in the OUAC's operations since the early 1990s.
• When the OUAC moved from paper to PDF documents in university distributions in 2011, approximately $50,000 was saved in postage and delivery costs per year.
• In 2011, the OUAC began work on a number of accessibility policies and procedures in response to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) standards.