Academic Year Welcome 2025

OCAD U Academic Year Welcome (AYW) 2025
Tuesday, August 26, 2025

AYW Main Event: 1:00 – 5:30 pm 
Location: 100 McCaul St., Main Auditorium (MCA 190)
Reception/Social: 4:00 – 5:30 pm at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond St. W.)

Presented by the Vice-President, Academic & Provost and the Centre for Learning & Teaching (CLT).

OCAD U’s Academic Year Welcome (AYW) brings together all faculty and staff to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year and to reflect as a community on shared commitments and priorities.

This year's theme, Navigating Complexity: Centering Learning Amid Rapid Change, speaks to the transformative shifts currently reshaping teaching and learning in higher education. Together, we will reflect on how pedagogical practices can be reimagined and evolve in response to these changes, while remaining grounded in our commitments to inclusive, democratic and sustainable teaching and learning.

The AYW keynote by Dr. Bonnie Stewart (Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor) will invite us to consider how we take up these ideas with care and intentionality in our classrooms and across the university. Following the keynote presentation, we will celebrate the recipients of the 2024-25 Teaching Awards with an awards presentation. The afternoon concludes with a reception/social at Onsite Gallery to mark the beginning of a new academic year.

All faculty and staff welcome. Please email clt@ocadu.ca with any questions and access requests.

In today's higher education context, how do we understand and navigate the broader structures attempting to shape what learning and knowledge mean in our classrooms? How do we distinguish between tools of power and tools of knowledge? This talk will overview the hype surrounding GAI and automation in higher education at this moment, and offer practical pathways for fostering agency, belonging and participatory educational values in studio education and learning more broadly. 

Dr. Jess Mitchell, Senior Manager, Research + Design, Inclusive Design Research Centre and Adjunct Professor, School of Graduate Studies, will introduce the keynote speaker and moderate the discussion.

 

About Dr. Bonnie Stewart: 
Dr. Bonnie Stewart is a longtime educator and digital researcher whose work in participatory learning has spanned all eras of the web. As Associate Professor of Online Pedagogy and Workplace Learning in the University of Windsor's Faculty of Education, Bonnie explores the implications of digital information ecosystems for institutions and society. Bonnie was an early MOOC researcher and ethnographer of Twitter as an academic environment, and currently investigates what it means to know, to learn, and to belong – at the human level, with agency – in an era increasingly marked by digital weaponization and scale. 

 

Event Overview:

1:00 – 1:45 pm Welcome & Remarks	Land Acknowledgement and Welcome – Vice-President, Academic and Provost   Welcome and Remarks – President   Opening – Elder   Remarks – Vice-Provost, Students & International
1:45 – 2:55 pm Keynote & Discussion	Keynote Presentation – Dr. Bonnie Stewart, Cultivating Agency and Belonging in Education During Complex Times Discussion and Q&A – Dr. Bonnie Stewart & Dr. Jess Mitchell
2:55 – 3:05 pm Break	Wellness Break
3:05 – 3:50 pm Teaching Awards Ceremony	Presentation of award certificates to the 2024-2025 Teaching Awards recipients – Vice-President, Academic and Provost
3:50 – 4:00 pm Walk to Onsite Gallery	Transition to reception at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond St. West
4:00 – 5:30 pm Reception / Social	Reception at Onsite Gallery