With the February break behind us, spring is just around the corner!

A lot has happened around the division over the last few months. The Finance and Administration Strategic Planning process is well underway, with departmental and campus stakeholder consultations almost finished. Thank you to everyone who has participated to date. Should you wish to provide additional thoughts, you can do so by filling out this form.

The budget process is also in the final stages of preparation and the university budget will go to the Board of Governors for final approval in April.

As you know, Marc Dabros is retiring at the end of April and I am very pleased that Valerie Turner will be joining the F&A team on March 13 as the new Associate Vice-President (IT) and Chief Information Officer (CIO). Read more about Valerie below. We also welcome Newaz Ahmed to the Pension Fund Management team as the new Assistant Director of Investments. Read more about Newaz below.

I want to congratulate all the Service Excellence nominees and recipients from the Finance and Administration division. Reading these nominations made me very proud of the dedication shown throughout the Division every day. The Service Excellence celebration was a great event and it was nice to see so many colleagues participate in person and online. Thank you to the Office of Quality Initiatives for organizing the Service Excellence Awards celebration every year. It’s always a highlight in the university calendar.

More than 3,700 pieces of hardware make Carleton’s WiFi network possible, including 2,800 WiFi access points, 900 ethernet and fibre optic switches, and 40 routers and firewalls.

Celebration events were held in February for two of the three renamed campus buildings, including Nideyinan – formerly the University Centre (pronounced nih-DAY-in-nah), is an Algonquin name that translates to “our heart”. Teraanga Commons – formerly Residence Commons (pronounced tare-ang-gah), is a Senegalese name from the Wolof language that means sharedness, civility and honour where generosity of spirit is emphasized. The celebration for renaming Pigiarvik (ᐱᒋᐊᕐᕕᒃ) – formerly Robertson Hall, is to be confirmed. More information about the New Names for New Times Initiative is here.

Valerie Turner, Associate Vice-President (IT) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) – Valerie is a senior leader with extensive technology, HR and business experience in the post-secondary, as well as the public and private sectors. She comes to Carleton from the City of Ottawa, where she was the General Manager of the Innovative Client Services group, made up of nine service areas and more than 1,000 staff. For more than 20 years, she also worked at the University of Ottawa in a wide range of IT roles, including as its Associate CIO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Valerie is known as a highly collaborative leader who has been at the forefront of innovation and executing enterprise-wide technology, as well as implementation of workplace digital strategies. She begins her new role on March 13.

Assistant Director of Investments Named: Newaz (Naz) Ahmed joined the Pension Fund Management Office on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023 as the Assistant Director of Investments. He has a background in finance and risk and has a professional risk manager (PRM) designation, as well as the chartered investment manager (CIM) designation. He is also a Carleton engineering alumni.

Sal Ugarte, Assistant Director of Emergency Management and Continuity of Operations, will be inducted into the Military Firefighters Heritage Foundation Hall of Fame on March 18 in recognition of his years of services as a Fire Chief in the United States Marine Corps. Congratulations Sal!

Carleton University recently launched its inaugural Digital Strategy and Roadmap. An additional resource, “Digital Strategy and Roadmap at a Glance”, is now available. Click here to download a PDF copy.

Thanks to everyone who attended the annual Service Excellence Awards celebration on Feb. 23. It was wonderful to gather with so many colleagues in Fenn Lounge and virtually to celebrate the nominees and recipients. Congratulations to all! The list of recipients can be found here.

A special thanks to the nominators who took the time to recognize their remarkable colleagues. Please remember, you can submit a Service Excellence Nomination all year round!

The Carleton Emergency Notification System has been upgraded to include push notifications from the Carleton Mobile App. To ensure you receive ENS alerts on your mobile device, please download the Carleton Mobile app on the Apple App Store or Google Play and ensure you enable notifications under your mobile device settings. More information is available here.

Person to Person: Catch up on what your colleagues are doing.

Service Anniversaries: Congratulate your Carleton friends on their milestone anniversaries.

University Policies: We have a policy for that! All university policies are on the University Secretariat website.