Strategy 2022 - 2027 | Full Version
Acknowledging the Traditional Lands of the Sc’ianew First Nation
Pearson College UWC is located on the traditional territory of the Sc’ianew First Nation, also known as Beecher Bay. The College is proud to acknowledge the First Peoples on whose traditional territories we live, learn and work. Acknowledging territory shows recognition of, and respect for Indigenous Peoples of both Canada and the world.
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The Context for the Strategy
Welcome to the executive summary of the Pearson College UWC 2022-27 Strategic Plan. Developed in consultation with stakeholder input and endorsed by the College’s Board of Directors, this plan builds upon our previous five-year Roadmap for the Future. We are excited to share our new strategy with you and we welcome your observations and counsel. The 2022-27 period marks a time of celebration and reflection as we look forward to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the UWC Movement and the upcoming 50th anniversary of Pearson College UWC.
Positioning Pearson as a global leader in climate action built upon cutting edge educational innovation utilizing local university and Indigenous expertise.
During our initial consultations, we heard calls for a strong focus on specific deliverables drawing on Pearson’s distinctive strengths:
The focus on place-based education strengthens our position within the UWC movement as a leader in climate action and sustainability. Our unique access to First Nations partners, knowledge and practices, plus our local post-secondary institutions specializing in climate adaptation and Indigenous education, offers the wider UWC essential resources to help achieve our mutual commitment for a sustainable and peaceful future.
Just as the UWC movement was created in the post-war era to help prevent future global conflict, Pearson is now rising to the challenge of developing new leaders with the skill sets and mindsets to address our global climate and ecological crisis.
This is not a limiting or narrow agenda. In fact, it is the opposite. The new Climate Action Leadership Diploma pathway honours the UWC commitment in the best liberal arts traditions and fully embraces the advantages of our location to ensure our students can become the most impactful and successful future global leaders.
Whether a student pursues our new IB Career-related Program (IBCP) Climate Action Leadership Diploma or the existing IB Diploma Program (IBDP), the increased choice and personalization offered by additional education pathways, will ultimately benefit all students collectively as our new competency framework and micro-credentialling give everyone access to best innovative practices. This future-focused, challenging educational foundation strongly supports key goals beyond curricula programming. This includes:
Building upon this vision and these strengths, our updated College profile would look like this:
Pearson College UWC continues to produce students who excel academically with enhanced leadership skills grounded in university-level competencies and credentials informed by an innovative new curriculum to help solve the biggest problem facing humanity. Young people graduating from our academically-demanding and challenging experiential programs will go forward with an explicit and concrete roadmap to meet the UWC mission of peace and sustainability through their further education, careers and personal pathways in life.
Vision and Values Informing Our Strategy
The UWC mission, vision and values are foundational to our philosophy. However the innovative and ground-breaking educational structure we outline in this plan demands that we also understand and incorporate new values and principles that complement this. They also push us to future-proof our offerings by opening ourselves to Indigenous knowledge evolved since time immemorial and equipping young people to meet and overcome the disruptions challenging our world.
Whether we are enhancing our educational programs, facilitating greater student agency, enhancing community wellbeing and decision-making or committing to sustainable operations and facilities, these are embedded in the First Peoples Principles of Learning that emphasize intergenerational responsibility, a focus on place, sustainability, collective responsibility and environmental stewardship. A foundation of Indigenous knowledge and ethics curated over thousands of years will inform our future-facing strategic approach.
A Promise that Learning will Be:
Transformative
Intergenerational
Experiential
Inclusive
Holistic
Place-based
Strategic Drivers
These strategic drivers emphasize Pearson’s strengths in place-based education and harness our unique position in driving an educational moral imperative. This also broadens and deepens every student’s social and educational outcome by elevating agency, leadership skills and creative problem-solving competencies. Details informing the three drivers are shown in this summary:
» Place as land, sea, sky, people, aesthetics and ontology
» Distinguishing Pearson’s characteristics amongst the UWC network
» Maximizing our location, resources, partnerships and expertise
» Sustainability in all things, including infrastructure, travel, energy, food, philanthropy, finance, and operations and a commitment towards net-zero operations
» Place and sustainability through the lens of Indigenous wisdom, practices and involvement
» Prioritizing Indigenous Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group actions as a core component of our wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) commitments
» DEI working group to involve all stakeholders
» DEI is the main driver for our five-year human resources strategy
» Climate Action, Reconciliation and DEI will be explicitly interlinked
» Increasing social emotional literacy, mental health and wellbeing, self-regulation, and autonomy
» Further develop means to enhance transparency and collective problem solving
» College commitment to widening responsibility, distributing leadership and creating a cohesive culture of trust and support for decision-making
» College Assembly (CA) model of authentic student and adult decision-making
» Program focus on developing advanced competencies, skills and literacies for both students and adults
Together, these inform our 2022-2027 Strategic Plan.
The vision supporting this is expressed in three straightforward strategic drivers:
- Place-based Education, Sustainability and Climate Action
- Reconciliation, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
- Community Wellbeing and Distributed Decision-making
These represent guiding statements for our 2022-27 Strategic Plan and inform our
commitments in each of our three main operational areas:
The following sections demonstrate how these describe a comprehensive way forward for Pearson College UWC as a thriving and vital educational institution dedicated to supporting and guiding young leaders and changemakers from across the globe with a foundation of peace and sustainability and a readiness to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
Educational Programming and Community Wellbeing
Educational Programming
This describes our work to develop Pearson’s new curriculum pathway which will run
alongside the existing IB Diploma program. This ambitious project involves co-delivery
partnerships with Vancouver Island University (VIU), Royal Roads University (RRU) and
First Nations educators to provide enhanced educational opportunities for all Pearson students and allow us to deliver several key goals in our Indigenous Reconciliation Action Plan.
Our 2027 Ambition
» Two flourishing IB curriculum pathways: the IB Diploma Program and the Climate Action Leadership Diploma. Regardless of which pathway is chosen, all students will benefit from enhanced leadership training focused on maximizing social impact.
» Increased access to applied and entrepreneurial/social innovation learning and university-level instruction.
» Increased access for all students – including those across the UWC movement – to knowledge shared through interaction with Indigenous education leaders and Elders.
» Pearson develops and shares innovative courses across the UWC.
» Pearson is seen as the global campus of choice for pre-university students in interested in working in the domain of climate leadership/sustainability and related intersectional issues.
Community Wellbeing, Distributed Decision-Making and Skill/Competency Development
This describes community wellbeing with a focus on student agency and influence on decision-making as well as skills development. Further development of the College Assembly (CA) model of student co-constructed decision-making working alongside leadership and staff. This also includes our DEI Working Group which draws together alumni and other experts working in the field of DEI in different industries. Student involvement in competency-building is supplemented by a new Core Course to develop self-management skills, social emotional literacy, respectful community understanding and awareness of misconduct policies, restorative justice and tone setting agendas.
This will be tracked, evaluated and captured by a student leadership Climate Change Adaptation Competency Framework (see next page) in development through Royal Roads University. High school-aged students that work together on this agenda and develop complex leadership skills focused on solutions will accelerate competency development linked to future employment, social impact, versatility and resilience. This framework will be utilised by all Pearson students in both the IBDP and IBCP pathways.
Student wellbeing and safeguarding will be enhanced as training for faculty, staff and
houseparents equips them with better skills to support early intervention for student support and encourage shared responsibility for collective community wellbeing. Responsiveness from the College in reacting to staff/faculty wellbeing concerns is also a strategic commitment. This will be enhanced by having a 360-degree component in all staff/faculty evaluations to ensure consistency and collective feedback in appraisal processes.
Our 2027 Ambition
» Improved engagement and a positive culture of trust, relationships and decision-making between students, staff, leadership and faculty.
» A student Core Course to improve student self-regulation skills/mental health and issues around consent, language, injustice, conflict resolution and collective responsibility together with a Leadership Adaptation Competency Framework established for all students.
» An empowered College Assembly (CA) to authentically involve students in decisionmaking, bridging the gap between students, leadership, staff and faculty.
» A DEI Committee, with student and alumni representation that diminishes misperceptions of issues related to student, staff or administrative investigations. Ethics committee and wider culture change reduces formal investigations.
» Faculty/Staff/Houseparent/House Buddy training ensures earlier interventions and
professionalization of Advisory/Houseparent support.
» HR: A Faculty/Staff appraisal process that ensures fairness together with a commitment
to improve workplace culture.
» HR: An embedded DEI strategy.
Engagement, Communications & Philanthropy
This section describes efforts to engage with alumni, parents, supporters, stakeholders and the broader community to advance the mission, understanding and awareness of Pearson College UWC. A key highlight includes the successful completion of our Renew and Re-found Campaign that already has supported the full renovation of all five student residences and other campus infrastructure upgrades and has grown our endowment to provide scholarships for students from around the world.
Within the plan period, the College will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
This is an opportunity to raise our profile and grow our audience of supporters to ensure funding is in place to deliver on the College’s strategic drivers.
Our 2027 Ambition | Engagement
» Develop a continuum of engagement for students and alumni to find diverse and meaningful ways to connect with each other and with the College, in various stages of their lives, so that the UWC mission can have an ongoing, living impact through the lives and work of all alumni.
Our 2027 Ambition | Communications
» College communications strategy amplifies strategic priorities including Indigenous reconciliation and education plus our commitment to climate education within a reconciliation context. Content is tailored on a variety of platforms to most effectively reach identified target audiences and to support ongoing awareness and advancement priorities.
Our 2027 Ambition | Philanthropy
» Successful completion of $40 million Renew and Re-found Campaign, enabling the innovation, campus renewal and scholarships that will lead the College into its next generation of education and impact.
Financial Stewardship and Initiatives
This section focuses on sustainability in ecological, operational and financial terms.
Sustainability in all its forms is key to ensuring the College’s future as a robust and
financially healthy institution committed to sustainable operational practices. These are
fundamental components of the College’s climate action and Indigenous reconciliation agendas.
Our 2027 Ambition | A Sustainable Financial Plan and Model
» Eliminate the College operating deficit and achieve a balanced operating budget by 2025 through increased revenue and potential changes to the College’s operating model.
» Maintain or exceed levels of tuition revenue throughout 2022-27 at near-maximum returns without negatively disrupting the College’s commitment to deliberate diversity and the mix of non/partial/full fee-paying students.
» Advancement – Fundraising/Government Support – Please see Philanthropy.
» Maintain or improve on a strong Endowment Fund performance and develop and implement a succession plan for Investment Committee membership to maintain this high level of talent, commitment, and expertise.
» Implement a revenue generating facilities rental/summer programs recovery plan, re-establish previous revenue-generating clients and build a new customer base by 2024.
» Continue ongoing initiatives to examine alternative operational models that maximize ROI from baseline funding, including internal/external expansion, partnerships, distributed programs, etc. Sustainable Operations
Our 2027 Ambition | Sustainable Operations - A Pearson Climate Action Plan
» Jump-start the education of next-generation thinkers and leaders by implementing a Pearson Climate Action Plan by 2023-24 in conjunction with the College’s 50th anniversary.
» Achieve 75% of net-zero status or greater by 2027 to complement our CALD program, help Canada meet its 2050 net-zero target and reinforce our commitment to a sustainable future climate through reduced energy consumption, decreased GHG emissions
» Establish a College champion to coordinate sustainability and environmental initiatives by hiring a Sustainability Coordinator in 2022.
» Establish a comprehensive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment strategy by 2022 and increase the College’s investment in the ESG pool of funds fivefold by 2027.