April Message from Julie

Dear CNAS community,

As April winds down there is a lot of work happening across our campus and our college. It’s an exciting time to be at our university, contributing to plans to prepare us for a future that seems to be coming faster than we ever imagined. In this work, I’ve been thinking a lot about the U of A values introduced earlier this year, specifically, A Spirit of Community and Impact Through Excellence.

These two values support and drive the work we do. The work is hard and messy, and we commit to this work on behalf of our community to see its impact realized.

We do this work to ensure that the CNAS community is supported so members of our community can focus on the core mission of research and education — areas where ALES, engineering and science continue to lead and have impact.

I am often asked, and I know many of you wonder, what exactly do you do in CNAS? I am taking this opportunity to tell you about three projects that we have been working on very closely with our amazing partners in ALES, engineering and science. These are projects that epitomize how we come together as a community to increase our impact through excellence

First is our work within the graduate administration space, specifically around graduate admissions. One of the outcomes of this important work is to make sure students applying to our programs have consistent experiences and get their admissions letters sooner rather than later. Earlier admissions and offer letters impact outcomes of applicants deciding to choose U of A over our competitors and this contributes to impact of our graduate programs. The CNAS program coordinators began providing administrative support to departments for graduate admissions for Fall 2026, which also corresponded with system and process changes in GPS. Overall processing times were generally improved, in no small part due to effective partnerships as we adapted to the move from GSMS to Slate as the institutional admissions system. A huge thank you to the program coordinators and all the departments for your hard work and support to make this happen. Now that the first cycle is complete, we will be planning a debrief for you to provide feedback so we can continue to improve our processes. Please watch for an email coming soon on how to participate. Also kicking off is the graduate awards and scholarship discovery project to look at moving graduate awards from GSMS to the BlackBaud Awards Management platform, and review the associated processes and roles around award administration.

Next, CNAS has been working with Infrastructure Planning, Development and Partnerships in USOF on campus master space planning to determine how we will accommodate growth outlined in SHAPE and best use space within our existing footprint. I am co-chairing the working group with Joanne Bortnick, and we recently had our college working group kick off meeting. We have amazing representation from across CNAS faculties on this project, and I am so grateful to work and collaborate with them. You can find out more about the master planning here, along with a list of who is representing CNAS on the working group. I thank everyone who is dedicating their time to the important work ahead that will see activity from now until the end of the year.

Finally, we have started collaborations with the Office of the Provost on the Course Rationalization Project, which empowers faculties to make timely, data-informed decisions in support of student experience, academic quality and long‑term sustainability. Our kick off meeting is May 14, and once again we have great representation from across ALES, engineering and science.

In closing, I want to thank the faculty general managers — Andrea, Dawn and Dianne — who have supported these and other college initiatives.

I’m always available to discuss opportunities to strengthen our college and our impact. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with ideas or questions at julie.naylor@ualberta.ca.

Sincerely,

Julie Naylor
College General Manager, College of Natural and Applied Sciences