Canada Awards for Excellence
Recipient ProfileUniversity of Waterloo, Office of the Vice-President, Academic & Provost
2017 Silver Recipient
Excellence, Innovation and Wellness®
The Vice-President Academic & Provost is the chief academic and budget officer of the University of Waterloo. Working closely with the President, he leads and supports the efforts of the deans, faculty and staff to drive academic excellence. The Provost also carries operational and budgetary authority and responsibility.
As a busy and process-driven office that is often the “last stop” for approvals within the University, the Office of the Provost team members have used the Excellence Canada journey to review and reflect on their work, identify strengths and opportunities, and take action to implement positive changes. Key initiatives included applying Lean methodologies to streamline the approval process for staff hiring, developing mission, vision and wellness statements for the Office, and creating an employee handbook to document the Office’s numerous processes.
Office employees participated in a Lean pilot to streamline the University’s hiring approvals process, which resulted in a 77% reduction in the number of approvals crossing the Provost’s desk.
“Excellence Canada provided an excellent framework for our offices implementation of an excellence culture. Through this, the team that is the Provost’s Office at the University of Waterloo, worked together to create an environment for success; a culture that is focused on employee health and wellness, institutional collaboration, and that provides outstanding service to members of the UWaterloo community.”