Strategic Support Fund initiatives drive progress on UM’s shared goals

As UM moves forward with implementing MomentUM: Leading Change Together, Strategic Plan 2024-2029, innovative projects supported through the Strategic Initiatives Support Fund (SISF) are bringing the plan’s vision to life. With the 2024–2025 funding cycle now concluded, several impactful initiatives have successfully wrapped up and a new group of funding recipients has been announced.

The SISF provides support for initiatives from faculty and staff that align with UM’s strategic goals – creating knowledge that matters, empowering learners, and reimagining engagement – while also advancing UM’s core commitments to fostering a vibrant community, advancing Reconciliation, and building a sustainable future. For the 2025-2026 year, projects focused on advancing unit-level priorities that moved forward our shared institutional goals.

A MomentUM Implementation Plan will be shared this summer to guide faculties and units in aligning their planning efforts with university-wide goals. In the meantime, recent SISF projects illustrate the kind of transformative work already underway.

A new hub for digital and media literacies in the Faculty of Education

With SISF support, the Faculty of Education has transformed its traditional computer lab into the new Digital Literacies Lab – a digital media production space designed to advance novel and inclusive teaching, learning, and research, and foster creative, transformative knowledge mobilization and community engagement through digital media. The new lab includes audio and video production and editing equipment and software, GenAI tools, and a podcast production room.

Officially opened in January of this year, the Digital Literacies Lab is already enabling faculty innovation and enriching student learning experiences, involving forms of media such as video and audio podcasts, video essays, sound postcards, digital stories, and documentaries. The lab has facilitated digital and media literacies education, media-integrated research, computer-assisted qualitative data analysis and Generative AI workshops, and knowledge mobilization initiatives.

The Digital Literacies Lab is also fostering cross-faculty collaborations and engaging the wider community. Several classes of newcomers from the River East Transcona School Division have already visited the lab, and upcoming visits are anticipated by Grade 7-9 students in the Faculty of Education’s CanU afterschool program. The lab has supported several UM student podcast initiatives, and through additional funding from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Seed Fund, Amir Michalovich, SISF Project Lead and Faculty of Education Assistant Professor, will use the technologies to explore live podcasting in class for student engagement, dialogic learning, and communicative skills development.

Michalovich notes, “Digital and multimodal literacies are essential in today’s world, particularly for critically and equitably thinking, meaning, relating, doing, and becoming through digital media. We are very excited about the ways the new Digital Literacies Lab will strengthen innovative and inclusive teaching and research, while also providing a valuable service to K-12, post-secondary, and adult learners across Manitoba.”

Students and staff recording a podcast in the Digital Literacies Lab.

Engineering students witness the realities of hydro development in Northern Manitoba

A collaboration between Jillian Seniuk Cicek (Department of Engineering Education, Price Faculty of Engineering) and Peter Kulchyski (Department of Indigenous Studies, Faculty of Arts) resulted in a week-long immersive learning experience that brought classroom teachings on decolonizing and Indigenizing engineering into the field.

Last summer, eleven undergraduate and graduate students, along with an engineer, an architect, four faculty members, and one community guide, visited six Cree Nations in northern Manitoba – Misipawistik (Grand Rapids), Nisichawayasihk (Nelson House), Pimicikamak (Cross Lake), Makso Sakahigan (Fox Lake), Tataskweyak (Split Lake), O-Pipon-Na-Piwin (South Indian Lake), and Kinoa Sipi (Norway House) – to learn directly from community members about the social, environmental, and cultural effects of hydroelectric development. Indigenous community members spoke of environmental destruction, experiences of racism, broken promises, and internal community division over proposed and implemented projects. Participants also heard powerful accounts of strength and resilience shown by local leaders in the face of these challenges. Their stories left a lasting and profound impact on the participants.

“The trip changed the way we understand the experiences of these Cree communities, and the devastating impact of engineering projects on community members’ lives and ways of being, knowing, doing, and relating,” says project co-lead and tour participant, Seniuk Cicek. “This understanding is crucial for engineering students and faculty as we work to learn the Truth and walk the path of Reconciliation in both engineering education and the profession.”

Grand Rapids Generating Station, visited by a group of engineering students and faculty members to learn about the impact of hydroelectric development on Northern Indigenous communities.

Ernest Turner (left) from Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids) speaks with Peter Kulchyski and the group. They stand on the dry riverbed where the Grand Rapids once flowed, a place of deep cultural, spiritual, and economic significance to the community.

Enhancing student wellness through improved private spaces

The Student Wellness Centre (SWC) is an important resource hub for student health and mental well-being, offering drop-in and appointment services with health and wellness professionals and trained peer educators. It also hosts a variety of preventive and promotional health initiatives.

Since opening in 2023, the SWC has seen steady growth in both programming and student engagement. As awareness of these resources grows, students are increasingly seeking one-on-one health-focused support from Healthy U peer volunteers, highlighting the need for a private space for these important and confidential conversations. To meet this need, the SWC received funding from the Strategic Initiatives Support Fund and the Bell Let’s Talk Implementation Grant to install a four-person privacy pod. Since its installation, the pod has significantly enhanced the Centre’s ability to offer confidential, student-centered care, helping students feel supported and empowered to thrive.

Arlana Vadnais, Associate Director, Wellness and Prevention, Student Support, says, “The pod allows us to offer students seeking peer support a comfortable, welcoming, and much more private space than before. It also greatly enhances the multi-purpose use of the Student Wellness Centre, as it is used for team meetings, planning sessions and trainings.”

The newly installed privacy pod room in the Student Wellness Centre.

Learn more about projects funded

These projects are just three examples of how the Strategic Initiatives Support Fund is helping the University of Manitoba move from strategic planning to meaningful action. As the new funding cycle begins, the university community looks forward to seeing how this year’s recipients will continue to advance shared priorities through creative and impactful initiatives.

Visit the Strategic Initiatives Support Fund intranet page for a list of 2025-2026 fund recipients.