Hello!
Welcome to the very first Canadian HEUG (CHEUG) Executive blog. We plan to put out more blogs throughout the year to keep you up to date with what the CHEUG Executive is working on and to solicit ideas from you, the community.
As I write this we are in the last days of winter. With spring just around the corner I can't help but think about the new growth and the new lives that are about to start. Our Canadian Executive is also something brand new and here is a little bit of info to help you to get to know us.
Our Chair is Kelly Wilker. Kelly works in the Registrar’s Office at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. She began her HEUG involvement on the Academic Advising Advisory Group. She was instrumental in getting the CHEUG conference up and running and was the Chair of the first conference held at the University of Waterloo. Kelly is also our Canadian representative on the HEUG Board. She likes to keep busy outside of HEUG and has been a pivotal member of the organizing committee for Oktoberfest in Kitchener, Ontario.
Our Deputy Chair is Lee Dreger. Lee is Senior Manager, Business Intelligence at MacEwan University in Edmonton Alberta and she was the Conference Chair for the most recent conference, CHEUG 18, in Edmonton. Lee was previously a member of the Reporting and Business Intelligence Advisory Group. Lee is an avid pool player and has played in a competitive 8 ball league for 20 years. She competes in an annual tournament in Las Vegas each May.
I am Jane Baratta, the Secretary. I am at Western University in London, Ontario. I was the Assistant Conference Chair at the Waterloo conference and a conference team member for Edmonton. I have been on the Academic Advising Advisory Group and the HEUG Alliance Conference team. I have participated in several focus groups with Oracle as well as a few HEUG work groups. I love dogs and have 3 of them (2 Newfoundlands and a mutt).
Our fourth member is Adam O’Connor. Adam is an Applications Analyst from the Nova Scotia Community College. Being on the executive will be Adam’s first foray into HEUG activities. He is the most technical of the four of us and we look forward to him bringing an Eastern Canada perspective to the table. Adam has played guitar for over 20 years and used to be in a local band. Now he is being kept busy with parenting a toddler.
As you can see the executive has representation from across Canada and from a college as well as universities. We look forward to advocating for Canadian interests and hope that you will engage with us in this endeavour. It’s very important that we promote our unique Canadian requirements in order to ensure that our Oracle products are improved for everyone.
We are working hard with this year’s conference host institution, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, to create another great conference. We will soon be asking for sessions to be submitted so start thinking about what you’d like to learn about or what you can share with your colleagues. If you have requests for sessions, please let us know and we’ll try and find speakers. Any ideas for changing up the format of sessions would also be welcomed.
Our other focus at this time is establishing goals for the CHEUG and then working on a strategy to achieve them.
Talk to you soon!