FANSHAWE COLLEGE
Fanshawe faculty and program honoured with national excellence awards

Fanshawe College is proud to announce that Karen Klee, professor and coordinator of the Developmental Services Worker (DSW) program, has been awarded the Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) Gold Leadership Excellence Award for Faculty and the Fashion Design program has received the Silver Program Excellence Award. The CICan Awards of Excellence, which recognize best practices from institutions across the country, were presented at CICan's annual conference in Halifax.

"Both Karen and the Fashion Design program embody Fanshawe's efforts to unlock the potential of our students and the communities we serve," says Fanshawe President Peter Devlin. "Karen is an enthusiastic and innovative educator who demonstrates a strong commitment to student success and the Fashion Design team does a terrific job engaging internal and external partners to develop exceptional learning experiences that benefit the community and shape innovative, forward-thinking graduates. I am very proud of both Karen and the program team and thank CICan for this recognition."

Klee worked as a nurse consultant in the developmental services sector for 20 years before joining Fanshawe's School of Community Studies as a full-time professor in 2013. She has been an early (pre-pandemic) adopter of eLearning tools and strategies - including blended learning, interactive H5P applications and a "flipped classroom" delivery model - into her courses to enhance student engagement and comprehension.

Klee has had a substantial impact during the COVID-19 pandemic. While DSW programs at other colleges shifted to all virtual learning and placements, Klee and the DSW team worked with community partners and students to ensure authentic experiences both in the lab and in placements; advocating strongly for DSW graduates at Fanshawe to have authentic experience working with people with disabilities before graduation.

Outside the classroom, Klee chairs a provincial committee focused on recruitment and retention of skilled support workers in the field of developmental services.

"Karen is humble and reflective of her teaching practices and continually pushes herself to explore new technologies and approaches to improve the delivery of her courses and eagerly shares what she has learned with colleagues across the College," says Sandra Fieber, associate dean, School of Community Studies. "She also exemplified the selfless nature of her profession by returning to frontline care with a community living organization early in the pandemic."

The Fashion Design advanced diploma program, offered through the School of Design, was established in 1973 and has evolved in recent years to focus on the principles of ethical, sustainable fashion and human-centred design.

The program's signature project is the UNBOUND fashion show, a collaboration with students and faculty from multiple programs to showcase the final collections of soon-to-be graduates. Students also benefit from live client assignments, co-op placements and innovative research projects.

Since 2018, the program has collaborated with Goodwill Industries on a pair of initiatives: "Worth", a social enterprise focused on apparel skills training for newcomers and turning post-consumer apparel into new products and "Apparel production in the new world of COVID-19," a project involving 10 co-op students working to design and manufacture face masks for local distribution and in Guyana. 

Students and faculty have also rejuvenated second-hand clothing for the Boys & Girls Club's Coats for Kids' campaign, created sustainable bags for London Health Sciences Centre and assisted a Western University clinical trial by designing a suit to securely house motion capture technology to better assess the severity of Parkinson's disease.

"I am so proud of the Fashion Design team for the resilience they have demonstrated over the past two years. Their unwavering commitment to student success and creative focus on finding innovative ways to improve the program help prepare graduates capable of leaving their mark on the industry," says Dana Morningstar, associate dean, School of Design. "Congratulations on this well-deserved national achievement."