Nov. 04, 2009 - Issue #733: Broke
Norquest Community College; Making the Quest clear
NorQuest's role clarified by changes in provinces post-secondary structure
In this framework, MacEwan was identified as a baccalaureate and applied studies institution, reflecting both its degree-granting status and its focus on teaching. Taking on the title of "university," however, helped to spell out MacEwan's role even further—which also makes things a little easier for a little community college down the street from MacEwan's downtown campus.
With its proximity to the larger and higher profile school, NorQuest Community College would often get asked where it fit in relative to MacEwan. While the university-community college question is out of the way, the answer to where NorQuest fits in to Alberta's post-secondary picture is not as easy as one might think. The Roles and Mandates Policy not only pinpointed NorQuest, along with 11 other schools, as comprehensive community institutions, it also made it clear what that means in terms of programming.
"The community college has to, as part of its responsibility, ensure that everyone has a place to start," NorQuest President and CEO Wayne Shillington explains. "So core to our mandate are things like ESL, literacy programs, academic preparation—others may choose to do it in whatever form they choose, but it's not required of them. So in a community college, that sense of being part of the community, open to and embracing the entire community ... and it's not to say that others don't work with community, but a community college is the piece that works with them."
The province's framework also divided Alberta's geography and handed each of its 11 community institutions an area to cover. NorQuest is responsible for ensuring that all of the adults in its area—from Whitecourt to Camrose to Drayton Valley to Jasper—have post-secondary opportunities.
"Almost half a million people that live in that area," Shillington explains. "So it means that we're doing programming in Edson, and Hinton and Drayton Valley and distance ed and those kinds of things, which is unique to a community college. We might bring in a MacEwan program or a NAIT program if the community has the demand, enough students. But we're the ones that are responsible to work with the community to figure out what it is they need and how can those people get it."
It's a huge role, and the challenges to running a school in an urban environment can be quite different from getting courses out to rural communities. One requires more of a focus on the socially and financially disadvantaged, with courses like academic upgrading, while the other strives to diminish the geographic problems of access with distance education and workplace-targeted training. But there are a couple of core principles that are the same for both.
The first, providing equitable access to post-secondary to all members of the community, regardless of educational background.
"It's quite inspiring, when you see the transformation in the students as they gain the confidence and success in the training," Shillington says. "Maybe they've never had an opportunity, because they're a new immigrant, or part of the aboriginal population, with the atrocious dropout rate in schools, which we don't seem to be able to fix. So it's helping someone when they get a little older to come back in their 20s and get another opportunity."
The second principle is that education really is the key to a successful future, both on an individual level and on a societal level. The return on investment of an educated population is well documented.
"I find the community college role very, very exciting, because I'm a community development guy at heart," Shillington says. "It's that opportunity to connect to communities, to be part of the community, to build a better community, and reach out to those groups in our communities that perhaps need that extra opportunity, and the extra help to be successful." V
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