Canada’s Rural College Leaders Come to Algonquin’s Waterfront Campus

Posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014

Rural college campuses are among the most innovative in the post-secondary system. In fact, because of their nimbleness they often pilot new initiatives that become best practices at larger urban higher education schools, but regrettably there aren’t a lot of opportunities for smaller campuses to highlight these best practices.

In a few weeks (May 24 and 25) Algonquin College’s new Waterfront Campus in Pembroke will play host to the Association of Canadian Community College’s annual Rural Campus Symposium. The Rural Symposium is an appetizer for the main conference being co-hosted this year by Algonquin College and La Cite in Ottawa, but for small campus leaders, the rural symposium offers an exceptional professional development and networking opportunity.

The line up of workshops and key note presentations has been geared to address the key issues that are facing small campuses such as declining youth populations, changing labour market conditions, the push and pull of prioritizing support services to students with limited resources, how to effectively use technology in teaching in a rural setting, maximizing fundraising capacity for small campuses, training staff and faculty to recognize and respond to students suffering from mental health issues, and the importance of risk management in outdoor education.

Former Ontario Minister of Colleges and Universities Sean Conway and Ken Coates of the University of Saskatchewan will deliver plenary addresses that focus on how rural campuses can drive economic prosperity in smaller regions. They will also be panellists in a televised town hall dialogue that will engage the studio audience in a discussion on the future of small colleges. Algonquin College President Kent MacDonald and Yukon College President Karen Barnes will join Conway and Coates on the panel.

This will be the first time that the Pembroke Campus has hosted a national symposium. It will be a wonderful opportunity for the campus to showcase its new Waterfront campus and tell its story about how a small community advocated for the building of a new campus and helped convince the College it was a necessary investment, even though the project received no provincial government funding. It really is a remarkable accomplishment, and another example of why rural colleges matter and why they will be celebrated at ACCC’s Rural Campus Symposium.

To register for the Rural Symposium or to see the agenda for the event, visit: http://www.cvent.com/events/accc-2014-conference/custom-131-8c79b06cf1fb426ab0b9ada4f1fa37fb.aspx?lang=en

Posted by: Jamie Bramburger

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