Bow Valley College looks to expand

Melissa Strle
Times Reporter

 

Bow Valley College is looking to offer more program choices through an expansion to its local office, or a physical move to a better space.
The college currently offers two program choices through its Strathmore campus located in the FCSS building in downtown Strathmore.
Corinne Finnie, director of regional stewardship with Bow Valley College, said the college has calculated about 500 local jobs within the Strathmore region and would like to ensure there is a ready and available skilled labour market meeting employment needs.
While the college deems Strathmore as a growth market in need of more course offerings, the current space is not big enough for the college to expand and doesn’t provide enough network connectivity to aid in the technological delivery of programs onsite.
“Without a new space to operate from, we will continue offering two programs a year and 10 people getting access to education,” said Finnie.
Finnie added that space is limited to about six learners, which makes it very difficult to grow, and there are only 25 megabytes for bandwidth connection in the space.
“So network connectivity is an extreme barrier in the current space we’re operating out of,” she said.
At the Sept. 7 town council meeting, Counc. Denise Peterson expressed interest in the expanded college concept stating. “I’m excited about what can happen and I think this council and this community has great capacity to at least mitigate the circumstance of bandwidth,” she said.
Strathmore currently has a fibreoptic line running through the downtown, and therefore, a downtown space would work well for a Bow Valley College expansion.
The college conducted a survey of 24 Strathmore respondents and found a lot of opportunity exists for training, especially in agriculture, oil and gas, and trades.
“The majority of our programming in rural communities is for women and typically with children,” said Finnie.
The college is also able to partner with other post-secondary institutions to bring desired programming to Strathmore that it currently does not offer.
Finnie said Strathmore is significantly behind in developing programs compared to other small locations such as Airdrie. She said Airdrie currently has the capacity of 76 spaces during the day which is significantly higher than the six spaces offered in Strathmore.
“When we look at the type of programming we’re bringing, we’re actually spending a lot of time on healthcare programming – hospital unit clerk, medical office assistant, healthcare aid for example – because the number of jobs there are local,” said Finnie.
According to Finnie, the Strathmore campus is starting to see a drop in inquiries and she attributes this to the campus being relatively unknown in the area. She maintained the college has spent a lot of monies on marketing its programs in the region.
Finnie stressed it is important to keep local residents within the town.
“We want to develop rural communities and keep people learning here and working here in Strathmore.”
There will be approximately 620 graduates coming out of high school in the region and the college is looking to keep these youths in the community as long as possible.
“They are a great labour market source and so if they have access to post-secondary, chances are they will stay longer in our rural communities,” she said.
The college will be looking to work with the Town of Strathmore in moving toward a bigger space but is not looking for funding at this time.
“I can’t make an announcement at this time, but I’m very confident that we will find a solution to move into a space and the timing is right for me to come and ask the town to consider how we can partner and work together to make that a successful venture in the community,” said Finnie.