SUBMITTED PHOTO Medicine Hat College president Kevin Shufflebotham, Northern Lake College president Ann Everatt, President and Minister of Advanced Education Demetrios Nicolaides sign a memorandum of understanding.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
With the ministry of advanced education’s blessing, Medicine Hat College has entered into a new partnership with Northern Lakes College, which will eventually allow students from each school to participate in the other’s programming.
The program kicks off in September, using NLC’s supported distance learning model to offer a wider range of courses to MHC students, beginning with the Brooks campus.
MHC president Kevin Shufflebotham, NLC president Ann Everatt and Minister of Advanced Education Demetrios Nicolaides signed a memorandum of understanding to that effect last week.
“It’s about collaboration and increasing regional access for our learners,” Shufflebotham told the News. “Currently, we offer a number of programs, but they’re primarily in a face-to-face format, so students have to actually physically come to campus in order to receive their training or education.”
This arrangement is beneficial for students who reside far away but want to access MHC – or NLC – programming, he added.
“If we had an individual who lived in Duchess and they had to drive an hour and 15 minutes every day to come to Medicine Hat campus, that would be quite difficult for them,” said Shufflebotham. “The opportunity is that individuals in our service region can access this education.”
He said distance learning offers a “high-quality” educational experience.
“It’s highly experiential and there is a sense of community that students actually feel,” Shufflebotham said. “There are opportunities for them to engage as a class.”
Students at any one of the 22 centres affiliated with NLC can get together and learn as a class online, so the model doesn’t inhibit the social experience of learning, he says.
“We can have students across southern Alberta in the same cohort taking classes through Northern Lake, and then the eventual goal would be that students in their service region would be able to take our programs online in the same format,” said Shufflebotham.
Nicolaides says the two colleges “are setting an excellent example for Alberta’s post-secondary system” that is “strongly aligned with the Government of Alberta’s own objectives.”
“I fully support all efforts to foster collaboration and reduce duplication, to improve student services and cut red tape, and to ensure programming meets the needs of the communities and regional economies served by both colleges,” said the minister.
Everatt said a partnership with MHC also made sense from NLC’s standpoint.
“Our colleges have similar community stewardship mandates, and we are eager to share our expertise to increase the breadth of programming available to our respective service regions,” she said.
NLC offers many of the same courses as MHC, including addictions counselling, social work, business administration, early learning and child care, welding and carpentry, as well as some that aren’t available at MHC, such as a computer network specialist certificate and oilfield operator training.
