submitted: Monday, November 02, 2009

College signs Southern Interior post-secondary agreement

The five public post-secondary institutions providing education and training to British Columbia’s Southern Interior are joining forces to collaborate on new training opportunities and services.

College of the Rockies Senior Instructional Officer Doug McLachlan says MOU will benefit students in East Kootenay

Leaders from College of the Rockies, Selkirk College, Okanagan College, University of British Columbia Okanagan and Thompson Rivers University recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding that links these institutions to create better integration of learning opportunities and services for citizens of the Southern Interior.

Together, the five institutions serve a population of more than 720,000 people in the interior of BC and have educated literally hundreds of thousands of students in the past 20+ years.

College of the Rockies Senior Instructional Officer Doug McLachlan noted: "This MOU allows our College to not only continue to meet the educational needs of our regional communities but gives us the opportunity to work collectively with the other Southern Interior institutions to further develop a broad, well-supported range of programs and training.

"Of course we've had close ties and various other cooperative partnerships with each and every one of these institutions in the past, including articulation agreements, which allow transfer credit between us for various courses and programs. This memorandum formalizes and strengthens these ties."

Since the MOU came into effect a few months ago, several other initiatives have already been developed. Selkirk College in Castlegar has partnered with College of the Rockies in the delivery of the Health Care Assistant program. COTR provides the instructor-supported distance learning aspect with Selkirk looking after the practicum placements and tutorial support.

College of the Rockies and Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops are in the final stages of developing a dual admission process for university transfer courses between the two institutions.

The Marketing and Recruitment departments of Selkirk and COTR are both promoting the Kootenays as 'Your Education Destination' outside the region by informing interested students of programs offered at the other institution. In other words, if Selkirk doesn't offer a particular program but COTR does, Selkirk will recruit for College of the Rockies, and vice versa.

"There's no doubt this is a win-win situation for all involved and can only lead to more and improved post-secondary opportunities in the future for people in our part of the province," McLachlan said. "We are all in the business of education and the less competition and more cooperative training initiatives we can provide benefits us all."

For more information contact Senior Instructional Officer Doug McLachlan at 250-489-8245 or email: mclachlan@cotr.bc.ca

For more information contact:
Donna Kraus-Hagerman
Executive Director, College Relations and Marketing
College of the Rockies
Phone: 250-489-8258
e-mail: kraus-hagerman@cotr.bc.ca

11/2/2009 | 471