FNUniv eyes expansion in Prince Albert

During a meeting at the Prince Albert campus today, officials had good things to say about FNUniv’s future in Prince Albert.

“Our numbers are growing, there’s a lot of demand for our students here,” said Juliano Tupone, acting president and vice-president of finance and administration. “In the near future we are looking at some possibilities with Peter Ballantyne Development Limited Partnership. We are talking with them about the possibility of a new campus here in Prince Albert.”

Tupone said the Prince Albert facility wasn’t meant to be an education campus.

“This has been our home here in Prince Albert for about 12-13 years,” said Tupone. “This has served us quite well, but it was never actually designed for delivering education.”

Vice-president of Academics Dr. Lynn Wells said Prince Albert is an important community to bring up enrollment numbers.

“It’s absolutely crucial for this campus to do well,” said Wells. “There’s lots of demand and the communities need their people to come to our university and do well, and our province needs people in the North to do well.”

Wells said there is a high demand in the North for programs like social work, education and business.

“It’s very important to have a campus in PA,” said Tupone. “We are the only university fully operating here. There’s a lot of growth in this area, there’s a lot of demand from people from northern Saskatchewan to get involved in post-secondary education.”

He added the Prince Albert campus allows many students to stay close to family and friends in northern communities. These students usually have built strong bonds with their communities and have difficulty being separated from them.

“Family connections are very strong up here, and we appreciate that and respect that, and we value that,” said Tupone. “People from the North, they want to stay close to home. Most of our students, when they talk about what they want to do afterwards, is they want to go back to their communities and they want to contribute.”
Tupone said it also helps with the culture shock that can come to many students who are used to small, close-knit communities.

Addressing Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST) becoming Saskatchewan Polytechnic, Tupone does not believe that, that will present an issue when it comes to FNUniv’s growing enrollment numbers.

“There’s enough work in this regard that if we all focus just on educating indigenous people I think we would be kept busy for some time to come,” said Tupone. “I think what’s more important is that each of these institutions goes out there and works with communities, schools, with other partners, and we reach back to students at a young age and let them know what opportunities there are out there for education.”

Tupone said in some of the smaller communities these opportunities aren’t often communicated to these potential applicants.

“Some of their backgrounds are such that some of our kids haven’t thought about going to university or even to SIAST or SIT,” said Tupone. “What they need is some encouragement, they need our recruiters to go out there, our leaders going out there, alumni going out there and say ‘here are the opportunities for you, this is something you can do.’”

This is one of the many endeavours the university will be taking on to help attract more students to the FNUniv.

During the meeting Tupone mentioned they had already approached elders and leaders in communities across the province to come up with strategies to reach out to these potential students.

Tupone said currently they’re still looking at locations and considering pricing for building a new campus in Prince Albert.

“We’re working on it, we have been working on it for some time, we haven’t been sitting by idly,” said Tupone. “When you’re talking about a potential new building in today’s day and age, with the construction industry the way it is, and the cost of building, you’re looking at a significant investment of at least $10 million just for a shell of a building. We’re doing due diligence and we’re working on it, and we will continue working until we find a solution.”

So far there are 750 students enrolled with FNUniv and it was announced that number was up 15 per cent in the 2012-13 school year.

FNUniv officials have met in Regina earlier this week and will meet with staff and students at the Saskatoon campus on Thursday.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim

by paNOW Staff

FNUniv eyes expansion in Prince Albert

By James Bowler

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