School makes the difference

Finding the right educational program not only boosts your career, it has the potential transform your life

Next month, hundreds of thousands of postsecondary students will be arriving on campuses across B.C. at institutions both large and small. This week, we’re highlighting 10 different programs for anyone thinking about starting or changing their career.

SFU DIALOGUE AND ENGAGEMENT CERTIFICATE

Kris Archie describes herself as a mother, sister, 2 auntie, and Secwepemc and Seme7 woman from the Tsq’escen First Nation. She’s also the recently appointed executive director of the Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. It’s a registered charity that aims to build stronger and healthier First Nations, Inuit, and Métis by building bridges between Indigenous communities and philanthropic organizations.

Archie credits a certificate in dialogue and engagement from SFU for boosting her skills and understanding of different perspectives, which helped her succeed in her last position as senior manager of the Vancouver Foundation’s Fostering Change initiative.

That job involved engaging both young people who had been through foster care and the broader community in embracing changes to the system to give those youths a better chance of succeeding in life.

“With everything we were learning, I felt that there was a clear, direct application to my work,”

Archie told the Straight by phone. “This is not all just theory. The second piece is it solidified for me the importance of dialogue to action. And it solidified for me the role that we can play in increasing civic engagement and leadership development in communities through asking questions that matter.”

To obtain a certificate, a student must complete 10 courses and a practicum that cover theoretical aspects of dialogue and engagement, as well as offering practical experience. They study part-time at SFU’S Vancouver campus and must complete the program and the practicum within two years.

“I did the certificate because I actually just wanted a credential that would value the existing work I had been doing,” Archie explained. “In addition to that, they had incredibly strong faculty.”

Archie had been consulting for years and already had a great deal of respect for one faculty member, facilitation consultant Chris Corrigan, before enrolling. Archie also spoke very highly of faculty member Peter Boothroyd, a professor emeritus in UBC’S school of community and regional planning, whom she described as a “masterful kind of teacher”.

“They weren’t afraid of posing and/or inviting uncomfortable conversations either about our process as consultants, about the way we work with power dynamics, and/or the requirement of having to confront our own discomfort or ego or concern and worry about our work,” Archie recalled.

She also appreciated an Indigenous instructor, Rain Daniels, for emphasizing that dialogue often involves interacting with people with very different world-views. According to Archie, this helped students recognize the importance of intercultural fluency and how equity can be increased through the ways that they engage with people.

It’s valuable nowadays as Canada is in the process of implementing 94 recommendations from the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

“There is an openness and a desire for coming to know our whole actual history—as uncomfortable as that can be when we have for so long believed in this narrative of Canada being this happy-go-lucky, everyone-is-welcome kind of place,” she said.

However, she suggested that coming to terms with the reality will enable Canada and its communities to become more equitable. She also thinks the country will benefit as more people from marginalized communities become leaders of public institutions.

“It will also influence the narrative that we hold as British Columbians, as Canadians, about who we are,” Archie stated. “So long as the people in positions of power maintain the dominant narrative of white-male dominance in those spaces, the longer we will continue to lose out on the beauty and the diversity of our province and our country.”

CANADIAN TOURISM COLLEGE

Career-training entrepreneur Feroz Ali says 2 he’s only lived in Canada for 20 months, but the former New Zealand resident already owns three private postsecondary schools, including the 36-year-old Canadian Tourism College. CTC, as it’s also called, has a new 11,500-squarefoot campus opening next month at 1111 Melville Street in downtown Vancouver. It will triple the capacity of the existing Hornby Street campus, which is being relocated there, and will be part of a career school that also has campuses in Surrey and Victoria.

“We are taking Canadian Tourism College through its new growth phase,” Ali told the Straight by phone.

The new Melville Street campus will also be home to Sterling College, formerly known as Stewart College, which will offer postgraduate certificates in nursing. This will provide foreigntrained nurses with more education so that they can apply to be licensed to work in this country. see next page