Education must continue to evolve
Complexity: New Douglas College president wants to make the system work for students
The first time I set foot in Douglas College was to watch my mom graduate. I was a teenager at the time, but the look on her face as she crossed the stage to receive her first post-secondary credential is still imprinted in my memory.
In my new role as president of Douglas College, I look forward to the privilege of seeing this look on the faces of thousands of our graduates as I hand them their credentials; all of them proud of their accomplishments, full of hope and excitement, with a touch of fear and apprehension about the future.
Although the world is a very different place now from when my mom attended Douglas College, some things are the same. An education, any education, still opens doors for students, as it did for my mother. While there are no guarantees for success, a post-secondary education provides a solid footing from which to grow personally and professionally. We are truly fortunate in B.C. to have one of the best post-secondary educational systems in the world.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t make it better.
During my career in post-secondary education, I’ve played many roles. I’ve been a student, a teaching assistant, an instructor, a department chair, a dean, a vice-president and provost. Now, as president, I plan to use the knowledge I’ve acquired and the experiences I’ve had over the past 25 years to help shape and guide our college, which serves more than 16,000 students every year.
In particular, I want to help Douglas College take the lead in making the educational system work better for students.
Right now, too many students are struggling, unsure of their direction, not certain they’re taking the right courses, confused about what skills are expected by employers, unclear which of the many options open to them they should select. Too many students take a course here and a course there with the hope that someday, somehow they will add up to something.
Our post-secondary system, as good as it is, tends to leave students too much to figure out as they navigate the sometimes labyrinthine structure of admissions criteria, prerequisites and course transferability. In the end, students need the same things that employers want and that society needs — they want to become well-rounded citizens with the skills to enter the workforce and a solid grounding in academic theory, critical thinking and analysis that will help them make good decisions throughout their lives.
I want to focus my efforts on helping students acquire the academic and applied skills necessary to achieve their goals in life. Although Douglas College is just one institution, it is in the geographic and economic heart of the Lower Mainland, and this positions it to serve as a hub for students and the educational system. We have recently expanded our status as a receiving institution, accepting course credits from other colleges and universities within our province, nation, and world. Already, we are receiving hundreds of new students every year from other post-secondary institutions in B.C. — students with courses under their belts, who are unsure about what to do with them. We want to help these students define and achieve goals such as completing an applied degree program at Douglas College that will prepare them for careers of their choice, or taking university transfer courses that will enable them to enter programs at research universities such as SFU, UBC, and others around the world.
To enable us to serve students more effectively, we are expanding our academic foundations program, which is designed as a starting point for any student. All courses in the one-year program ladder into Douglas College degree programs and transfer as credits to B.C. universities, providing students with certainty that they aren’t wasting time or money on courses they don’t need or can’t use. The cost of attending college is an important consideration that is sometimes overlooked. Education isn’t cheap, and students deserve value for their educational dollars, as do taxpayers.
The educational costs and tuitions at Douglas College are among the lowest in the B.C. educational system, which allows more money to be available to build needed programs and finance other important facets of post-secondary education, such as primary research at the research universities.
I am determined to ensure that Douglas College continues doing what we do best — offering educational experiences to students that prepare them, not just for a career or for university, but for life. That’s how I see our role, as a hub for the B.C. educational system and as a bridge for students to more productive lives.
The world is a different place for graduates today than it was for my mom. There is a bewildering array of career options, many more post-secondary opportunities, and an atmosphere that is more competitive and faster changing. Lifelong pursuit of education is no longer just a noble goal, but a necessity.
This means post-secondary institutions like Douglas need to adapt.
In the past, students had to accommodate to the ivory tower. Now the ivory tower needs to accommodate students.