UNBC President Talks About University's Future
By 250 News
Dr. Don Cozzetto on left and Tom Berekoff make presentation to Regional District of Fraser Fort George
UNBC’s new President, Don Cozzetto talked about "Embracing Change and Promoting Excellence" as he made a public presentation to the Regional District of Fraser Fort George.
In his presentation, Cozzetto says Universities which do not embrace change, do not succeed, so while recognizing the recent developments he talked about plans for the future:
- the teaching and learning centres, will be completed this April, providing more lab and insturcutional space
- New Sports centre now under construction
- New Student Centre which will make use of the old gymnasium
- new regional campuses in Prince Rupert, Quesnel Terrace and working with Fort St John.
- New Fine arts and Health Sciences programs
- Enrolment this fall is just a little over 3600
Looking forward, Cozzetto says Thompson University in Kamloops is the top competition, and one of the major challenges for UNBC will be to market UNBC and be competitive with financial aid and student scholarships. He says they need to be more aggressive to ensure students who start their post secondary education experience at UNBC complete their degree at UNBC.
He says it is now time to look at the programs offered and see which ones met or exceeded expectations, and where resources can be better reinvested.
He says they are still trying to re-engage graduates to continue their involvement with the University. There are 5500 graduates all over the world now.
Ranked number one in Canada for research, with about 18 million dollars a year in research funds, Cozzetto would like to take that research and work with industry partners to see how the research can be better applied, "Whether it be in technology, forestry, minining, whatever, my experience has been at other unversities that when you show how the research can be applied, industry steps up and asks how can we fund it?."
Cozzetto says the University is working towards technical links with regional classrooms and is looking forward to the opportunities that will be presented when the Northern Sport Centre is completed as it will alow UNBC to expand into athletic programs and courses.
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Posted by: owl on September 22 2006 12:01 PM
Embracing change and promoting excellence are catch phrases that have been around for at least 20/25 years. I am not sure what it means exactly but it has been Corporate gibberish for sometime.
Now the interesting statement that was slipped in as smoothly as a Gurkha's knive between your ribs, is that enrollements this fall are just a little over 3600 students. This is an increase of 39 students over last year, and the final numbers are not really in. So it could be less/more. It will be interesting to see what the full time student count is and the partime student count. In any event this will be the fourth year of negative growth, so I agree with him that enrollement has to be the number one priority, however I dont know where they will find the students.