Improving Campuses For Aboriginal Students

By 250 News

Five regional campuses have received funding under the provincial government’s Aboriginal post-secondary strategy to improve on-site facilities for aboriginal students.

The College of New Caledonia’s Fort St. James campus has been awarded $310-thousand dollars and all four Northern Lights College sites - in Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Fort Nelson - will share a $600-thousand dollar allotment to create gathering places for aboriginal students.

Aboriginal people are the College of New Caledonia’s fastest-growing student group. At the college’s Fort St. James campus, 65 per cent of students are First Nations. The money will be used to provide a cafe-style gathering place, containing a cooking area that will be close to the student lounge, resource centre and multi-station Internet lab. 

Plans at the Northern Lights College campuses call for construction to create 72-square-metre gathering places that will feature artwork and cultural artifacts commissioned by local Aboriginal bands. They will contain private study spaces, a learning services kiosk and help desk, a presentation area and a utility kitchen.

"We’ve committed $15 million to help all of our institutions either create gathering places or enhance the ones they have, which will encourage more Aboriginal people to enrol in post-secondary education, and help them succeed
when they do," says Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell.

More than 17,200 First Nation, Métis and Inuit students attended B.C.’s public post-secondary institutions in 2007, an increase of more than 16 percent since 2002. However, according to B.C. Statistics, a non-Aboriginal is five times as likely to have a university degree as an Aboriginal person living on reserve, and almost three times more likely than an Aboriginal person off reserve.

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