Camosun College recently announced that it will be partnering with the University of Victoria, the Justice Institute of British Columbia, and Royal Roads University in a new shared post-secondary campus in the Westshore. Camosun contributed $200,000 in funding.
Camosun vice president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst says that the project has been in discussion for over five years, and the initiative is in response to data showing that residents of the Westshore are statistically less likely to enrol in post-secondary education. With such a long commute, citizens of Langford, Colwood, Sooke, and the surrounding areas face challenges around transportation and other logistics.
“It’s an opportunity to reach out to students, who maybe, for all kinds of reasons, were not accessing post-secondary,” says Wilmshurst. “Some of that is proximity: we know that students are more likely to access education if it’s near where they live. And with commute times and so on, for some people that made it difficult or didn’t allow them to make a decision to enter into post-secondary, so we think the opportunity to be able to offer programs and courses to students in their own community is a really great thing for us.”
Wilmshurst anticipates it will be a couple of years before the facility is operational—the building isn’t constructed yet—but that information should become more definitive around a year from now.
“We think, optimistically, that doors would be open in September of 2024. Already the site is being cleared and ready for construction, so we are hopeful it will be open then, and that we would be able to offer programs,” says Wilmshurst. “There is a lot of work to do in the next 12 months, and I would think that sometime after that, there will be a lot more clarity about what we are going to offer, and how we will share that space.”
While other media has reported that Camosun’s programming in the building will be limited to Health Care Assistant and Education Assistant training, Wilmshurst tells Nexus that nothing is set in stone, and it’s possible that other programs offered at Lansdowne and Interurban may also be administered at the new location.
“It’s really early days, and we’re certainly discussing all kinds of program options,” he says. “Those are a couple examples of what we may offer, but we are going to be certainly talking to the community and trying to understand what are the community interests and needs. I expect that we will be offering a broader range of programs than what has already been discussed in the media. Obviously, limitations are going to be around space, but if we have the space, we certainly will be looking at what are our options in terms of what we will be able to offer.”
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Jessie Niikoi says that the CCSS is excited about the new building because it will save students from having to commute long distances, but she also expresses concern about how the student society will be able to effectively support students while sharing a roof with three other institutions.
“How are they going to involve the student society to make sure they’re always working together and always doing things that would benefit our students in general?” she says. “Having us as involved as the other student unions, and how we’re all going to work together, because different schools will have different priorities for their students… It’s going to be four different campuses at once, so it’s like, how are we all going to have our representation for students on those campuses?”
Wilmshurst says that Camosun VP of student experience Heather Cummings will be working closely with the CCSS to provide student support, which may include other options such as online support in addition to a physical presence in the building.
Wilmshurst is excited for the new campus and is pleased that after five years of planning it has made it to the point of this announcement.
“We are really excited about the opportunity to serve students in the Westshore,” he says. “It has been one of our priorities all along, and the fact that we are going to be able to do it even more effectively with this new partnership is just fantastic.”