Barrhead area residents who are looking to further their education have one less option.
In June, Northern Lakes College’s Barrhead branch will be closing its doors permanently after 12 years of operation.
Northern Lakes College is a publically funded vocational college established in 1999, whose mandate is to provide innovative programming and service delivery models to overcome access challenges for students in remote communities in their area. Prior to 1999 the college was known as the Alberta Vocational College.
Programs at the college include everything from academic upgrading (high school equivalency), apprenticeship programs, and university transfer studies to career diploma certificates and diplomas in business and administration, health and human services industries.
Valerie Tradewell, College Advancement and External Relations director for Northern Lakes College, said the institution came to the difficult decision to close the Barrhead location last spring.
“In May 2015 the college was forced to make some difficult decisions to respond to funding pressures. The college wanted to ensure that the communities in our defined educational service region were given priority,” she said in an email interview. “Unfortunately, Barrhead is not within the Northern Lakes College’s boundary set out by Advanced Education.”
Alberta is divided into 10 geographic areas, which are served by 26 publically funded institutions. These areas are based on dissemination area (DA) boundaries. DA boundaries are made up from small dissemination blocks. Each block contains 400 to 700 people.
Northern Lakes College is in the Northern Lakes while Barrhead falls in the Edmonton service region, which is served by NorQuest College, Lakeland College, NAIT and the University of Alberta.
Although Northern Lakes offers a number of different programs, Tradewell said the Barrhead campus was opened to deliver its two-year practical nursing program.
The practical nursing program can accommodate a total of 16 students between year one and year two. Currently there are six students enrolled in the program.
“The students were informed last year that the program would continue until June 2016 allowing them to complete their program,” she said. “It was very important to Northern Lakes College that the students were given the opportunity to complete the program.”
For those prospective students wishing to go into practical nursing Northern Lakes College still offers the program at their Grande Prairie, High Level, Peace River and Slave Lake campuses. NorQuest College also offers the program at its Edmonton campus as well as Stony Plain, Wetaskawin and Whitecourt through hybrid delivery, a combination of online and face to face instruction.
