(file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Provincial budget support

North West College receives funding for new Battlefords campus planning

Apr 5, 2024 | 5:00 PM

North West College is seeing some good news in the province’s latest budget to help with its plans for a new Battlefords campus.

The province has announced $250,000 that will help the college in its planning phase for the new campus.

Saskatchewan Education Minister and Battlefords MLA Jeremy Cockrill said the province is glad to support the project.

“What the commitment is by the province is to provide a quarter-million-dollars of planning funds to North West College,” he said. “Really, what that will help North West College do is some work around further defining what the needs are of the college going forward.”

Cockrill notes the college will also be able to define what its proposed campus project may look like to meet those needs.

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He added that the college and the province have discussed several ideas about the potential project at this point.

“That’s what these funds are intended to do – to further define needs, and further flesh out what are the options to address the needs,” Cockrill said. “Then, hopefully get us closer to a decision about what [the] project looks like going forward.”

North West College President Eli Ahlquist is thrilled with the support from the province.

“We’re really excited about the investment the province has made to perform the preliminary planning work for an expansion or a new campus here in the Battlefords,” he said. “That quarter-of-a-million-dollar investment in that piece of the puzzle is very significant for us, and we’re very excited to start work on that project for sure.”

Ahlquist noted while it would be good for the college to receive all the money for the project at once, being optimistic, the amount allocated in this announcement is a “really great signal from the province of the commitment and recognition of the work that’s been going on at North West College.”

“Whether it’s our expansion in health programs, the activity we have going around in skill trades, all those pieces, I think this is a really great signal from the province of the recognition and the value of the work that’s been [taking place] at the college here, to invest in our community through post-secondary education,” he said.

The college previously stated it needs to either expand or look at a new site in the Battlefords due to the great success it has experienced, in terms of growth amongst domestic and international students, as well as its diversity of programming.

Ahlquist earlier noted that, as a result of this growth, the college requires additional space to be able to fully serve all the surrounding areas.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow