U of S President Peter Stoicheff visits Prince Albert campus’s nursing students. Photo courtesy twitter
The University of Saskatchewan’s president has been paying attention to the new Liberal government’s promise to increase infrastructure spending, and that’s why he took a flight to Ottawa a few weeks ago.
Speaking to a crowd in Prince Albert on Thursday, President Peter Stoicheff said he knows other universities will have big asks when the federal budget comes out on March 22, so he took the trip to lay out a very clear vision for U of S’s needs.
Stoicheff says building up Prince Albert’s campus was on his short list of infrastructure priorities he handed over to ministers.
“What we know that students lack here (in Prince Albert) is a coherent sort of campus or suite of buildings that are dedicated to the purpose. And we have been, for a long time, trying to figure out how to make that happen and I think we’re at the point where we have some proposals on the table that will be vast improvement to what there is now,” he said.
To sell his ideas to the feds, he’s pointing out how in-touch the U of S is with the communities it serves.
And Stoicheff says post-secondary education that will better-serve the north and aboriginal people is in line with Liberal values.
“The Liberal government is very serious about prosperity in the north,” he said. “As you move into Prince Albert – I mean, it’s true in Saskatoon but even more so in Prince Albert – you are giving access to post-secondary education to aboriginal people,” he said.
Stoicheff is optimistic about his asks, but said the U of S’s plans in Prince Albert aren’t dependent on federal funds.
“I want to be very clear about that: we will go ahead with what we need to do for the benefit of students here and for programming here. It would be of tremendous help if we could access” federal, provincial or City of Prince Albert funds, he said.
Regardless of what the finance minister delivers on March 22, Stoicheff said the U of S is dedicated to building up its infrastructure to keep up with growth.
“The University of Saskatchewan is in a transformatively growing city, Prince Albert is growing. The demand on the part of students for what we offer at the U of S is growing is one of growth. You know, it’s a bright, bright future,” he said.
Stoicheff was in Prince Albert to share the university’s priorities in the “gateway city,” including reiterating the actions it’s taken to make the U of S a leader in serving aboriginal students.
It’s his first time speaking there since taking over as president about five months ago.