Northlands College. Photo courtesy saskatchewan.ca
It appears fall offerings at Northlands College will include a Bachelor of Education, not the Northern Teacher Education Program.
Last month, the province announced it will redirect NORTEP and the Northern Professional Access College’s (NORPAC’s) provincial funding to Northlands College, effective August 1.
On Tuesday, NORTEP held a meeting with students where they handed out a letter stating “NORTEP will be ceasing operations” after the academic year, which was met with tears from many, said student association president Amie Bell.
NORTEP president Jennifer Malmsten further explained the contents of that letter.
“Basically that is our legal notice to them that NORTEP will be folding and that they will not be enrolled in any NORTEP classes,” she said.
Northlands College president Toby Greschner said this comes after his school’s board was thrown a curveball by NORTEP Council during a meeting in late March. Earlier that day, NORTEP Council passed a motion to pass on their assets to Gabriel Dumont Institute.
“This is a bit messy right now but we’ll get it straightened out,” he said.
Malmsten said assets include the NORTEP program itself, its apartments, furniture and equipment, library, vehicles, and computers.
She said the decision was motivated by the fact that GDI already has instructors in place and has an “enhanced affiliation agreement” with the U of S and U of R for its Teacher Education Program, which Northlands does not have.
Additionally, GDI, like NORTEP, is a non-profit organization while Northlands is not.
“Our article states that we have to pass the assets onto a non-profit corporation. So as you can imagine, that wasn’t well-received by Northlands and we haven’t spoken since then,” Malmsten said.
Greschner said it was suggested Northlands takes over the NORPAC courses and contract GDI to deliver NORTEP programming, which the Northlands board rejected.
“It does put us in a bit of a predicament because we do not have the program,” he said.
“They have every right to do what they did, we don’t question that one bit, but by transferring everything to Gabriel Dumont Insitutute then we can’t sort of take the program and offer it ourselves.”
At this time, Greschner said NORTEP is not forwarding any applications made for NORTEP’s fall semester.
The Tuesday NORTEP letter asks current students to contact university providers themselves to “determine the application process for their programs.”
As for NORTEP staff, Malmsten said “we’ll all be terminated at the end of the academic year.”
Greschner said there are currently limitations on Northlands’ ability to reach out to NORTEP students as well as staff.
“We were given a directive from the legal counsel of NORTEP to not interact with their students or staff,” he said.
For now, he’s promoting Northlands’ programming and encouraging NORTEP students to apply through Northlands in order to work together to complete their studies with a Bachelors of Education.
Greschner said they’re still figuring out whether they can work with GDI to rent out the NORTEP apartments in order to provide accommodations.
At this time, Malmsten said NORTEP is still working on an agreement with GDI to transfer over NORTEP’s assets.
Bell said students are frustrated that they have not been able to get any answers on their future education, but she has applied to other programs.
The NORTEP/NORPAC Student Association has issued a news release questioning whether current NORTEP/NORPAC students will be eligible to have the cost of tuition and books covered under “Northern Status” financial assistance, considering that Northlands has an ad listing costs of $6,000 for tuition and $900 for books for its new Bachelor of Education program. The northern status is available to those who have lived in the north for 10 years or more.
In speaking with media on Wednesday, Advanced Education Minister Bronwyn Eyre avoided guaranteeing the northern financial allowances would continue on with Northlands.
“How Northlands will work with that, I just point to the press release that Northlands itself put out, that said we will work very diligently to ensure absolute continuity for students, for northern students, in terms of supports and in terms of housing consistency,” she said.
“I think we have to wait and see a little bit.”
Despite Greschner’s comments that NORTEP’s recent moves “make it much more difficult for us to simply say ‘we’ll take it [the NORTEP program] lock, stock and barrel,'” Eyre said “I’m convinced that this is going smoothly.”
In Bell’s view, it doesn’t seem the government or Northlands are treating students as their “number one priority.”