Grande Prairie Regional College is closing all its West Yellowhead locations and moving its service delivery online.
These changes are being made to help address a 13 per cent reduction in its Campus Alberta Grant and costs related to the global COVID-19 pandemic in its budget.
Robert Murray, President and CEO of GPRC, said: 鈥淕PRC was challenged to look at all areas of its operations to find efficiencies and opportunities to modernize to meet the budget targets
鈥淲e faced difficult decisions and our choices were guided by minimizing the impact on students while remaining focused on our goal of becoming the centre of excellence for post-secondary education in northern Alberta.鈥�
GPRC reduced its 2020-21 budgeted expenditures to $65 million from the 2019-20 budgeted expenditures of $73 million.
A total of 85 positions were eliminated in the budget. Retirements, voluntary severance, concluding contracts with term-certain employees, and eliminating vacant positions accounted for 39 of the 85 positions. The remaining positions reductions were the result of program and service adjustments along with finding internal efficiencies.
鈥淓ach of the staff directly affected by these changes positively contributed to the success of our students and will always be part of our GPRC community. We thank them for their valuable contributions and know they will be missed,鈥� said Murray.
Two low-enrolled programs were suspended, the Perioperative Nursing program and the University Transfer Engineering program. GPRC is launching a new operating model for the fitness centre on the Fairview Campus; and closing of the Educational Technologies Centre.
The college is planning to launch a Centre for Teaching and Learning to increase support for faculty to improve students鈥� educational experiences at GPRC and investing in planning to further the college鈥檚 work on Indigenization.
This, along with the college鈥檚 recently announced partnership with Athabasca University to provide GPRC students an inclusive and accessible online learning management system, will enable new and innovative learning experiences for GPRC students.
Recently, GPRC announced its involvement with Alberta鈥檚 11 Comprehensive Community College鈥檚 (CCCs) COVID-19 Economic Recovery Taskforce to support local, provincial and federals initiatives to meet the immediate, short and long-term growth needs of the communities it serves.
鈥淭his was an incredibly difficult budget for all of us at GPRC. I鈥檓 proud we proved we are up to the challenge of responding to this current fiscal reality while we make the necessary changes to secure GPRC鈥檚 viability and important success for future generations of students,鈥� said Murray.
