By Richard Rush, Director, Community and Professional Programs

Many of us have had the experience of eagerly awaiting the unveiling of something special. For some, those memories might be rooted in a holiday gift, or a special meal we are preparing for someone, and for others it could be a performance of some sort that we are attending or participating in.

In our world, the great unveiling comes with our calendar, be it print or online. We have heard that many of you will scan through it to see what is new and exciting, while others will head straight for a course that they have come to appreciate, term in and term out.

Each term, our program staff looks for exciting new community courses to offer that they think you will enjoy. When considering courses, our staff will often look for what’s current and topical like Decolonizing Canada: Paving the Way for Reconciliation or Thinking About Suicide. They also look for topics that are regionally important such as Thunderbird and Whale: BCs Next Big Earthquake or Wiring the Abyss: Adventures in Deep-Sea Engineering. The richness of the community programming is that there is almost always something for everyone, as the program staff use their expertise across a range of disciplines and fields. They also make sure they have a balance between short, single evening sessions such as Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder and Child Development and some longer, more in-depth, offerings such as the Business Administration or Cultural Resource Management diploma programs.

Weeks of effort are wrapped up in the preparation of the courses, and,––just as a gift is often as enjoyable for the giver as for the receiver––our program staff eagerly await the unveiling of what they’ve spent a lot of time considering and planning. With over a dozen staff searching for and putting together a rich and meaningful suite of courses, it’s easy to see how we are able to offer over 200 community courses each year. Many of our staff are well-known to the learners because they attend the courses to see how the gift of learning is being received. They are eager to take the feedback provided so that they can continue to enhance and develop the next term’s courses. It is a virtuous cycle of planning, learning and giving.

We hope that you will enjoy the buffet of courses available again this term. They are here for you to explore, learn and grow with. That always brings a smile to our faces.

  • Posted November 29, 2016