Company Report: College of the Rockies
The little big school in the shadow of the Rockies Dr. Nick Rubidge sees that sometimes staying current just isn’t good enough, so he is bringing the College of the Rockies into the future — before it gets here

Imagine a place that sits at the base of one of the most beautiful areas in Canada nestled in the snow covered peaks of the majestic Canadian Rockies. Now imagine this is your college. This would be the dream of many people across Canada, and this is just part of the great experience that students going to College of the Rockies (COTR) enjoy.

The College is one of British Columbia’s large regional community colleges serving 2,300 full-time equivalent students. Says Dr. Nick Rubidge, President and CEO, “We serve an area that is a little larger than Switzerland, but in the case of Canadian rural college sizes that’s considered small. There are some colleges in British Columbia that serve areas the size of France.”

College of the Rockies has not taken their “small” size as a disadvantage; in fact, it is one of the selling points for the school. Promising smaller class sizes, and thus greater teacher-student interaction, the smallness has huge appeal to potential students looking at their post-secondary options. COTR has two campuses in Cranbrook, B.C., and five other regional campuses in Creston, Fernie, Golden, Invermere, and Kimberley.

The College began as the East Kootenay Community College in 1975, and Rubidge was one of three educational administrators hired on to create a multi-campus college for the East Kootenay region. It was later renamed College of the Rockies, and Rubidge returned as President and CEO. “I started on April 1st, (2001) right on April Fool’s Day!” Rubidge has had numerous years experience in the B.C. government with post-secondary education and was involved in the changeover of Royal Roads University from a military to a public college.

PARTNERING WITH UNIVERSITIES
College of the Rockies is about to offer its first full degree program, a Bachelor of Business Admin¬istration with a major in Sustainable Business Practices, by Sept. 2010. “We are creating many new programs, especially looking at degree programs that will be coming online downstream in the next few years,” says Rubidge. The College already offers degree programs in partnership with other universities such as the University of Victoria which allows a student to complete two and a half years of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree out of four at COTR. “Since colleges started in British Columbia, they have been integrated with universities so that a student can take two years of their degree here, and then go to the university of their choice to complete,” he says.

Also offered is a full four-year Elementary Teacher Education program with graduates receiving a degree from the University of Victo¬ria. Partly due to locale, Tourism, and especially Mountain Tourism, is a significant program within the College.

Right now, he says, the most popular programs are health related. “Nursing, dental assistant, licensed practical nurse, and health care assistant programs have been quite popular, and our business administration program has always been a strong performer.

Electrical trades are also very hot, it often depends on the economy, and which trades are doing well in it,” says Rubidge. “Interestingly, although, the demand for a certain trade may increase in a given economy, the number of students in that area may go down. We have cer¬tainly noticed this, but when the economy turns down, that is when you have people coming back to upgrade their education and skill sets.”

GOING GLOBAL
“If you look at education generally, there probably hasn’t been a more important time to take advantage of post-secondary education opportunities than today as we see the rapid pace of change in the work place. The people coming into programs are being trained for jobs that most of us haven’t even thought of yet.” In ten years time, predicts Rubidge, there will be new jobs that most have not seen, but people are training for them now.

He also predicts current graduates will see opportunities appear because of the “greying” of the Baby Boom generation. “They will be filling in a vacuum left behind by the Boomers and the Generation X-ers as they exit stage left.” Rubidge adds that he thinks it is a very exciting time to be in the education industry, training students for a “dynamic and changing economy.”

The question that they face is, how exactly do they move from being a small rural college to becoming one that is globally engaged. “We aren’t just training students to work locally anymore,” says Rubidge, “we are preparing them to work in the world.”

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