Lethbridge College president among those named to provincial Comprehensive Community College's Economic Task Force

Lethbridge College President and CEO Dr. Paula Burns is part of a task force assigned to assessing how Alberta community colleges will face the economic challenges they face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

News — COVID-19 has changed a lot for colleges in Canada, and now Alberta’s 11 Comprehensive Community Colleges have launched an Economic Recovery Taskforce to assist the work of local, provincial and federal governments, as well as industry, as they tackle the economic challenges faced as a result of the pandemic.

The task force is trying to figure out how they can help in the short, near and longer terms. It will be chaired by Grande Prairie Regional College President and CEO Dr. Robert Murray and is comprised of eight additional members including:

-         Dr. Paula Burns, President and CEO at Lethbridge College

-         Joan Hertz, Interim President and CEO at NorQuest College

-         Nancy Broadbent, President and CEO at Portage College

-         Dr. Peter Nunoda, President at Red Deer College

-         Elan MacDonald, Senior Vice-President at Global Public Affairs

-         Joseph Lougheed, Partner at Dentons Canada LLP

-         Lynette Tremblay, Vice-President, Strategy and Innovation at Edmonton Global

-         Justin Riemer, Assistant Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Western Economic Diversification, Government of Canada

Connecting communities

Dr. Murray says the task force will align its work with businesses as well as municipal, provincial and federal government priorities.

“To be able to connect the community-based knowledge and expertise that exists within Alberta’s Colleges to have a direct positive impact on the economy,” he added.

It will look at a number of things, including re-skilling and up-skilling, where colleges can help out if a job is being created or there’s a shift in a job someone might have had before, as well as what they’ve learned during this period of time.

“Longer term as well is not just about the programming, but also about the applied research and what are some of the new and innovative ideas that are coming out of what we’ve learned during the COVID-19 crisis,” Dr. Burns explained. “As well as what new ways or things that might we want to consider.”

Resiliency

The focus of the task force is on three main themes: economic resiliency to address immediate needs, economic recovery to play a key role in restarting the economy, and economic competitiveness to focus on long-term opportunities for Alberta’s Colleges to build Canada’s economic strength.

Work is currently underway: the task force met virtually for the first time last week, to discuss data that’s already available and identify what common experiences have been like.

“If there was a program that needed to be developed, I’ll just use an example of what does contact tracing look like over the next two years? Could every college have a program that trains up contact tracers within a short amount of time basically, and we could have a common curriculum for some of those things,” Dr. Burns said.

Colleges don’t just provide students with an education, but also many people with various types of employment too, so the task force is trying to figure out what people need and how to fill those needs.

“We’re also looking at what’s the innovation we can bring to the table. Because we recognize that not all employers or industries actually know what they need, they just know it’s probably going to be different than what they need now,” Dr. Burns said.

The task force will also examine how to further support and develop this work to assist economic resiliency and recovery to address the immediate and short-term needs as it looks to future opportunities for Alberta’s colleges to support long-term economic growth.

A lot of the work will be done as time moves along, but members are planning to have a report with recommendations ready to present by late summer or early fall.