Paul Morden, from www.theobserver.ca The Observer
A new recreation and fitness centre could be built at Lambton College as the same time as a proposed $30-million health sciences building.
College president Judith Morris outlined plans to connect the projects during a breakfast held Wednesday to update community representatives on Lambton College’s strategic plan and efforts to renew its London Road campus.
Morris said the college has made a proposal seeking $20 million in government funding, and it hopes to have an answer by March or April.
“If that $20 million comes through, we will be able to build the two buildings together, which will gain efficiencies,” Morris said.
Combining the projects is expected to result in “an outstanding building that will share some of the facilities and be able to do more for our students than we would have had we been building two buildings at separate times,” she said.
In total, the two buildings are expected to cost approximately $45 million, Morris said.
Funding is already in place for the new recreation and fitness centre, and the college is counting on raising $10 million within the community to pay one-third of the cost of the new health sciences building.
If the funding comes through, the college would like to see the combined project happen in 2016-2017, Morris said.
“It’s incredibly important,” she said about the plans to renew the campus originally built in 1972.
Those plans are one of six “pillars” in the college’s strategic plan adopted two years ago.
“It’s important for the success of our students,” Morris said.
“All facilities grow older and ours are no different.
“And right now, architecturally, we can’t do the things we want to do to really prepare our students.”
That is particularly true for health care students who make up a large percentage of the 3,800 full-time and 6,000 part-time students at the college, Morris said.
The new health science building is “critically important” to retaining students, she said.
“Otherwise, they will go other places and they will not come back.”
The college’s strategic plan runs to 2018 and Morris told a room full of community partners Wednesday that a number of the plan’s goals have already been met.
“We are well on our way,” she said.
That includes developing mobile learning programs allowing students to use tablets and other mobile devices as part of their education.
“We’ve taken a very bold move, and it was a bold move, to say that all of our programs will be mobile by 2016,” Morris said.
“No other college is doing that.”
The presentation also outlined progress the college has made to form partnerships, enhance the student experience, and establish centres of excellence in energy and bio-industrial technologies, as well as fire and public safety.
There was also an update on work the college has been doing in recent years to move into applied research.
Morris said that while Lambton is Ontario’s 18th college in size, it is ranked sixth in applied research.
“The future is very bright for Lambton College, our students and our community,” she said.