Local news delivered daily to your email inbox. Subscribe for FREE to the rdnewsNOW newsletter.
(rdnewsNOW/Troy Gillard)
Changes coming

RDC moving Donald School of Business to main campus

May 25, 2020 | 3:21 PM

Red Deer College (RDC) is bringing its Donald School of Business (DSB) closer to home.

The college has announced that the DSB will be moving from its current location at the Millennium Centre in downtown Red Deer to the RDC main campus in January 2021.

RDC President Dr. Peter Nunoda says the change is not an abandonment of the downtown, but an effort to take advantage of synergies that exist at the main campus, while creating that ‘full college experience’ for DSB students.

“We’ve really tried to reach out to the community around this decision, and we feel it is very, very positive,” he says.

Despite significant financial challenges faced by RDC and all post-secondary institutions in Alberta following funding changes announced in February’s provincial budget, Nunoda says the decision was not financially motivated.

“We’re not giving up space in the Millenium Centre at this point in time, so the finance picture looks more or less the same,” he explains. “Can we provide services potentially to the DSB students more easily at the main campus? I think so, but you know what, it wasn’t finances that really drove the decision.”

Nunoda says thousands of RDC’s Continuing Education students will still attend classes at the Millenium Centre, with the Corporate Training Centre to remain there as well.

“We’re in sort of the 15,000 range for students that attend our continuing education programs,” adds Nunoda. “There’s a large student body there, but they tend to be more mature, adult learners than is the case in the DSB programs.”

Nunoda anticipates the change to affect nearly 900 students in nine Donald School of Business programs during the upcoming academic year.

“We haven’t determined ultimately the location for the DSB, but it will be dedicated space because I think that that’s very important in the work that we’re trying to do,” he points out. “So we will keep the school together but we haven’t landed on the final positioning of the school within the main campus footprint.”

In terms of enhanced learning opportunities for students, Nunoda says work continues on RDC offering its own Bachelor of Business Administration Degree, as an example.

“Currently, the degrees that we offer in collaboration with Mount Royal and the University of Calgary, like our Bachelor of Science, we’re seeking to develop our own degrees so that students can start and complete their education with us at RDC,” he declares. “But we’re also looking at, what are the opportunities for shorter credentials and how do we create flexibility in learning for students? Some of that would be deployed through DSB, but some of it could be deployed downtown through Continuing Education.”

As another opportunity, RDC’s English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, offered through the School of Continuing Education, will now be centrally located close to organizations such as Central Alberta Refugee Effort (CARE) and Catholic Social Services, to better meet the needs of ESL learners as they access learning and essential community resources.

Nunoda concludes the decision underscores RDC’s commitment to not only a higher quality of education for its students, but for its commitment to downtown Red Deer.

“The fact that we see ourselves as a key economic driver of recovery in the post-COVID world, and the better we can deploy our programming to meet the needs of employers, the more successful we can be as contributors to that economic recovery,” he suggests. “All of this continues to be under consideration as we move forward, but the message that we want to send quite clearly, is that we are committed to a downtown presence and we will be occupying the present space.”

Red Deer College’s downtown campus at the Millennium Centre first opened in 2011.