Thompson Rivers University

Coordinates: 50°40′6.32″N 120°21′56.22″W / 50.6684222°N 120.3656167°W / 50.6684222; -120.3656167

Thompson Rivers University
Motto Quansem Ilep (To strive ahead)
Type Public
Established
  • Cariboo College (1970-1988)
    *University College of the Cariboo (1988-2005)
    *Renamed Thompson Rivers University on April 1, 2005
Chancellor Wally Oppal
President Dr. Alan Shaver[1]
Provost Dr. Christine Bovis-Cnossen
Academic staff
 650[2]
Students

On campus: 14,099[3]

Distance education: 12,658[3]
Location Canada Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Campus Urban
Sport Teams Thompson Rivers WolfPack
Colours      Royal Blue
     Sage Green
Nickname TRU WolfPack
Affiliations CIS, AUCC, IAU, CVU, CWUAA, CBIE, CUP, RUCBC.
Website http://www.tru.ca/

Thompson Rivers University (commonly referred to as TRU) is a public teaching and research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and vocational training. Its main campus is in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and its name comes from the two rivers which converge in Kamloops, the North Thompson and South Thompson. The university has a satellite campus in Williams Lake, BC and a distance education division called TRU-Open Learning. It also has several international partnerships through its TRU World division.

TRU offers 140 on-campus programs and approximately 60 online or distance programs through the Open Learning division, including trades apprenticeships, vocational certificates and diplomas, bachelor’s and master’s degrees and law.

Founded in 1970 as Cariboo College, it was one of several colleges created by the government of the Province of British Columbia to provide academic and vocational programs in regions outside the urban centres served by the province’s three universities.[4] The college moved to the current campus on McGill Road in Kamloops in 1971, expanding rapidly through the next two decades, and opened a satellite campus in Williams Lake.

Cariboo became one of BC’s first university colleges in 1989, offering baccalaureate degrees under the oversight of the province’s three universities, and was renamed the University College of the Cariboo (UCC) in 1991.[5] [6][7] In 1995, the College and Institute Amendment Act gave UCC independent degree granting authority.[8] Construction in the 1990s included the Canada Games Pool, built as the city and university prepared to host the 1993 Canada Summer Games. The International Building opened in 2002, to house the growing international education department (now the TRU World division). UCC gained the authority to grant master's degrees autonomously in 2003.[5]

In 2005, with the Thompson Rivers University Act, the province amalgamated the University College of the Cariboo with the BC Open University to create Thompson Rivers University, designating TRU as a “special purpose university” which would continue to offer undergraduate and master’s degrees, vocational training and adult basic education, undertake research and scholarly activities, and with the addition of Open Learning programs and courses, provide an open learning educational credit bank for students.[5][6][9]

TRU’s current President and Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Alan Shaver, joined TRU in 2010. In 2011, TRU opened its Faculty of Law, which moved into a state-of-the-art, award-winning new space in 2014. Also in 2011, the university released its new Academic Plan, and joined the six-member Research Universities Council of British Columbia (RUCBC). Sustainability is one of the commitments in TRU’s Strategic Priorities for 2014-2019, and campus initiatives since 2009 have resulted in a Gold STARS rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in 2015.

History

Kamloops, the largest population centre in the regions now known as the Thompson-Okanagan and Cariboo-Chilcotin, was chosen by the BC provincial government as the site for one of several new two-year regional colleges to provide academic and vocational programs outside the urban centres served by the province’s three universities.[4][10] The Province founded Cariboo College in 1970, and classes for 367 full-time and 200 part-time students began in September, 1970, initially out of the Kamloops Indian Residential School facilities.

Cariboo offered two-year academic programs that enabled students to transfer to UBC and the newly established Simon Fraser University (SFU) and University of Victoria (UVic). The college also began vocational training programs to serve the needs of forestry, mining, and other industries in the region. Cariboo’s vocational division, now known as the School of Trades and Technology, was established following the move of the college to the new campus under construction on McGill Road in September 1971. In May of 1972, BC Premier W.A.C. Bennett officially opened the vocational wing. By provincial mandate, Cariboo amalgamated with the Kamloops Vocational School in 1974, providing training for occupations in demand in Kamloops and the region.[5]

In 1978, Cariboo was officially designated as a College with corporate status under the British Columbia Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, gaining its own board independent of the school boards that had previously governed it. The Act also created the Open Learning Institute (OLI), which would later become TRU-Open Learning, to provide academic programs and vocational training by distance throughout the province to people that were unable to access post-secondary education due to geographic isolation or other reasons.[11] The following year, the Universities Act gave OLI power to grant baccalaureate degrees in arts or science in its own name.[12]

In its first twenty years the college’s population increased from 30 faculty serving 367 full-time and 200 part-time students in its first year, to 259 full-time and 124 part-time employees serving 3,047 full-time and 2,205 part-time students in 1990. As enrollment rose, Cariboo built over a dozen new facilities and an on-campus student housing complex, also renovating and expanding older buildings. In 1971, Cariboo opened a satellite campus in Williams Lake, BC, 285 kilometres north of Kamloops, offering programs to surrounding communities, including remote aboriginal populations. In 1985, the Williams Lake campus moved to the 55,000 square-foot Hodgeson Road facility, which would later close due to seismic instability.[5]

In 1989, Cariboo was one of three colleges chosen by the Province to become a new entity, a “university college”, in order to provide degrees in regional centres.[4] Cariboo’s five bachelor’s degrees—Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Business Administration, and Bachelor of Science in Nursing—were initially developed and granted under the oversight of the province’s three established universities, UBC, SFU and UVic. When the first graduates received their degrees in June of 1991, Cariboo was renamed the University College of the Cariboo (UCC).[5][6][7]

In January of 1995 the College and Institute Amendment Act gave UCC the authority to independently grant degrees.[8] Several new programs launched that decade, including five more bachelor’s degrees and the Adventure Guide Diploma. Construction in the 1990s included a cost-recovery-based joint proposal between UCC and the student society to complete the 53,000 square foot, student-focused Campus Activity Centre, after a change in provincial legislation in 1990 allowed the college to borrow money privately for development.

UCC began to offer master’s degree programs in collaboration with UBC and SFU in 2002, gaining the authority to grant applied master's degrees autonomously in 2003.[5] The following year, the BC government announced UCC would become the province’s newest university.[13][14]

In March, 2005, Thompson Rivers University (TRU) was incorporated under the Thompson Rivers University Act. The Act amalgamated the University College of the Cariboo with the BC Open University and other aspects of the Open Learning Agency, converting UCC’s university council into a senate, and creating a planning council for Open Learning. UCC president Dr. Roger Barnsley continued at the helm of the new institution. The Province designated TRU as a special purpose university which would continue to offer undergraduate and master’s degrees, vocational training and adult basic education, undertake research and scholarly activities, and with the addition of Open Learning programs and courses, would provide an open learning educational credit bank for students.[9]

TRU’s inaugural convocation was held March 31, 2005, along with the installation of its first chancellor, Nancy Greene Raine. Prime Minister Paul Martin was TRU’s first official visitor the following day.[5] The Master of Business Administration, TRU’s first autonomous master’s degree program, began that September.

The 11-storey TRU Residence and Conference Centre building, a 580-room apartment-style student residence, opened in 2006. In 2007 the current Williams Lake campus opened on Western Avenue, and all Open Learning operations (TRU-OL) relocated from Burnaby to the new BC Centre for Open Learning building on the Kamloops campus.[5]

Dr. Kathleen Scherf was installed as TRU’s second president in 2008, but was dismissed by TRU’s board of governors in 2009. Roger Barnsley returned to serve two more years as president during the search for Scherf’s replacement. Dr. Alan Shaver was installed as TRU’s third president in 2011, and the Honourable Wally Oppal was installed as chancellor.

The university gained membership in the Research Universities Council of BC (RUCBC) in 2011.[15] The Brown Family House of Learning, TRU’s first LEED Gold-certified building, opened in 2011 and was the initial home of TRU Faculty of Law, the first new law school to open in Canada in over thirty years. [16] TRU Law moved into an award-winning 44,000 square foot space in the newly renovated Old Main building in December 2013. Law’s first graduating class convocated in June 2014.

In the 2014-15 academic year, TRU had a total headcount* of 25,748 students, of which 11,957 were on campus. International students made up 15% of TRU’s on-campus student population (10% overall), with China, India and Saudi Arabia topping the list of over 70 countries of origin. Aboriginal students made up 10.5 percent of the student body. Open Learning students, domestic and international, totalled 11,903 students. (*Due to the fact that some students are dually enrolled in on-campus and Open Learning courses, the total headcount gives the unique total for the entire institution, not a sum of on-campus and Open Learning students.)

Campuses

TRU’s 250-acre main campus in Kamloops is situated on McGill Road in the city’s southwest Sahali area, overlooking the junction of the North and South Thompson rivers from which the university takes its name. The campus features 40 acres of gardens and the largest arboretum in BC’s interior. Residences provide on-campus housing for 880 students. Kamloops, a small city of 85,000 people, is located in the semi-arid grasslands of the Thompson-Nicola region of British Columbia’s southwestern interior, on the traditional lands of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) people. TRU has a satellite campus in Williams Lake in BC’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region, and regional centres in 100 Mile House, Clearwater, Barriere, Ashcroft, and Lillooet. The Open Learning division reaches students world-wide.

Campus development

After one year operating out of the school district’s various facilities, such as the Kamloops Indian Residential School building, Cariboo College moved to the current campus on McGill Road in September of 1971, sharing the newly constructed Main Building with the Kamloops Vocational School. Much of the campus had been part of a Canadian Navy munitions base, and several of the officers’ quarters built during that period were put to use and remain as heritage buildings on today’s campus.[5]

Construction was a constant on Cariboo’s campus to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding student body. The Library and the Gymnasium complex both opened in the fall of 1976. The Science building was completed in 1980, and the Visual Arts building opened the following year, replacing use of the Kamloops Indian Residential School facility. Construction began on student residences in 1988, and Hillside Stadium opened. 1989 saw the completion of the Clock Tower building and Alumni Theatre, and the addition of a second storey on the Main building’s B Block for classroom and bookstore space.

As part of Cariboo’s application to become a university college in 1989, the first Campus Plan was developed, with the requirement that every building have an official name. Without a single faculty or function to identify it, the eighteen-year-old Main or Main Block building, as the oldest and still most central building on campus, officially became Old Main when Cariboo College became the University College of the Cariboo.[5]

Construction in the 1990s continued with the increasing influx of undergraduate students. UCC doubled the size of both the Library and Science buildings and opened the Computer Access Centre on Victoria Street in 1991, and completed the Arts and Education (A&E) building in two phases from 1991 to 1993. Next door to A&E, the 53,000 square foot Campus Activity Centre, including the campus bookstore, a cafeteria, pub, retail spaces, meeting rooms, and the student union office and coffee shop, opened in 1993 thanks to a cost-recovery-based joint proposal between UCC and the student society, after a change in legislation in 1990 allowed the college to borrow money privately for development.[5]

Also in 1993, UCC opened a new campus daycare facility, the Hillside Stadium track house, the Williams Lake campus extension, a regional centre in Ashcroft, and the Wells Gray Education and Research Centre. The facilities at UCC, next door to the city’s new Canada Games Pool, were integral to Kamloops’ hosting of the 1993 Canada Summer Games. More regional centres opened in Merritt and Lillooet in 1994, and the Trades and Technology Centre was completed in 1997.[5][6] The International Building opened in 2002, to house the growing international education department (now the TRU World division).

The new Brown Family House of Learning building opened in 2011, featuring TRU’s second library and a learning commons. It was the first TRU building to be awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status for sustainable construction. Its adjoining theatre-in-the-round, the Irving K. Barber BC Centre, features a ceiling made of beetle-killed pine and a green roof, in a design modelled after an Interior Salish pit house.

The latest renovation and expansion of Old Main, the first building constructed on the Kamloops campus, was completed in 2013. The TRU Faculty of Law moved into the 44,000 square foot addition that December and officially launched the space to coincide with convocation of its first graduating class in June 2014. The renovation won several awards, including an Honour Award of Excellence for 2014 from the Society of College and University Planning and the American Institute of Architects.[5]

TRU completed an updated Campus Master Plan in 2013, which set out future development of the Kamloops campus using a “university village” model. Aside from increasing density and enhancing campus life, the university village development will also provide a revenue stream that will raise money for scholarships, bursaries and research. A corporate trustee established in 2011, TRU Community Trust (TRUCT), was created as a way for the development to progress but remain at arm’s length from the university, which under current provincial post-secondary risk management policies, cannot directly control the project. Rezoning applications are anticipated in 2016.

Sustainability

Increasing sustainability is one of TRU’s five Strategic Priorities for 2014-2019. The Strategic Sustainability Plan, which also runs 2014 to 2019, was developed based on the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, & Rating System (STARS) by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). TRU was named a STARS Gold institution by AASHE in 2015, and was one of only two Canadian universities to qualify as members of the Founders Circle of the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, an energy efficiency financing initiative launched by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.

Campus environmental sustainability initiatives are principally coordinated by the Office of Environment and Sustainability, which was established in 2009 under inaugural director Dr. Tom Owen. The Kamloops campus underwent an energy audit in 2010, followed by an energy retrofit encompassing 78 percent of the campus building area. TRU partners with provincial utility BC Hydro’s Continuous Optimization Program on various energy efficiency programs for campus buildings. Solar hot water heating systems serve Old Main, the Campus Activity Centre and the Culinary Arts Training Centre, and further alternative energy options are being explored. Other initiatives by the Office of Environment and Sustainability include campus-wide composting, zero-waste stations, water bottle refill stations, a carpool service, and many annual events supporting student and community education. The office also supports sustainability research.

The TRU Sustainability Grant Fund awards grants to improve TRU’s operational environmental performance, foster sustainability literacy and campus community engagement, advance applied research, and demonstrate the viability of sustainability technologies, and accepts proposals from TRU students, staff, and faculty.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://newsroom.blog.mytru.ca/2010/06/02/tru-announces-new-president-coverage/
  2. ↑ http://cariboo.tru.ca/trufa/
  3. 1 2 http://www.tru.ca/about/glance/facts.html
  4. 1 2 3 [1] Higher Education in British Columbia: 1945-1995, Opportunity and Diversity John D. Dennison, Professor Emeritus of Higher Education, The University of British Columbia, June, 1996 See UBC Library, [http://www.library.ubc.ca/edlib/higher/higherbc.html]
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Striving Ahead: 25 Years At Cariboo
  6. 1 2 3 4 Made In B.C.: A History of Postsecondary Education in British Columbia Bob Cowin, Douglas College, November 2007 http://www.douglas.bc.ca/__shared/assets/History_of_BC_Postsecondary_Education51973.pdf -see also the graphics he uses from BC Stats, ie College Regions 1999
  7. 1 2 University College of the Cariboo Annual Report, 1991 – 1992.
  8. 1 2 COLLEGE AND INSTITUTE AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 http://www.leg.bc.ca/35th3rd/1st_read/gov22-1.htm
  9. 1 2 Thompson Rivers University Act, March 3, 2005. http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/00_05017_01
  10. ↑ Macdonald, John B. (1962, UBC) Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future (aka “Macdonald Report”) http://www.bccat.ca/pubs/macdonaldreport.pdf
  11. ↑ British Columbia Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, 1977, Government of British Columbia, Queen’s Printer.
  12. ↑ Moran, L. (1991) Legitimation of Distance Education: A Social History of the Open Learning Institute of British Columbia, 1978-1988. Doctoral Dissertation, University of British Columbia, Pg 19
  13. ↑ Press Release, “UCC to become B.C.'s newest university”, March 19, 2004 http://www.tru.ca/marketing/mediareleases/2004/mar.html#No.14
  14. ↑ University Affairs, News, April 12, 2004: “Two universities slated for B.C. Interior to boost access” RE creation of TRU http://www.universityaffairs.ca/two-universities-slated-for-bc-interior-to-boost-access.aspx
  15. ↑ RUCBC: “TRU joins prestigious provincial research council,” Kamloops This Week, Oct. 5, 2011 http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/tru-joins-prestigious-provincial-research-council/
  16. ↑ Law: “Canada’s Newest Law School,” University Affairs, March 5, 2012 http://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/canadas-newest-law-school/

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