NAIT is planning for the future of the campus, and they want students to weigh in. On Nov. 5 in CAT Crossing, students and staff can share feedback with NAIT on what they’d like to see in the next campus development plan. An online survey will also be available until Nov. 14.
The last update to the campus development plan was in 2020, and since then, a lot has happened. NAIT has purchased land in Blatchford, the NAIT/Blatchford Market LRT station is finished, and perhaps most importantly, planning is underway for the new Advanced Skills Centre (ASC) — a hub for apprentices and trades students.
“This is the right time to be thinking about what our future looks like for this,” said Mike High, NAIT’s VP Administration and Chief Financial Officer. “That ends up helping to inform things like the Advanced Skills Centre, but also inform things like potential for residences and other investments around campus.”
“It’s about creating identity and belonging and celebrating the trades,”
High explained that even though many students may have graduated by the time the changes are implemented, their feedback is still valuable. NAIT’s “life cycle of relationship” with its students is different; in traditional universities, students will complete their four-year degree and rarely return for more education.
But High explained that at NAIT, many students complete a diploma or certificate, then come back to reskill later in life. “Many of our students, this is maybe the first start of their relationship with us. But they will come back to campus at some point in time and benefit from their contributions now.”
Advanced Skills Centre brings together 29 programs in collaborative space
The project is still in the early stages of development, but NAIT’s goal is to bring trades together to work on projects together, like they would on real job sites. “HVAC and carpenters and electricians are working on top of one another like they have to do in the real world, and think about the consequences of their work on the next trade that comes in,” said High.
“It’s to just think of this as a design and planning project. It’s also very much an academic change project. It’s a campus development project.”
NAIT estimates they’ll be able to train 50 per cent more students in the ASC, bringing their totals to almost 15,000 students each year. High said that academic chairs have already started thinking about how this could work — from discussing how projects could work when they aren’t limited by the size of the room, to discussing the capacity for lectures versus the intimacy of labs.
The planning extends outside the classroom to things like traffic, parking and food services. “We’ve done a parking study, we’ve done thinking about how traffic would be routed, where entrances should be, where the primary flow of traffic would be routed,” said High. “It would be very tempting to just think of ASC as one building, but the campus development plan actually is even more crucial to shake through all the consequences of those types of things.”
NAIT plans for the majority of the space to be educational; in the presentation at the Aug. 28 Board of Governors meeting, the space was divided into 76 per cent dedicated to labs, 9 per cent towards community and student-focused spaces, 6 per cent each for faculty/staff spaces and classrooms and 3 per cent for support spaces.
But student touch points and community spaces are still vital, said High. If students have vibrant experiences on campus now, they’ll share it with their friends or family. “Later on, when they’re employers they remember the great experience they had as a group and think about hiring here,” High explained.
“It’s about creating identity and belonging and celebrating the trades that I think sometimes doesn’t happen.”
NAIT hopes to have foundations in place by 2026/27, with a completion date of 2030. And while the current economy does pose additional challenges — like funding — NAIT believes the building is necessary now.
“We have a 46,000 skilled trade shortage that we’re going to be facing in the province by the 2030s or so … We kind of can’t build this fast enough to be able to support those broader [provincial] priorities.”
“You want to build roads, you want to build schools, you want to build hospitals, you want to build pipelines, you kind of need the trades that are going to come out of this building.”
The campus development plan open house will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in CAT Crossing on Nov. 5. There will also be one in South Lobby from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on the same day. The online survey is open for responses until Nov. 14.
Feature image via NAIT Content Collective
