A little green schoolhouse on the corner of Calgary’s Stampede Park is the beginning of a major expansion for Olds College.
The modular building is the temporary home for two college programs and 50 students in the satellite school.
The college and the Stampede started talks in 2001 to expand the 90-year-old agricultural college to downtown Calgary. It was considered a perfect fit for the Stampede, which is undergoing a $500 million expansion of its own with a 21st century approach to agriculture promotion.
Right now the Calgary school houses the fashion merchandising and land management programs. Students attend classes from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. The next step is to bring in a second shift of afternoon students in 2007 to fully take advantage of the space. Parallel programs are offered at Olds, so students could attend either site.
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For land management student Dana Zielke, the choice made perfect sense. The former CBC sports reporter and Stampede broadcaster decided to go back to school a year ago. Rather than move from her High River home, she is able to commute to Calgary.
“When they said they were going to open a Calgary campus, I breathed a sigh of relief. It saved me $12,000,” Zielke said.
She likes the partnership and is excited to be among the first graduates from the Calgary location.
Classes started at the end of August in the Big Four building and as soon as the modular school was ready, students moved across the grounds to a building tailored for their needs. It includes a state of the art computer lab using fibre optics connected to the provincial supernet, a high speed internet service offered in all public buildings.
The next step in the expansion plan is a two year renovation of the Weston Bakery, a Calgary heritage site on the northeast side of Stampede Park. The 2,430 sq. metre building will become home to 450 students starting in 2009.
“We wanted heritage that could be turned into contemporary beauty,” said Dan Fullerton of Olds College who has been involved since the talks began.
He sees the collaboration as a melding of ideologies. The students need hands-on experience and the Stampede wants a facility that is used year round for education of students as well as the urban audience it serves.
“Students can work here, meet industry partners and do their practicums,” he said.
College courses like equine sciences, landscaping, horticulture and other agriculture programs also fit in with the Stampede’s expansion to develop the century-old park into a 193 acre exhibition park and classroom.
The college is located beside the Elbow River where students can work on water studies and riparian rehabilitation, as well as play a major role in the greening of the park filled now with old buildings and asphalt parking lots.
