Lethbridge College wants to hear from southern Albertans

By Heather Cameron

Coomentator/Courier

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Lethbridge College is seeking input from others through a ‘Road to Ready’ Survey.

“We’re making sure that we ask anyone who wants to provide an opinion about what they think of the college and where we should be and where we should be going and what’s our mission and vision gets to,” Dr. Samantha Lenci, Provost and Vice President Academic of Lethbridge College, said. “It’s really to deepen our understanding, our mission, our vision, our values, and to help us understand what our institutional priorities are.”

The survey, Lenci says, was last done six years ago. This current survey, Lenci says, is being done because the current president of the college, Dr. Brad Donaldson, has an open style and thought that there have been a lot of changes in higher education within the province of Alberta after COVID, enough changes that he thought it was a good time to look at what the college does and why they do it. 

“The whole community is embracing the opportunity to really think about all of the things we do and why we do them, and perhaps maybe what’s changed over the last few years,” Lenci said.

Lenci says that Dr. Donaldson initially launched the ‘Road to Ready’ initiative to the whole community in January and the actual survey was first distributed internally to staff and students by the end of February and the beginning of March. After the survey was paused for the election, it is now just starting back up again with the rebooking of focus group events beginning June 14 on the Lethbridge College campus.

“I think it’s really time to look at how we’ve changed,” Lenci said. “We’ve had a lot of impact in our industry for a few years, and I think it’s really exciting to see what people think our current and future state should look like and how our community helps shape that for us and with us.”

Additional ‘Road to Ready’ focus group sessions, Lenci says, will be held in Claresholm on June 16, in Raymond on June 21, in Vulcan on June 22, in Fort Macleod on June 23, in Pincher Creek on June 26, and finally in Taber on June 27.

“We advertise that we’re having an open session and we invite community members to come along and be part of those sessions,” Lenci said. “And we have some guiding questions. I don’t know what those are right now, but it’s really, you know, how is the college supporting the community? How does the community see the future of support? That type of thing. So it’s all by just open invitations. And we don’t bring the information from the surveys. That’s not part of the presentation. The focus groups in the communities is really about asking about how the communities feel about us.”

Lenci says that anyone who wants to be part of a session can register at the Road to Ready website: https://lethbridgecollege.ca/executive-leadership/road-to-ready. 

“I think these sessions are to be aware of the diversity of voices out there that include our students, our employees, our Indigenous community partners, alumni, and industry partners,” Lenci said. “It’s to understand our purpose, our mission and vision for the future. And what we’re going to do is we’re actually gonna measure our future performance on the mission and vision and values that we get out of this information. I’m excited for the college. I think the future is very bright and I love that I’m a part of something that asks all of our partners, all of our members, you know, where are we going, what are we doing? And why are we going and doing all of those things? So I’m pretty excited.”