STEPHEN RICCIO
CAMPBELL’S BAY
Sept. 9, 2020
CEGEP Heritage College’s Campbell’s Bay Campus has made the decision to cancel the early childhood care and education program that was initially planned to begin in September.
Campus Manager Greg Graham confirmed to THE EQUITY that the college cancelled the program once they realized that . . .
there weren’t enough registrations going into the targeted Sept. 1 start date.
“My decision-making is based on what’s best for the students and what’s best for the Pontiac, but sometimes there’s other decisions and things that have to come into play like finances unfortunately,” Graham said.
“I’m disappointed but I haven’t given up hope,” he added.
Graham said that registration for the same program is now live on the school’s website, with a target date of January for its return.
He emphasized that those interested should get registering, both for early childhood care and education and the cattle production management program that he is aiming to begin in October.
Graham gave a glowing review of the postponed program’s usefulness in the region.
“It’s a great program, we’ve had 100 per cent employment of everybody that has graduated from it. People love the program and we desperately need people in that industry.”
With the need to plan around the persisting threat of COVID-19, Graham said that the teachers had been great in preparing for the education program’s classes had it begun when scheduled.
“They have been preparing for partially online and partially in-class, but with an emphasis towards online as much as possible,” he explained. “Some things, some activities and assessments and field trips, you need to do in-person and we [would] just take proper precautions.”
He acknowledged that COVID-19 may well have had an impact on the volume of people signing up, but he said he had no way of knowing for sure.
He pointed out that a lot of people aren’t aware of the Heritage College location in Campbell’s Bay.
“It’s amazing, we have a college in the Pontiac and not everybody knows that,” Graham said.
“One of the neatest things about working for the college is now everywhere I go, all these farms I see, they’ve got graduates of Heritage,” he added. “And all these people working in the elementary school and the day care who are Heritage graduates.”
