Two Bow Valley educational institutions have teamed up to provide a pilot dual-credit program for local high school students.
Canadian Rockies Public Schools and Bow Valley College received funding from the provincial government to develop a pilot program that offers students credits for courses taken in both streams of academia.
CRPS director of learning and innovation Darren Dick said dual credit is a broad strategy aimed to increase completion rates for students and increase participation in post-secondary education.
Out of 60 different applications to develop a dual-credit program, the Bow Valley pilot is one of eight chosen last summer to move forward.
“We have been pretty quick to develop the partnership and one of the things the grant has allowed us to do is put a co-ordinator on the ground that does the liaison with the students and the college in a student advisory role,” Dick said. “Where it all came from was … there’s a shift in education that is based on what is called inspiring education out of Alberta Education and inspiring education started about four or five years ago. It was the largest public consultation in the province’s history on anything and essentially the inspiring education consultation tried to determine what an educated Albertan in 2030 should be.
“One of the things to come out of it is students should have competencies to make them engaged, ethical and entrepreneurial citizens, and so one of the strategies Alberta Education has put into place is the dual credit opportunity.”
Beverly DeSantis, BVC Chiu School of Business coordinator of professional studies, said it is the first dual-credit program for the college, although the idea is not a new one. High school students in Canmore and Banff are taking a BVC course in entrepreneurship this year as part of the pilot.
The course is part of BVC’s business administration foundational courses and along with a high school credit, students earn three credits toward the first semester of the business administration program.
“If we continue along this path we are actually looking at offering enough courses that they would have a full semester after maybe two years of dual credit to Bow Valley College and the business administration program,” DeSantis said. “What is nice about our business admin program is once the students then have a diploma in business admin they can bridge to a university. For instance, the University of Lethbridge gives us a two plus two block transfer, meaning students take their first two years in a business admin diploma and it counts toward their business admin Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Lethbridge.
“The bridging is really nice from high school to college to university for some of those folks who may not meet the eligibility to get into university right out of high school.”
The course this year is done online and while high school students, the expectation is at a college level.
Dick said there is also a direction to transition high school students into the local workforce and that means working with businesses to determine what their needs are and what skills students should be equipped with.
“One of the areas of specialization is tourism, another one is around marketing and business finance, so there are some direct relations to the types of industry that we have in the valley here and that is also the opportunity we are trying to give students while they are still in high school,” he said. “Hooking them up with business leaders in the community in a mentorship role, but also a work study role to see what kind of real world applications these courses actually have.
“So it is not just theoretical out of a book, but embraces that experiential education we are wanting to transform our education towards.”
For the first course, five students from Banff Community High School and seven from Canmore Collegiate signed up, which Dick said he is really pleased with. The goal is to grow the number of students next year in partnership with the college.
While a two-year pilot, he added work will continue with the province to determine how to sustainably fund the program.
“Bow Valley College has been a fantastic partner in this,” he said. “They made accommodations for us – waived registration and student council fees – and really facilitated a can-do kind of spirit towards making this happen.”
