Guest Speaker: Dr. David Atkinson, the President of McEwen University, was introduced by Jerome Martin.
Dr. Atkinson gave a brief history of McEwen which started over 40 years ago as a Community College, then a College, a degree granting college and 5 years ago became a full university. He was proud of the sense of ownership that the city of Edmonton has with the university.
McEwen is going strong and currently has 12,100 full-time students, 3000 part-time students and over the year, approximately 19,000 people attend some sort of course in the institution. The university also has a staff of 3100 and is growing with the construction of the new Arts centre.
McEwen used to be a "transfer-out" institution, but over the past few years has become a "transfer-in" institution and now accepts more transfer students than any other institution in the province.
McEwen is an undergrad university and very much tries to be different than the U of A and is proud to provide that in the province of Alberta. The U of A is excellent in what it does, but there are other needs that need to be filled and filled well.
Dr. Atkinson explained that because the university is brand new, it is very well positioned to adapt to the challenges of the changing face of education requirements in the world today. Universities are experiencing challenges today that they have never experienced before. No longer is the typical student an 18-19 year old coming out of high school and planning to spend 4 years at the university and then be prepared for the rest of their lives.
Higher education now needs to be delivered to many different people in very different situations. This will need to be varied and timely or people will just go elsewhere (e.g. private sector), so it is an opportunity to learn from those options and attempt to be proactive and ahead of the curve.
Dr. Atkinson was thanked by Annie Meuller.
The meeting was adjourned by President Ingrid.
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McEwen Rotaract Charter Presentation: President Ingrid presented the official Rotaract Charter to president-elect Ali Khan. The official charter documents were presented to Ali Khan by District Youth representative Edmund Ramsdon and by our clubs Youth Services directors Mike Ryan and Leslie Cleary. Congratulations McEwen! we look forward to a long and production partnership with you.
