The Lakes District campus of the College of New Caledonia (CNC) is expected to have more autonomy since the college announced that the Lakes and Nechako will again become two distinct regions.
The Lakes region will be centred at the Burns Lake campus, while the Nechako region administration will be balanced between the Vanderhoof and Fort St. James campuses.
Each region will have a regional principal and an operations manager.
According to CNC president Henry Reiser, this change will allow regional principals to focus more on the needs of their communities and to develop stronger partnerships with all the stakeholders in the community.
"The physical distance between our campuses has presented a challenge, particularly in the winter, for one regional principal to serve all of our communities," said Reiser. "With two regional principals, the amount of travel will be significantly reduced."
Reiser said these changes are a result of community consultations that were held across the region over the past year, as well as the college's effort to achieve increased program access.
"We have heard and listened to our community leaders and regional stakeholders, where they have indicated there is an interest and a community commitment to help the college grow in these regions across a variety of academic, community and continuing education programs," said Reiser.
"We are pleased to be able to respond to these regional intentions."
In addition, all community education and regional operations will move from the vice-president, community and student services portfolio, to the vice-president, academic portfolio.
"Aligning community and continuing education with the academic portfolio is the most common college model and, with the 2015 change of the deans taking responsibility for regional academic programs, it makes sense to move all educational programming into the same area," explained Reiser.
The changes will be rolled out over the summer and full changes will be effective as of Sept. 1, 2016.
A couple of months ago, the CNC board reported a surplus of $1.8 million in the 2015/16 year-end. According to a CNC press release, the surplus was "unanticipated."
Last year, the college was forced to make significant cuts to address a $2.8 million deficit.