Confederation College Hosts 150 Delagates From Ontario's 24 Community Colleges
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
Thunder Bay’s Victoria Inn was buzzing with activity as the 2008 Rendezvous Conference of Ontario’s Community Colleges was held recently. “ We are holding a conference that brings together all of the facilities, finance managers, purchasing agents and the vice presidents
of administration of the 24 colleges in Ontario. It was good to hold in Thunder Bay with 150 delegates coming here and with speakers and presenters bringing over 180 people in total. It is the first time we have brought the facility managers with the other managers in our 40
year history so it is a bit of a first. It’s exciting we can share information between the departments of the colleges. We have taken over the Victoria Inn. They have done a superb job in hosting us,” said Reg Jones, Vice President of Corporate Services at Confederation College. “ The purpose of the event is to share best practices and ideas. This year we have themes around sustainability, emergency preparedness, purchasing ethics and some of the financial challenges we are facing as a college system. Monday and Tuesday we have workshops around those types of themes and Wednesday morning we have the four committees that
form this group holding their annual general meetings so this is the only time we meet as a full compliment.”
Also at the event were suppliers the colleges buy products from and some others who supported the conference. Many are in the energy fields monitoring energy usage and getting more green. “ Our energy costs are huge but the measures we have taken with Honeywell mean we are paying half the previous normal and have saved $5 million in the last 8 years. We are embarking on a green project to help us get off the grid somewhat perhaps providing some of our own energy sources like wind, solar and biomass. One of our colleges did presentation on solar heat for their hot water needs and others around waste management. We are looking at a biomass mass project,” stated Jones who will retire form Confederation College this December after 31 years. “ The college owns about 700,000 square feet of building space that we manage so you can imagine the cost of that energy wise is well over million and half
dollars.
Confederation College also does much bulk purchasing to lower costs. “ We actually bulk purchase in Thunder Bay quite considerably with a consortium of the educational institutions, hospitals and City of Thunder Bay. There is a movement to do bulk purchasing across the
college system in Ontario but we aren’t sure if our geography would make it more difficult here. We want to support Thunder Bay businesses but we do have to buy some things provincially and nationally,” noted Jones. “ We cover 58% of the province with the college geographically
which makes our role a challenge. People when they come here are amazed. They don’t think we are as big a city as we are and like the beautiful geography. We make every attempt to get people here and are doing tours to the Terry Fox Monument, Marina, Old Fort and Kakabeka
Falls.”
On hand to do a presentation on emergency preparedness was Kathryn Karcz, Chair of Emergency Preparedness and Instructor in Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management at Sheridan College in Toronto. “ We had a real lock down recently at our college. It was a typical
Friday on the Campus which is a busy part of the community. At 2:30 pm a faculty member and 8 of his students saw what they believe to be a individual with a long gun walking towards the library. The police looked at the security camera and were hard pressed to understand what
it was so we locked down for 2 1/2 half hours, “ said Kathryn Karcz. “ We had three police services from Hamilton, Halton and Peele regions, 6 K 9 units and plain clothes officers for approximately 60 officers in total. What we thought was a gun turned out to be a microphone stand. Sheridan is a big campus and it takes from 2 to 4 hours to secure the campus and do a room by room search and identify the areas before it is safe to evacuate the school and move people out. Police search is a very methodical.”
“ It was the best test we could have ever hoped for. We know we did very well because earlier in the fall we ran a series of lock downs and had a very aggressive training program inviting emergency response personal to observe. We did relationship building with the responders
and it put us in good stead. The students were very calm. We have a generation of students who have practiced for lockdowns their whole academic career,” said Karcz. “ We need to work on communicating to the community that we have tactical paramedics on site that are trained
to go in and deal with situations. Recently we had a pregnant women on site that was experiencing some difficulties and she came out fine. We needed to enhance our understanding of our own resources on campus. Also an important message is to stay off the cell phones and keeping quiet is important during a crisis situation.”
Marla Peuramaki is the Manager of Health Safety and Security at Confederation College. “ We are still on a learning curve at Confederation College. We have lock down procedures that we haven’t put to the test or a drill yet and hope to learn more from Kathryn today with her presentation. There are a lot of colleges across the colleges which can help,” noted Marla Peuramaki.” We received serious funding from the Ontario government recently to put in place a telephone system with voice capability and speakers in the public places. The whole conference has been about learning and sharing with our colleagues from all 24 colleges, sharing questions and solutions.”
