Staff
After years of anticipation, Confederation College celebrated the opening of its new 40,000 sq. ft. Regional Education Alliance for Community Health (REACH) building yesterday morning in Thunder Bay.
“This is the true embodiment, I believe, of our vision, which is to enrich lives through learning, and also our commitment to be deeply-connected to all our communities across this vast region and to provide support and leadership to this region,” Marilyn Gouthro, chair of the college’s board of governors, told a press conference broadcast to Confederation’s various campuses across the region.
The new facility will serve as a centre for academic, laboratory, simulation, and clinical/fieldwork education for those enrolled in the college’s School of Health and Community Services.
While the new REACH building is located in Thunder Bay, it has many benefits for students, said local campus director Anne Renaud.
The new centre has all of the technology needed to “link” up the classrooms so students here can attend classes with professors teaching in Thunder Bay, alongside students from all across the region, she explained.
As well, the investment brings to the local campus a number of different pieces of equipment for use in the health-related programs like paramedic, nursing, and personal support.
These include new simulators that are now in the program’s lab at the hospital and which can be used to simulate real-life situations, Renaud explained.
“So [students] can listen to the heart, they can listen to the breath sounds,” she noted. “We even have a simulator that gives birth to a child, so the students can experience that with those simulators.”
This sort of equipment will help students practise even more scenarios to enhance their learning, Renaud said.
Yesterday’s ceremony also included speeches by Thunder Bay area MPPs Bill Mauro and Michael Gravelle, former Confederation College president Patricia Lang, current president Jim Madder, and Naomi Abotosaway, president of the Confederation College Student Union.
The REACH facility came, in part, from a $6.23-million investment from the federal government through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP), alongside $15.23 million in combined funding from the Ontario government and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp.
