douglas college
CO Inter Office Memo Date: __September 18, 1986.

 

To: DOUGLAS COLLEGE BOARD

 

From: _ W. Lb. DAY

Re: _ PRESIDENT'S REPORT

 

A. External Matters - Municipal

 

I was invited to attend a meeting with the Vice-President of
Development for the B.C. Development Corporation. The substance
of that meeting was simply that Mr. McLean wanted to indicate to
us his pleasure in Douglas College's efforts in the area of the
Entertainment Arts.

His belief is that this institution is well positioned geographically,
and in terms of its community relationship with the Business community,
the Arts community, etc., to be of real aid to the B.C. Government
in its efforts to provide a stimulating environment for movie industry
activity in the province. He is interested in setting up a possible
liaison with programs that are going on at Dominion Bridge for student
placement, sandwich training, co-operative training projects, and
© with the stagecraft union.

The Royal City Community Development Association is in the process
of taking on its contracted responsibility with the City of New
Westminster to bring about the accomplishment of the Economic Strategy
for redevelopment .of the City. They are in the process of hiring
a Manager, and as I am still on the executive of that group I am
involved in the interviews. The spinoffs from this for the College
will continue to be substantial in terms of connections between
students and faculty and the local business community, both in terms
of research as wel} as employment.

The Centre for Enterprise Development is to be reported on later
by Mrs. Popove. The Centre seems to be going from strength to
strength. I think it is an excellent payoff for an act of faith
on the part of the Board in agreeing to the setting up of a
substantially autonomous organization.

The Downtown New Westminster Association is coming to life as a result
of the accumulative downtown changes. They are clearly very conscious
of Douglas College as being their primary resource in terms of research
activities. Again I think this points, in the long run, to a gradually
accumulating number of very useful relationships as a result of
front-end investment over the past two or three years.

The Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia met
with a number of Federal Deputy Ministers last week. The Board should

© be aware of the fact that the Federal Government, while clearly
shifting its relationship to social support programs, is spending
a fair amount of money on consultative programs in an attempt to
identify problems as they develop. I view this as praiseworthy effort,
and feel it is well worth spending time ye to reinforce such
behaviour. I hope to be invited to the next such meeting which will
occur in six month's time.