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within -which its students must make
their way, is through cooperative
education endeavours - the interleaving
of paid work experience with study,
each activity calculated to be of
relevance to the other.

Douglas College is now well into
a cooperative education project that,
if successful, will have broken new
ground in school /community
relationships. The basic nature
of our cooperative education program,
is that it is student centered rather

than program centered. Any student
at Douglas College that chooses to
apply for cooperative education,

will be at least given the opportunity
to find a relevant work experience
in the community, through systematic
college support. In an environment
where the major new employers are
all small enterprises, this holds
out the prospect of actually being
more effective in providing student
work experience placements, than
the traditional program based large
employer oriented model.

We must face the fact that efforts
in this direction have been’ faced
with some scepticism, at both’ the

provincial and federal government
levels, as we have sought support
for the enterprise. However, we

have faith that the concept is sound,
and is of relevance not only to
students in specific occupational
or career fields, but also to _ the
general academic student.

Most of us are aware that the
probabilities of finding employment
for a general academic student are
not markedly different than for those
of career or occupationally related
students. Te would seem logical
to offer the same opportunities to
our academic students as to, aur

occupational students. Time will tell,
but the experiment will be worthwhile,
and we have every intention of making
it a success. This will not be the
first time that Douglas College has
attempted projects, and succeeded,
in spite of scepticism elsewhere.
Significantly, members of our business
community in the college region have
been enthusiastically receptive to
our initial approaches. Some of the
people involved in this project are:

Al Atkinson, who is the administrator
responsible,

Gordon Gilgan, who is acting as senior
administrative support, and

Barbara Franck, who is the placement
officer.

Other members of the present Advisory
Committee include: Jim Sator, from
Business; Al Lawson, from Sciences
and Mathematics; Gary Tennant, from
Social Services and Allied Health;
Beth Morris, from Student Services
and Developmental Education, and Maurice
Hodgson from the English and _ Basic
Communications Department. AS the
project moves- on, people from _ the
community will be brought on deck to
help us.

c. COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
AND THE CENTRE FOR ENTERPRISE

DEVELOPMENT
Some of you may be aware that a number
of us, including myself, Jim Doerr,

Randi Duke, Jim Sator, and Terry Clement
have been at work for the past two
years developing relationships with
the business communities in New
Westminster and Coquitlam, on the
assumption that this would give us
an infcrmation base from which to do
development work in the area of job
creation and enterprise development.