By Christine Miller, Thompson Rivers University

As part of the TRU Act, the institution has a mandate to meet the educational needs of the region and to offer adult basic education.  TRU, in all its iterations (including Cariboo College and University College of the Cariboo) has found ways to bring upgrading courses to students in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

More recently, the University and Employment Preparation Department (UEPrep) has been working with small towns and Indigenous groups to bring programming to students in their own communities.  Over the last few years, we have taught courses in Lillooet (population 2,300), Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc (TteS) (1,500 members living on and off reserve) and in Neskonlith. We will be working with a new cohort in 100 Mile House in Fall 2024.

As program coordinator and then as the regional programming coordinator over the last two years, I had the privilege of working with amazing groups of people all with the shared goal of bringing education to people who needed it but couldn’t leave their home communities.

I’ll share a few things in this article.  First will be about the impact of this programming on students and communities.  Secondly I’ll discuss the process we’ve started to use as a template for starting new community initiatives.  Lastly I’ll share lessons learned, the does and don’t of working in community, as I’ve gathered from my experiences.  I hope you enjoy the read.

Impact

Being part of regional programming is honestly one of the most rewarding things I get to do in my work at TRU.  I love the busy feel of our main campus, the bustle of students, the sprawl of buildings, and the breadth of programming. However, the regional programming has its own heartwarming feel.

Since we work in rural and remote communities, these are typically cohort programs with a relatively small class size – usually no more than 15 students.  Often the classroom space is actually a community gathering place and quickly becomes a comfortable space place for the whole group.

The student profiles we see in regional programming is very different that our typical on-campus student.  The average age of our students in the in-community programming is much higher, students are more likely to have experiences that include residential schools, are more likely to be the first in their family to plan on a post-secondary education, and often belong to vulnerable/underrepresented groups.

This makes what happens in the regional programming like magic – we get to see positive personal growth, a sense of belonging, a building sense of self-determination and agency, and amazing family and community support for students.  Spouses and children will sit in class and support their people, friends drop in just to listen to what’s going on, and there always seems to be food (we do try to build this into our budget).

I’ve had graduates of this programming tell me that it changed how they viewed themselves, causing a shift from believing like they were not capable of learning to feeing proud that they can express their thoughts and ideas.  We’ve had students register just to have a safe space to be in during the day who ended up moving forward to health and childcare careers.  We’ve had past students doing our best recruiting for new iterations of programming.

It feels great to be part of making people’s lives better through education ♥

Process

Shortly into my term as program coordinator I realized that there were too many moving pieces in setting up in-community programming to be able to just go ahead and do it.  I have to admit my first two rounds of setting up courses, facilitating registration, moving through hiring instructors, figuring out who was paying for what and a multitude of other tasks were pretty disorganized.  I am very much a checklist person and so I used these two experiences to start building a workflow document.

I then organized the tasks into what needed to be done into three major phases: Planning, Implementation, Wrap-up.  Those sections are also broken down into what is done in partnership with the community, and what is done behind the scenes at the institution to make it happen.  I then asked for input on the workflow plan from some community coordinators and several partner areas on campus. Here’s a little summary of how it goes:

I use this template and basically check things off as I go.  It’s not always smooth, but this document helps me stay on track so things don’t get missed.

Lessons Learned

TRU has a long history with delivering in-community programming and what I’ve got below is constructed from stories I’ve heard from communities, situations I’ve encountered when doing this work, and is highly coloured by my own biases and perceptions.  So read on, but take it all with a grain of salt!

1. Always keep your promises – this is critical in maintaining relationships with communities.  It seems common sense, but this also means that when you are having the first exploratory conversations you make it very clear that you have to get permission from the institution and that will take time.  I usually let our community partners know about the different levels of approval that I have to get and my plan for piecing together a budget plan.  Telling a community that something is happening for sure and then going back to tell them that you can’t do it is probably the best way to permanently break a relationship.
2. Be flexible – sometimes I feel like regional program planning is the wild, wild west.  Enrollment changes daily, courses sometimes change midstream, the start and end dates are moving goal posts, and events can impact whole communities on a deep level.  You need to embrace the chaos, go with the flow, and not try to fit your in-community work into the same sort of mold that your on-campus work fits into
3. Hire teachers who build relationships – as with all ABE, there is a huge hidden curriculum of belonging, courage, and self-determination.  The right teacher, who starts with empathy and care, can help students soar.  The wrong teacher, one who is overly strict, adheres to old-school ideas of teaching (teacher is boss, students show respect), or someone who does not fully embrace Indigenization and the TRC calls to action around education can ruin a program.  Hire someone you’d want to spend all day with – because this is what students will be doing.
4. Food and gifts bring people together – again, this one is pretty common sense.  There is something about sharing a meal that builds community like almost no other activity.  If you have the budget, do it early, and if possible, do it often.  Even if it is just snacks.  The stronger the connection between students, the better able they will be to support each other.  When have budget we also arrange for school supplies and some sort of apparel – this helps out students who don’t have the means or access to get school supplies, and the matching apparel further builds the feeling of being a cohesive group.

In the end, making this type of programming successful is  very much a group effort – coordinators, students, teachers, budget officers, registrars, scheduling folks, Deans, janitors, friends and family of students – they all have an important part to play.

If you ever wanted to chat about this type of work, feel free to email me at cmiller@tru.ca

Christine Miller

Associate Teaching Professor

Thompson Rivers University