Monday - March 22, 2024 - UFV's enrolment plan

🌧 High 9C

Good morning!

I don’t get properly sick very often. I think I inherited the old German farmer immune system, which rumbles to life like a tractor every winter and chugs along all season.

I consider myself lucky most of the time, but it hasn’t always been that convenient of a superpower. For example, in middle or high school, once I established this reputation, I couldn’t get away with any sneaky class skipping. Or, I could, but pulling it off took a little more commitment. It didn’t help that my parents (or other family members) were usually teachers in whatever school I was attending.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

After years of sagging enrolment,
UFV eyes a new surge

The University of the Fraser Valley was in a bit of a rut. 

As university execs sat down to plot their institution’s future last year, they would have seen a divergence.

The Fraser Valley’s population had been swelling for years, but local enrolment heading in the opposite direction. That suggested a problem for a university built to serve the educational aspirations of local Fraser Valley residents.

Now, though, UFV has an ambitious new plan that it hopes will boost both local and international enrolment. The plan includes targets for thousands more students—and there are already signs of progress.

But it’s one thing to attract more students. As the valley’s local school districts have found, it’s another to have the space to educate them and the resources to support them. That’s especially the case when it comes to international students who cross the globe for a Canadian education.

• Today, Tyler writes about UFV’s plan to grow its local and international student populations, and the challenges that brings.

  Related

Need to Know

🏃 Chilliwack’s Ihor Verys has become the first Canadian to finish the Barkley Marathons [Canadian Trail Running]. We talked to Verys last year as he prepared to race on Sumas Mountain [FVC]

👩‍🔬 A UFV biology professor hosted a Celebrate STEM program for girls interested in science and math in Chilliwack [Chilliwack Progress]

🏗️ A two-storey light industrial development project has been approved for Aldergrove [Langley Advance Times]

🍻 Chilliwack will allow its alcohol-in-parks program to continue this summer, and council didn’t take kindly to a warning from a Fraser Health’s public health officer [Chilliwack Progress]

👉 Swiss seven-year-olds sent appreciation cards to Abbotsford’s hospital staff as part of a classroom project on globalization [Abbotsford News]

🚓 A man died of injuries sustained in a crash following an attempted traffic stop in Langley [Global]

♻ A new bottle depot has opened in Abbotsford [Abbotsford News]

🚲 The design for the extension of Mission’s 7th Avenue Greenway will depend on the city’s new high school [Mission Record]

🔥 A fire gutted a trailer in Chilliwack in which a person was living; no one was injured [Chilliwack Progress]

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The Agenda

Langley Township to plan more school sites in Willoughby

Though a recent announcement from the province outlined plans for two more schools (and one more new site for a future school) in the Willoughby area, Langley Township says it’s not enough.

In a meeting later today the township council will vote on a motion to ask city staff to develop a 15-year plan for new school sites in Willoughby.

The motion, written by Mayor Eric Woodward, lays out concerns for a lack of schools in the pipeline as the population growth in Willoughby continues. Langley’s population is expected to be at least 208,000 by 2040, and community plans have lately been adjusted to accommodate expected increasing density as the neighbourhoods develop. 

Woodward writes that there are currently nine schools in Willoughby for a neighbourhood where housing development is about half finished, and that there are only five additional school sites currently planned. One of the sites, for future new Willoughby secondary and middle schools, was announced last week. 

Township staff would consult with the Langley School District on the plans but report to council. School districts write their own capital plans, which include their hopes for new school sites, and submit them to the province for funding. While cities and districts can identify school sites, funding for the schools themselves comes from the provincial government.

Two new school projects were recently announced for Langley Willoughby: an addition to R.E. Mountain Secondary and a new middle school in the Willoughby area’s Smith neighbourhood. Read that story here.

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🗓 Things to do

🎼 Musical: Walk Right Back: The Everly Brothers Story, a musical about the successful UK musical duo, will be on at the Clarke Theatre on Monday, March 25. Details online.

🧵 Fibre art: The Mission Weavers and Spinners Guild presents Fibres by the Fraser, an exhibit featuring fibre artwork, at the Mission Arts Centre and Gallery from March 26 to April 13. Details online.

🌱 Spring camp: The Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve is holding a Spring Break summer camp from Monday, March 25 to March 28. Details online.

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Catch up

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