UFV eyeing new programming in Hope

Hope students may have a couple more options come the fall.

The University of the Fraser Valley is expected to restart programming at the Hope Centre in September, nearly one year after the death of a staff member forced the university to pause instruction.

The Hope Centre has been open but not offering programs since the fall.

Since then, staff have been available to answer questions, even though the university doesn’t know what programs will be offered in the future. The building typically hosts prerequisite courses and continuing education classes, among other educational resources.

A new campus director was hired in January.

Fall programming will be dictated by the results of a recent four-week community engagement project.

Nothing has been confirmed, but the centre will likely restore offer programs that help people hold onto their jobs or move up an organization, such as bookkeeping classes, computer programming and English language courses, Carolyn MacLaren, UFV’s director of continuing education, told The Current.

UFV is also keen to add a food safe class and health care training in Hope.

Mayor Victor Smith is excited the Hope Centre is scheduled to offer programs again this fall. But he also has bigger hopes for the facility. He wants UFV to create agricultural courses that teach locals about vertical farming, a method of growing crops in layers in an environmentally-controlled area like a greenhouse.

“The more we can grow here locally and everything else in that means great jobs here,” he said.

There are facilities that UFV is eyeing in Hope for agricultural and science training and research, MacLaren said. Those programs would likely be run through the faculty of agriculture, not the Hope Centre.

Most UFV students from Hope prefer to study at the university’s larger Abbotsford and Chilliwack campuses. MacLaren believes that’s because those students like to work with their peers in-person.

The Hope Centre, which served a couple hundred students when programming was on, may not offer 100-person in-person lectures anytime soon. But MacLarn said the building could become a satellite campus where Hope students similarly learn in-person with classmates.

“They could come to campus to be with two other Hope students who are taking the same course in an online format,,” she said.

UFV is hoping to host one-day first aid or food safe workshops in Hope by June.