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The University of Saskatchewan and the City of Prince Albert will work together to support city growth and provide learning opportunities for students.
On Tuesday, both signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow Prince Albert campus university students to conduct Prince Albert-based research projects with city assets.
“It leverages the strengths on both sides of the relationship,” said U of S Prince Albert Campus Principal Jay Wilson.
“We have people who are very interested from an academic perspective, and we have people who are really interested from a civic management customer response perspective, and we’re bringing those two parties together to ensure that we can really build on each other’s strengths and make a difference here in Prince Albert.”
Prince Albert Mayor Bill Powalinsky signed the memorandum on the city’s behalf. With this understanding in place, Powalinsky believes the best and brightest minds living in Prince Albert will be able to help tackle issues important to the community.
“The signing today really extends the cooperation that we’ve had in place for a while, but it really commits our agreement to work together on areas of research — whether it’s industrial, economical, social issues, health sciences, you name it. This really not only expands from the centre here, but it puts all the resources of the University of Saskatchewan behind us, and that’s a million-dollar agreement,” he said.
Both have worked together on projects before. Researchers from the U of S have helped with previous city projects around issues such as homelessness, water security, drug addiction, and more.
“What that’s doing is building on what’s already happening as opposed to starting fresh. I think what we can now do is rather than try to tackle a huge program with one or two faculty, we can leverage the resources of many, many faculty in our community and have that opportunity to build teams that could look at subsections of those larger areas that we’re already working with,” Wilson said.
He added the memorandum could also have an effect on future programming for the U of S.
Recently, they announced bringing in training for industrial arts teachers due to a lack of those teachers in the area. Wilson believes this memorandum will also help adjust programming in the future to better serve the people of Prince Albert in a similar fashion.
“Especially at the graduate level because graduate students are generally researchers and they’re involved in solving problems, sometimes problems that they bring to solve, but also ones that are brought to them. So I think what this allows us to do is expand our graduate programming, it also allows us to enhance the undergraduate student experience because now they are able to go out and actually do research and work with a variety of different groups here with the city of Prince Albert,” said Wilson.
The U of S has had a similar memorandum with the City of Saskatoon for years. When asked if the memorandum in Prince Albert is similar to the one in Saskatoon, Powalinsky was adamant that this one will deal with Prince Albert specific issues.
“Saskatoon’s a totally different environment, some of the same concerns and some of the same issues, but the thing here in P.A., what we’re looking for is ‘made in P.A. initiatives and solutions’. So no disrespect to Saskatoon. Their memorandum, from what I understand, has been very effective, very beneficial, but we’re really charting our own course here,” he said.
Groups from the U of S will be meeting with city representatives to share their findings several times a year.
