Students at the College of New Caledonia, including at the Quesnel campus, and at Thompson Rivers University, including the Williams Lake campus, will be getting a longer holiday break.
Dr. Chad Thompson, Vice President of Academics at CNC, confirms that the winter semester has been pushed back a week to start on January 11th…
“We were hearing from various internal stakeholders at the college, students and employees, that this has been a really tough fall semester, and we’ve known that.  A variety of other institutions in BC and across the country were looking at extending the winter break to give everybody a bit more breathing space before we got into the next semester.  So we looked carefully at our programs, we looked very carefully at what the impacts would be for things like student financial aid, and when we were confident that it wouldn’t have a negative impact on students we went ahead and make the recommendation that we should change the semester.”
Thompson says the Education Council approved it on Tuesday and it became official.
He says there are a couple of exceptions in Quesnel…
“The one major program in Quesnel that will resume on the 4th is the Northern Collaborative Baccalaureate Nursing Program.  In addition the Healthcare Assistant Certificate Program that’s running in Quesnel will resume on the 4th, and I believe all the other programs in Quesnel will go back and will now start on January 11th.”
Thompson says it wasn’t possible to change the start date on some programs because of scheduling issues, and the need for students to complete certain things in order to go into clinicals or practicums or internships.
He suggests that students to go to the CNC website to check the start times for their specific classes.
Thompson is also encouraging students to be smart over the holiday break as the number of COVID cases in the north continue to go up.