Highlights from the Northern Lights College (NLC) community report were presented to city council Monday, providing a snapshot of the school’s activities last year.

Just six weeks into her new job, President and CEO of NLC, Laurie Rancourt began by noting the celebrations held to commemorate the school’s 35th anniversary.

“As somebody new to the college and the community, what I thought was really amazing was the time capsule – hopes, dreams and fears for the future… that will stored in Energy House and will be opened as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2025,” she said.

Rancourt also pointed to the college’s newest facilities including the new health sciences building and the Energy House.

The health sciences building was transformed from a 1967 vocational building into a “state of the art facility that’s going to house the college’s Health Care Assistant and Practical Nursing programs among others,” said Rancourt.

The building includes three labs, five classrooms – four with videoconferencing capabilities, an amphitheatre with a capacity for 94 students, and one meeting room.

“These are community facilities,” she noted. “I think it’s important that members of the community know these facilities are there.”

She added that community groups interested in using the new facilities are welcome to contact the college.

The Energy House is something that the community has been waiting for, for a long time, Rancourt said.

Construction for the 807-square-metre building is nearly complete with a grand opening to be announced soon.

“Energy House… is the Centre of Excellence for Clean Technologies,” said Rancourt. “It’s a leading edge facility in Canada, which will allow the demonstration of clean energy mechanical systems.”

The training facility contains classrooms and labs that also visibly show the technology that went into the building the structure.

“When you walk through Energy House you can visibly see the technologies and the advancements in what we’re doing with clean energy,” explained Rancourt.

Looking to the future, Rancourt told of new programs that were started at NLC in the 2010/2011 school year and what programs are in the works.

The Wind Turbine Maintenance program that saw its first graduates this year, and the Geomatics program are off to a great start, she said, adding applied research programs are in the works also.

“We are just starting to look at applied research as an activity for the college,” she said. “It’s something that we will be able to work with industry, we’ll be able to work with the community, and we’re looking at a number of different potential projects that will be of benefit across the floor.”

Rancourt finished her presentation with an image of what she hopes the NLC campus will look like in the coming years, notably the addition of indoor walkways that will allow students to walk across campus without having to go outside.

“Essentially the concept is to take the activities that are currently dispersed across the campus in older buildings that have been retrofitted and adapted for programming and to consolidate them into a campus that is connected both physically and at the program level,” Rancourt explained. “All of the campus would be joined by pathways or corridors so that the students aren’t having to go outside.”

NLC is in the process of applying for funding to build the walkways.

“It’s a question of being more effective, but it’s also a question of being more efficient because if we can make this vision become a reality, we’ll be taking some 7,500 square-metres of space and collapsing them into about 5,000 square-metres of space, which will be much more energy efficient,” she said.

“As B.C.’s energy college we’re not just looking at programming, we’re also looking at our own environmental stewardship and decreasing our own energy footprint and becoming much more effective that way.”