Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Squamish university on track

Andrew Mitchell checks in with David Strangway, president of Quest University, Canada's first private, non-profit and secular university.

In September 2007, Quest University in Squamish will open its doors to its first freshman class of students.

Quest is unique as Canada’s first private secular and non-profit university, receiving no public financing. It was made possible through private donations, the sale of real estate, as well as some supportive zoning from the District of Squamish and the Sea to Sky University Act passed by the provincial government.

In addition to being a unique model for post-secondary education, Quest also offers a unique program that will be taught with a different kind of methodology — instead of the traditional semester system Quest is introducing an intensive block system where entire courses are taught in a matter of weeks. Students will also receive a balanced education in their first two years, taking many different subjects, before specializing in years three and four.

Other features of Quest include smaller class sizes, and a recreation department that offers athletic scholarships and encourages both team and individual sports.

Quest is the personal vision of Dr. David Strangway, a former professor who served as the president of UBC for 12 years.

Pique recently spoke to Dr. Strangway to find out how Quest is progressing.

Pique: I’ve been by the site and it seems like everything is on track to open in September of 2007. Is everything going to plan?

Dr. David Strangway: I’m happy to say everything is going according to plan. We still have lots of things left to do. Construction is underway on most of the facilities, and the construction on the residence block is expected to start soon. It should all be finished by mid-2007, although maybe some resident buildings will be open for occupancy before that.

On the staffing side we’ve hired a number of really keen officers that are responsible for helping things move ahead, and on the faculty side we’ve just recruited our first seven faculty members which we’re very excited about.

Pique: So you’re reaching all of the milestones you’ve set?

DS: In some cases we’re further along that we would have hoped for, in other cases we’re seeing slowdowns and so on.

On the construction side, the cost of materials is rising pretty fast, and that’s something we have to keep monitoring and managing. On the faculty side, we advertised the positions and received 600 applications from around the world. We picked the first seven that jumped out and made offers that were accepted, which is much better than we could have hoped for. Overall I’d say we’re happy.

Pique: Has there been a lot of interest or advance registration? What kind of student is the school attracting?

DS: From students, I would say we have inquiries from several thousand students by now which is great to see, but of course the next step is turning inquires into applications. There are the decisions those students still have to make before they decide to come to us, and we’re still months away from taking applications.

Right now we’re very encouraged by the interest in what we’re doing. They can see we’re very different than a traditional university and how we’ve been able to focus on people who are interested in the outdoors, like skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, and those kinds of things.

We are looking to have160 students first year, and grow in stages fairly quickly to 640 students. We intend to stay small.

Pique : And where is this interest coming from?

DS : We’re getting inquiries from all over. We’ve seen a lot from the U.S., but also a lot from across Canada. There’s been a significant number from outside the country and the U.S. as well.

I don’t know what the breakdown is off the top of my head, but there does seem to be a lot of interest from all over. But as I said turning interest into applications is still some time away. We won’t know what our student body will look like for a while yet.

Pique : A lot of attention is given to the fact that this will be Canada’s first private university. Why was it important to be private?

DS : I guess there were several reasons, and the first is that it is very difficult (in the public university system) to have the commitment we have to undergrad students, and to what we call integrated learning. We plan to cross discipline boundaries, while keeping class sizes small at 20 students and no more.

In the public university system nobody can offer those kinds of small classes, even for the upper level students in graduate programs.

We’re also using the block system, where students take one course really intensively over three weeks. And students have to participate, with one faculty and 20 students you can’t sit at the back of a class, like you might with class of 500 where you’re not learning anything. The student is very much part of the process, is involved in the discussion, and when they go home at night they will have to do some research on their own, through the Internet or course materials, and come back in the next day ready to join the conversation. A lot of people are interested in that aspect of the school.

Pique : Is the block system modeled after any specific programs that are already out there, maybe in the U.S. or Europe?

DS : It’s not modeled so much after Europe, because they don’t have the luxury of small classes there either. If anything it’s modeled on some smaller colleges in the U.S. that produce people to go on to post-graduate studies or on to professions. It’s not totally unique to the U.S., but they have strong examples like Reed College, Overland, William and Mary.

The small, focused teaching institution we’ve created is still pretty unique for North America.

Pique : One of the appeals seems to be the fact that your Foundation students will do a little of everything — English, math, science — instead of starting to specialize right away.

DS : That’s part of it, but the other part is that students will spend three hours a day, five days a week on one subject for three weeks. Students have to be really engaged. They’ll be doing projects, reporting back on what they’ve learned. It’s really more of a lab or a tutorial than a lecturing environment where students are told one thing and then go reproduce it. The instructor may give a lecture on a short topic, but the focus is on participation, and getting students to think about the topics for themselves.

Pique : How portable are these blocks for students wishing to go on to other universities or graduate schools?

DS : In terms of grad schools, this is the best kind of undergraduate program out there for students that are going to go on with their education afterwards. There has been lots of interest from other universities and grad schools across the country and in other countries as well because this kind of integrated education is important to them. They want students who know science, let’s say, but also can write well, and maybe speak another language.

As for transferring credits, we’ll have to review that on a case-by-case basis. For example, our students will be taking an intense course in English for three weeks instead of twice a week for a semester, so it should be transferable in terms of class hours but we’ll have to see. Of course, we’re very small so it won’t be hard to review anything on a case-by-case basis.

Pique : I’ve heard that you are preparing to offer athletic scholarships as well. What is the scope of the school’s athletic aspirations?

DS : They’re both short term and long term. We’ve nearly completed our rec building, and it will have squash courts, a NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) standard basketball and volleyball court. Our outdoor fields are almost ready to go and will be used for soccer and maybe some other things. There are tennis courts.

Our main intercollegiate sports will be basketball and soccer, once we’re organized enough to put together teams.

Pique : Do you know what league your teams would be able to compete in?

DS : We’re not certain, we have to do some research on that. You can’t get into certain leagues unless you’re a certain size or have a certain number of students. Whether we can get into a league immediately or will have to wait until we get to critical mass is a good question that I don’t have an answer for. We are looking into it.

Pique : And you do intend to give athletic scholarships?

DS : We intend to, yes. There are a lot of sports here, and a lot of sports in the region are more individual than team sports, like alpine skiing and snowboarding, windsurfing, rock climbing, mountain biking, you name it, so I think we’ll see all kinds of interests represented as well as more traditional sports.

Pique : Obviously construction provides employment is Squamish, but what are some of the other benefits to the community of hosting a university?

DS : I think the community is very pleased to have us, or my perception is that they’re pleased to have us, because we represent a change in the larger outlook of what this town is. Squamish has had, and will continue to have, an interest in forestry and forestry-related industries, but bringing a university to a small town has a big impact. There’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.

Pique : Will there be an opportunity for members of the community to become directly involved in the university, maybe take a few courses and that kind of thing?

DS : Yes, there probably will be an opportunity for that down the road. As a private university we will need students to pay their fees, or to be getting assistance from scholarships, of which we have quite a bit on the table as well, before we can address that. We would like to provide some access to the community, but we need a core group of people first to make sure this place functions.

Pique : This has been a long project for you. Is it exciting to see it come together?

DS : It’s very exciting. The idea first occurred to me in 1997, but the serious work didn’t begin until 2000 or so. So it’s been a long birthing period. But there were a lot of issues that had to be addressed, a lot of discussions about the value of the land we needed to have, whether we could get market housing sold — just a lot of things to do.

But the community has been great, and we’ve picked a great location to build. We’re very excited.



Comments