Carolyn Campbell, President and CEO at NorQuest College: We Are Who We Include

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Hello, I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, an ongoing conversation with leaders and innovators offering insights into creating a future-ready workforce.

Many of the US labor market challenges we discuss on this podcast are shared by Canada, including the need for more skilled workers that are available, particularly in healthcare, skilled trades, and technology.

We’re going to take a look today at how the higher education sector in Canada is responding to these problems with the help of Carolyn Campbell, president and CEO of NorQuest College in Edmonton, Alberta. Under her leadership, NorQuest has developed a reputation for accessibility, innovation, and student success with enrollment growing and revenues up over 50 percent.

Before coming to NorQuest, Carolyn served as deputy minister with the government of Alberta, a deputy city manager with the city of Edmonton, and Associate Dean of Executive Education at the University of Alberta. I met Carolyn earlier this year at the Ditchley Foundation-Lumina Foundation Summit on Reimagining Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century, and I’m delighted to welcome her today to the podcast.

Thanks for joining us today, Carolyn.

Carolyn Campbell
You’re most welcome, Van. It’s great to see you again. That was such a fabulous session that we had together in New York.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
It was wonderful. Well, to get started, Carolyn, can you give our listeners a picture of your institution, NorQuest? How big is it? Who does it serve, and what kind of programs does it offer?

Carolyn Campbell
Yeah, absolutely, Van. So NorQuest College is the largest comprehensive community college in the province of Alberta. We’re really well known across the country for healthcare. We have the largest l licensed practical nurse program in the province, one of the biggest in Canada. We have twenty thousand learners all in, and ten thousand full load equivalents. We’ve got forty-two programs, eight foundational programs, forty-two post-secondary programs. So not only are we huge in healthcare, but we have community support workers, social workers, childcare workers.

Essentially we say we’re powering the front lines of the economy, and we’ve had just a huge amount of growth. Transfer programs as well, too. We’ve seen a lot of growth in that area.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Not everybody who’s a listener on podcast understands the meaning of the word comprehensive. So could you just clarify that for listeners?

Carolyn Campbell
For sure. So within our mandate that means that we offer diplomas and certificates, as I mentioned, foundational programs. So NorQuest College would be the place that you would go if you’re looking to upskill, reskill, you wanna get new credentials, you wanna take something that’s perhaps two years or one year and just get into the workforce.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
And you’ve been describing NorQuest as playing a role in disrupting higher education for the greater social and economic good of Alberta. Where do you see traditional postsecondary model falling short, and what kinds of disruption are you enacting over there?

Carolyn Campbell
Disruption is such an interesting word and when I think about the word disruption, I really think about having people feel very welcome, removing barriers, ensuring that there’s lots of different pathways. You know, we’ll often see people that are coming to NorQuest who maybe there isn’t another option. It’s go to NorQuest or they might not go to post- secondary educational institutions at all.

With that said — and we talked about the meaning of a comprehensive community college —  you’re also talking about coming in and you can get started here and maybe transfer to other post-secondary programs. So it’s about being really, really meticulous on barrier-free. And what does that mean? And what kind of tutorial services do we provide? Wraparound services, mental health supports for students. We have ninety pathway programs at NorQuest College, which is outstanding. And almost all of those are transferable to other postsecondary programs. Nineteen of those are fully transferable.

I’d love to give you just a couple of like practical examples and maybe tell some stories of what it’s like and what that means really right within the college. So we have a very high Indigenous population, urban Indigenous and rural Indigenous population here in Edmonton. We’re the most northerly big city in Canada. One of the things that we did several years ago to remove barriers for Indigenous students was take away that $90 application fee for potential Indigenous students. We felt like it was so important for students to get academic upgrading and then find their way through the college through these transfer programs and then they can transfer somewhere else if they wish to but get a job as well. So you know what we did? We took we took that $90 administrative fee away.

We saw a huge uptick in Indigenous students. I think when I started — I should get this number exactly right — but I think when I started we had something like a hundred or a hundred and forty, maybe a hundred and eighty Indigenous students. Today NorQuest College has between 1,400 and 1,800 Indigenous students, depending on the term. So years ago, we would see lots of new students coming in, Indigenous students studying and academic upgrading.

One of the most beautiful days that I’ve had at the college was about two years ago I went into our Miya-pimâtisiwin Centre and I was sitting down and meeting with students. They come into our centre to just relax, and maybe do some beading or have something to eat. There were twelve of them around the circle, almost all wearing scrubs, and I asked them what they were taking. And it was nursing and unit clerk and pharmacy tech, but then mostly nursing. Then I asked them how they got to the college, and it was all academic upgrading. I think that is really, really important work.

I do think that that disrupts the system, but in the most positive of ways, and further to that we’ve also created some mobile labs that take the classroom out to students. So in a small town in Alberta we created a mobile lab to do a healthcare program and ensure that we’re taking our learning to the learners and being as barrier-free as we can.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Let me pull on your example of removing the $90 from the registration fee as a barrier of removal. Some listeners may say, well, that was the solution. I’m gonna remove the registration fee, but it sounded like there was more. It was a sense of inclusion, it was a sense of belonging that you created.

So it’s not just the act of removing that barrier, it was also creating a more comprehensive, welcoming environment that I detected from your example.

Carolyn Campbell
Van, we did a lot more than remove a fee. You’re so right. In 2021, we launched our new strategic plan, and it was called We Are Who We Include. And within that, we had several paths to include ensuring that we were creating an environment where Indigenous and all students felt more welcome. And so we made sure that we put lots of effort into our Miya-pimâtisiwin Centre, that we were working on things like how welcoming is the library, how welcoming are our student supports?

We have something called student advisors…people that students can reach out and call and get quite a lot of personal attention in finding their way into school. We have a Center for Growth and Harmony, that makes sure that students have somewhere to go if they need a person to talk to. Today we have a group, we started it about two or three years ago, and it’s called Walking Together. I’s the executive of NorQuest College and Indigenous leaders and employees who sit around a table and we talk about all the ways that we can ensure we continually create opportunities for Indigenous students.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Thank you for giving these specific examples. Especially in this moment in time where we have such a rise in mental health, behavioral health issues and isolation and loneliness, in a large institution like yours, you’ve managed to create the sense of belonging and the sense of place which seems difficult for a large institution to replicate. I wonder if you have some specific suggestions for leaders who run big, especially public, institutions. What are the levers that they can use to create that kind of culture?

Carolyn Campbell
I think first of all, absolutely tone at the top, right? So I think our from right from our board onward we talk about inclusiveness, but the way we think about inclusiveness is this is about everybody. Like, are high school students feeling more included at NorQuest? Are our students who have been in the workforce — maybe they’re thirty-eight, forty years old — feeling like they would be included? So I think number one, it’s ensuring that you’ve got that on the agenda at the board level and then within executive and that you’re continually reevaluating and looking at what it means.

I think part of what it means as well is career building, getting people out into the workforce, making sure the labor market needs are met in our province. Over 90 percent of our grads stay in Alberta and fill that labor market need. Alberta is the fastest growing province in the country as well, so just huge growth in Alberta. Edmonton in particular is seen as a very affordable city, so we have a lot of people coming here. It’s important that those people feel like they can come to post-secondary and NorQuest in particular, if you want to come through quickly and get a job, and it’s making a huge impact.

NorQuest’s impact on GDP in our region alone is $922.7 million in added income and you know, thousands and thousands of jobs. So I think, from an executive perspective, it’s what does it mean to your organization?  Providing education is something that is so core to our purpose. We continually talk about our purpose. Our purpose is to transform lives, and by doing that, we transform families and we transform communities. Well, not only is that so important and vital for the social fabric of our region, but it is also so for the economic fabric.

We continually bringing in experts from outside the organization to talk to us. We bring in chief economists. We have a person in our on our staff who does an incredible job with an environmental scan and speaks to our board and our executive on a regular basis. So I think it’s like, how do you do that zoom out and that zoom in and if you’re very precise and intentional about being inclusive and making a difference, then I think that that should be on your agenda.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
What good advice. Well, I was so excited to see my very bright blue book, WorkforceRx, sitting on your shelf right behind you, when we got onto this recording. I would love to get your take on the relationship between higher education and employers and how both parties can do a better job co-designing training and talent pipelines.

Carolyn Campbell
Yeah, and there’s so much to learn from your book and thank you for that. You know, I think there’s a few things I’ll just I’ll just start with. What I took away is you talk a lot about networks. I’m coming in as the chair of something called Colleges and Institutes Canada. That’s all of the colleges, polytechnic institutes and CEGEPs in the country. I think that in doing that co-design and working with industry, you know, starting with networks across the country and ensuring we’re learning from one another. You know, we’ve got a Prime Minister who’s talking about “Building Canada” right now. And so how does the college system, college institute, CEGEP system ensure that we’re front and center on that agenda? And it’s a human resource agenda as well, right? We talked about zooming out and zooming in. So then coming back in for co design.

You also talk about ecosystems in your book and it made me think of our workforce advisory council that we have. It was set up with CEOs across our region, whether it’s airport or health care or community support or construction, etc. These are all fields that are germane to the college and the work that we’re doing here. We have these great thinkers and leaders and they’re so dynamic and they’re just sparkling in the room. And they are able to sort of distill for us what’s happening within our broader economic ecosystem and help us with our program design. We have program advisory committees as well for all of our programs, but having the big workforce advisory council makes a huge difference. The last one we had, we did a deep dive into artificial intelligence and defense.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Very important relevant topics for the day. Now, it’s been mentioned that you’ve grown NorQuest enrollment substantially under your watch. Tell us what the secret sauce is. Is it is it just the theme of We Are Who We Include, or do you also have set of programming priorities?

Carolyn Campbell
Definitely programming priorities as well. NorQuest’s answer to the labor market needs is strong and powerful. We have been persuasive in sharing with — whether it’s high school counselors, whether it’s our community writ large, whether it’s communities of people who might not otherwise be thinking of post-secondary education, or folks that already have other degrees — and they’re saying, you know what, I’d like to come and get a job.

There’s been very, very important growth in health care. I was looking at a report today. I think over the past ten years in Alberta, enrollment trends in health care have been along the lines of women 43 percent, men 57 percent, and this is by full load equivalent, Indigenous folks going into healthcare education 127%, and folks aged 35 to 44, 117%. Now, this is the market that NorQuest is working to attract, and we’ve been very effective in doing so.

Certainly we’ve seen an increase in international students, but what’s interesting is the domestic increase as well at NorQuest, 79% in ten years. Another area where we’ve seen a lot of growth is university transfer. We created a program — and you were talking about co-design — this is a prime example of that. We created a program with the Alberta Professional Engineers and Geologists Association and the University of Alberta to transfer through engineering. So students can come into NorQuest and take one year of engineering here, and provided they get the appropriate GPA, they can automatically transfer into the second year at the U of A.

When you think about our growth, another area that’s really interesting is our Indigenous career center. It meets your definition, I think, as well, of an ecosystem wherein industry and government and post-secondary are working together. We have a partnership with the province of Alberta and with several construction groups to help Indigenous people come in and get new get access to their resumes, to interviews, to employer connections, and we’ve seen great growth there.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
These all amazing examples of what NorQuest is doing well. You briefly mentioned that newcomers to Canada actually is a growing share of your student population. I’m so curious about that. What are the most significant barriers for those students when they try to translate their credentials and experience into education, higher education as well as to the workforce?

Carolyn Campbell
International students has certainly been an area of growth across Canada. It’s a bit less so now, though. I’m sure you’re aware of the reduction in international students across the country. With that though, we’ve offered a new program on pre-trades, and it helps people that are new to the country come in and get a taste of what it might be like to work in the trades.

We also see internationally educated nurses coming. We just finished convocation, Van, and had the internationally educated nurses cross the stage and the cheers for them…it was just really exciting to see. This was a beautiful story that I think you told in your book in the introduction section about what it’s like to come from another country and to get settled and find a career.

And NorQuest is doing an outstanding job of ensuring that when people are new to Canada, they’re getting the language training that they need, the settlement services that they need, access to additional post-secondary education, or they can get access to workforce programs that will almost guarantee people a job. Like as I said, 97% of people stay in Alberta, but we have a huge employment rate as well. I believe it is 94 percent of our graduates get a job.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Those are amazing statistics. I’m so impressed with the work that your institution has done to support the learners. It’s very learner-centered, clearly. So for the workforce development and higher education administrators listening to this conversation, what’s the one shift in mindset or practice you’d most want them to take away from your approach at NorQuest?

Carolyn Campbell
I would say it’s for sure lifelong learning. How do you translate the strategy into execution around lifelong learning? It’s about staying so close to your students. I wanna tell you a story about our president’s medal winner this year. That’s the one student who we pick to shine a light on at our convocation ceremonies, who is an example of how we conceptualize lifelong learning and continually working on your skills. We told this  student’s story at convocation. He was bullied in school, went on and had a really tough time with drugs and homelessness. He found himself at NorQuest College taking our social work program. He’s a little bit older student and has completely turned his life around. It was beautiful to see what he did on campus as well in order to draw in more students. He created a little coffee group and drew more students and more students to him and to the value of a comprehensive community college education.

So, I think from a mindset perspective, it’s so important for us to hold on to hope. There’s a lot of talk in the world right now about what divides us and I think education and being purposeful about how we think about each and every life and what that means to their families…it’s something that we hold close at the college. Every time we do an engagement survey it comes back to us that our staff all hold that very close. Keep the student in all of your conversations and you’ll do really well.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Clearly the culture at NorQuest flows from the top. So, congratulations as the leader. Let me close by asking you what makes you most optimistic about the future of higher education over the next decade.

Carolyn Campbell
You’re asking at such a great time because it was a week ago we had convocation. We had four ceremonies and we had 2,200 people across the stage, and all of us were saying we have never seen so much joy in the room. There was an optimism that was spread, not just amongst leaders and board members and faculty, but it was cascading throughout convocation. Students cheering for one another. We had a student who crossed the stage who was sixty-nine years old, part of our early childhood diploma, and if that doesn’t make you optimistic, I don’t know what does. People — no matter what stage of your life you’re in — contributing to the workforce, contributing to the economy, but really thinking about your own life and what that means for you, what your own “why” is,

We could all feel it in the room, and I think we’ll be buoyed about it and we can’t wait to start the new school year.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Thank you so much, Carolyn, for reinforcing the value of higher education and the future of higher education, and thanks for being with us today.

Carolyn Campbell
You’re most welcome. It’s great to see you, Van.

Van Ton-Quinlivan
Likewise. I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future focused workforce in the nation.