Southeast College closing Moosomin campus
March 10, 2025, 2:24 pm
Kara Kinna
Southeast College is closing its Moosomin campus. The college announced last week that it would not be renewing its lease at their location on Park Avenue in Moosomin, and will be closing the Moosomin campus at the end of June.
The electrical program that the college offers out of Moosomin will be moved to the campus Whitewood.
Despite meetings with businesses, industry, the town and economic development committee over the years to connect the college with major employers in the region and to come up with ideas for various course offerings that might work in the area, the college cites a lack of student demand and economic challenges as their reason for closing the Moosomin campus, which has seen few to no course offerings the last few years other than the electrical program.
“Over the past two years, the Moosomin campus has been largely vacant, with the space being used for only 18 weeks each year for the electrician program. The last staffed position at the campus was a part-time One-Stop Associate, and since the summer of 2023, the campus has been staffed on an as-needed casual basis,” the college said in a release last week.
“The college will continue to offer part-time Early Childhood Education (ECE), English as an Additional Language (EAL), and various business and industry training classes in Moosomin, utilizing rental and lease agreements where applicable. We will continue to explore full time post-secondary programs within the community and surrounding area.”
“The combination of economic challenges and declining student demand is the main reason for the change,” says Interim President and CEO Jody Holzmiller.
The World-Spectator interviewed Holzmiller about the decision last week. Following are her comments:
Is the campus in Moosomin closing?
We are in fact not renewing our lease, and it’s due at the end of June. The intent is for the college to continue doing programs in Moosomin and surrounding area and rent on an as-needed basis.
Is there any intention down the road to reopen a campus in Moosomin?
Absolutely, we are always open to wherever our programming needs are. It’s part of our mandate, to provide education in rural Saskatchewan. If we find the need for another full-time program, or some part-time programming, which we continue to do. We continue to offer our part time programning, our EAL programming, and of course this winter we started the electrical program there again. But we’ve had declining enrolment in electrical, so we just need to figure out if there is a demand for a full time program, and what is that program. We will work out the logistics from there.
What was the decision to close the campus based on?
We’ve had declining enrolment in our adult basic education program since the fall of 2022. In the fall of 2022, the enrolments dwindled. We amalgamated Moosomin and Whitewood and that programming happened at the Whitewood campus. In reality, it is a business decision. Our base funding has not increased in 12-13 years, and to have a facility sit empty for the majority of a programming year, as a taxpayer, it’s not the best use of our resources. It was a very big decision, one that did not take lightly. It’s never an easy decision when we have to give up space. Unfortunately at this point in time, it was a decision that we had to make for the college.
Moosomin is the third largest centre in the area that you serve, and it has more people within 100 kilometers than Estevan. It’s one of the fastest growing communities in the province. We’ve seen significant business expansion and we have one of the biggest mines in the world down the road, as well as major manufacturing industries and it’s also a health care centre. It’s also two hours away from Regina and the other Southeast College campuses of Estevan and Weyburn. Why would you be choosing now to close a campus in Moosomin rather then reaching out to some of those industries and sitting down with them and finding ways to add additional courses? And we know that some of those industries have reached out to the college as well asking for additional courses, like Vaderstad for example.
We have had conversations with Vaderstad. There’s a few factors at play. We have not been fully staffed in our strategic development area, we are almost there now. Those are the folks that are the boots on the ground in communities, to talk to business and industry. I appreciate that Moosomin is a fast growing centre, and I’m not sure if it’s a lack of communication from our side, or what it might be, but we have not seen an uptake in programming at that campus. That’s part of the decision, and also it’s based on funding.
What efforts has the college made to engage industries like Vaderstad and Nutrien, and also businesses like implement dealers who have been asking for mechanics courses. Can you go over what you have done in the past decade with those industries and businesses.
We have had community meetings. I was out there a couple years ago and presented to the Chamber. We did have a business consultant out in that area, unfortunately that’s a very difficult position to staff, but we are back to two business consultants, one in Weyburn and one in Estevan, and one is relatively new, but once they get their feet under them, both of them will be expanding their areas to cover Moosomin and surrounding area. It’s not an excuse, but we have had an immense amount of turnover at our college and specifically at the presidency CEO level. It takes time to regain ground. It takes some time to get back to those meetings and those priorities and back out into the communities.
Do you think a decision like this should be made while there is no CEO in place?
I’m the intern CEO. It’s a decision that wasn’t taken lightly, but we also can’t take budgets lightly. We have to make our budget work, and we were holding space there that was very underutlilized and a significant expense to the college.
At one time the college offered lots of courses at the Moosomin campus—first year university courses, an office ed course, ESL courses, heavy equipment operator, H2S alive, and I know the community had to fight to keep the electrical program a few years ago. We’ve seen a slow slide in those courses, with more and more of them being dropped from the Moosomin area.
Why?
Not just Moosomin. We don’t offer university anywhere throughout the region anymore. We have also seen a decline in activity in our Assiniboine campus, so it’s not just Moosomin. And ABE has dwindled so we’ve amalgamated that program. We still do EAL which we will continue to do, and the safety classes, we do a good chunk of those off-site anyway, so we will continue that work and rent a space as needed.
I’m looking at the list of courses being offered in Estevan and they fit almost everything we do in Moosomin. You are offering everything from welding to pluming and pipefitting to health care courses, and Moosomin is an industry and health care centre. Have you ever considered offering those courses in Mooosmin in addition to Estevan? It appears that the majority of courses are out of Estevan right now.
Our programming splits between Estevan, Weyburn, we do a lot of adult based education on First Nations, and when there’s a need for vocational technical programs on a First Nation, we will go there to do that as well. Welding, that’s a tricky one, it requires very specific equipment and labs. I know that hope to have some conversations with the Moosomin high school, to see if there’s potential, I believe they have a welding lab. It would mean shared space because we obviously don’t have the resources to set up our own welding lab.
The health care programs that don’t require an extensive amount of lab equipment, we could certainly consider it. We run CCA out of the Whitewood campus and that has been a successful program for as long as I’ve been at the college, so we might have to look at something different because those two communities are very close and I’m not sure we could get enough to fill two programs. It’s a matter of us getting back out there, into the community. Getting a plan in place, and having some stability here that can see that plan through.
Is the provincial government aware of this decision?
My contact at ministry reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and asked for the information that the decision was based on and he intended to share that with our minister. That’s an assumption, but I think it’s a safe one.
So the minister of advanced education is aware of it?
I’m assuming but I can’t say 100 per cent.
Who made the decision? Was it a board decision?
It’s operational, the decision was made at the executive management level, and then provided to the board for information.
There have been local business groups and businesses reaching out to the college asking for more programming to this area and we’ve heard from local tradespeople who are upset about this campus closing because they hire apprentices from the electrical program, and people used to hire employees from the office education program, as well as other programs that have been offered in the past. Is that something the college would look at doing in the future is engaging some of these groups to come up with some ideas to offer some more courses in this area?
Absolutely, we would be open. I’m currently in the interim role, but it doesn’t stop us from getting out there to have some community meetings and figure out where that demand might be, and start to look at some full-time programming again.
When you came to the Moosomin Chamber meeting about a year and a half ago, someone asked about a meeting with Vaderstad who had reached out looking for courses, and your response at the Chamber meeting was that the college had failed to follow up on that request from Vaderstad. Did you actually sit down with Vaderstad?
We sat down with Vaderstad after that Chamber meeting. I am not sure where things went after that.
If you have more business consultants in place, will that change moving forward?
Part of the decision item was that the strategic development team starts to focus on Moosomin and surrounding regions now that the second consultant has been here and on board for a bit, and has her feet under her. So it’s definitely in the plan.
We have a medical residency program in Moosomin right now that is excelling. Has the college looked at programs like that—programs that are working—as an example the college could emulate?
No I don’t think we have at this point. Definitely something that we need to do.
We have seen over the years people asking for courses, yet we’ve seen a slow cutback of courses specifically in Moosomin and more of a focus in Whitewood and Estevan. But you are saying there is declining enrollment. Do you think there something the college is doing that could be improved upon or do you think there is actually a lack of interest in courses?
I think it’s a combination of all of those things. It’s a struggle to find the right program and in the smaller communities to get the enrolment. We are finding the exact same problem in Assiniboine in the other corner of our region. It’s very difficult to get enrolment in programs. Most definitely, we can do better as a college, I’m certain of that. And we will do better as a college, because it’s our mandate to serve rural Saskatchewan and it’s part of our region. We will commit to doing better, we just need to sit down with the community and figure out exactly what those needs are and get a plan in place and move forward with it.
You just opened a reconciliation centre in Weyburn. Moosomin has a lot of Indigenous engagement. People from the First Nations are in town a lot for shopping and services and Moosomin is closer than Weyburn to any of the First Nations. Why was the decision made to open something like that in Weyburn and not in Moosomin?
Because we aren’t close to the First Nations, and because we don’t have a significant population of First Nations very close to Weyburn, or a significant student population of First Nations, we chose to put it in Weyburn as a start of the education process for staff and students here. The intent is to have more than one in the future, but this was the starting point for those reasons.
What happens moving forward now for the Moosomin area?
The first step will be to get our college out there to have conversations with your ecdev and council, and mayor, and figure out what it is they believe is needed for programming. The second piece is to get our strategic team out there working with the mine and Vaderstad to try to pick up and rebuild those relationships, and the third step is once that information is gathered, we get our program folks working on a plan, and hopefully have a full-time program or even some part-time post secondary programming back in your the community.
I felt a bit defeated when I talked to the mayor on Friday. The first words out of his mouth are ‘your pulling out of our town.’ And I get it. We held space there for quite some time. We will continue to do programming, and I recognize that not holding space does have an impact on your community, but when I spoke with the landlord and conveyed the message, I thought it was very clear that I hoped it could be as positive as possible, but it will take some time for folks to recognize that we are still going to do programming.
Will you be actively looking for some space? Have you thought about reaching out to groups like the Community Builders Alliance?
That would be a step post-program determination. All of our programs are brokered, so our space would have to be approved by Saskatchewan Polytechnic. It’s part of the process when we identify what programming we need out there. And if it is full-time, we would be securing space. It depends on the program, I’m not sure that we would commit to a long-term lease again, we might commit to a short-term lease that satisfies the length of the program, and see what enrolments are like for the next year and carry on from there.
If declining enrollment is an issue across the board, are there similar fates facing the Weyburn and Estevan campuses as well?
We have definitely noticed a decline in enrolment across the region, not just in Southeast College but across the system. The other piece of the puzzle that has impacted enrolment are the new regulations surrounding the post-graduate work permit. That has had a big impact on our international students. So the number of people that are eligible for the post graduate program has been altered. In all honesty right now, Canada isn’t the best nation for international students, so that’s going to take some time to bounce back as-well.
