Durham College and UOIT need your feedback for future students.
Durham College and UOIT held an open house on Monday, October 20 to invite students, faculty and members of the public to share their input into what the campus will look like in years to come.
Andrea Bourrie, senior planning director with MMM Group, says this event connects the community to the project.
“People are excited about the opportunity for more development to be coming to north Oshawa,” she said. “For the students, they’re excited about the opportunity to have more space.”
The open house focused on several key areas, including transportation options to and from the campus.
“People are generally interested in helping to shape that and that’s a really great response for us to be able to have that kind of input.”
Gabriel Rodriguez, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student at UOIT who attended the open house, says he is willing to help with any problems.
“My biggest issue right now is getting to campus and transportation because I live about 25 minutes away by car and if I took the bus to school from Whitby it would take around an hour and a half if I catch it at the proper times,” said Rodriguez. “Transit needs to be fixed.”
Rodriguez says it’s not so much for him that he’s providing his two cents, it’s more for future students.
“I’ll be out of here by the time they finish it (the master plan),” he said. “For future students, you need to be able to effectively get to the campus using either public transport or bicycling if you can, without worrying about, ‘oh my class starts in two hours, will I make it in time.’”
Ron Chatterton, chair of the Durham College Board of Governors, says this is a powerful opportunity for anyone looking to provide input for the future of the school.
“The Windfield farmlands represents a wonderful opportunity of great open space that can be used for classrooms, open-space area, student free space area, sports areas, and also a meeting place for the campuses and the community,” said Chatterton. “It really is a great natural resource and to have that available to use for the future is a wonderful opportunity.”
Bourrie says the final master plan should be ready by summer of next year.
“Because we know students love online, we have created an online version of this workshop,” she said. “They (students) can essentially go through this entire workshop process, understand what was presented and there’s a questionnaire that people are filling out in hard copy today but you’re able to fill it out online and submit your answers via an interactive web app.”
The questionnaire can be found at www.campusmasterplan.ca/participate.
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