Grant MacEwan Community College Oral History

There was no period of time when I was with the college that we weren’t always planning another expansion someplace. I think our largest and biggest achievement was the City Centre Campus. Those were the Don Getty years as premier, and Gerry Kelly was the president. In achieving – only the two of us that were there – we worked hard on planning and building the bricks and sticks – Andi Pallas & Bruce Vincent 

I’m really just pleased with the success we had right in the division. The collaboration amongst the different programs. They worked well together. We had a tremendous explosion of programs at the time because the college philosophy was to meet the need of the community at the time, and this is what we did – Gerri Nakonechny

My final recital was quite an achievement because it was an accumulation of all my studies all put into this one hour of music that I had arranged and programmed and rehearsed and publicized. It was a preview for what life as a working musician, a solo artist would be like – Julie Mahendran

Once we got the Phys. ed. program, we very quickly became the number one choice for Phys. ed. students in the Edmonton area. Anybody who had parents that recognized a smaller college was a better place to start – I taught many of my own classmates’ kids at MacEwan – Mark Lund

The UT science program was offered out of Mill Woods. The campus wasn't designed for a science program. They had equipped a nice lab, but they didn't have enough instructor space. So, they brought in portables that were basically out in the parking lot of the campus. That’s where the office for the UT Science Program was and Arts. That's where all the instructors were – Rick Lewis

Grant MacEwan was all about students. Students came first. So for a student, what MacEwan was all about, of course, was their programs, their great instructors, and of course, their classmates. Easy to overlook sometimes by busy presidents, what happened at the chalk face, the classroom, the program  - that is the heart and engine of the College – Gerry Kelly

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