Arthur Kroeger College Celebrates 20 Years

Students, faculty members, friends and alumni gathered at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in downtown Ottawa on November 15^th to mark the 20^th anniversary of Carleton’s Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs.

Established in 1999 with the goal of building the next generation of leaders, the college began as the home of the Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management (BPAPM) degree. It now houses BPAPM, as well as the Master of Political Management, Migration and Diaspora Studies, and the Bachelor of Global and International Studies (BGInS) degrees.

“Each program focuses on building leaders in different fields – leaders that are engaged citizens that can help us navigate the complexities of contemporary decision-making, and who work within and outside of Canada” said Mary Francoli, Associate Dean and Director of Kroeger College.

She also added these words about Arthur Kroeger, the College’s namesake: “Arthur’s career in the federal public service spanned more than three decades and saw him serve as Deputy Minister of six major departments. He was Companion of the Order of Canada, with honorary doctorates from the universities of Calgary and Western Ontario, and he also received the Public Service Outstanding Achievement Award. Sadly, Arthur Kroeger passed away in 2008, but his values, and the importance of leadership live on through the College, its current students, and its alumni.”

Since 1999, the flagship BPAPM program has graduated approximately 1,000 alumni. Many of them are in leadership positions in international, national and local organizations.

In a May 2019 Carleton University article, Professor Emerita Eileen Saunders described how they created Kroeger College’s first degree.

“We realized that nothing existed in Canada for what we were proposing,” said Saunders, who served as the College’s first director. ““We embraced the concept of a college to signal that the program would seek to offer both in-classroom education with extracurricular opportunities that would offer a different kind of learning experience.”

As the college continues to grow and mature, a new degree program will be offered in the fall of 2020, a master’s and graduate diploma in Migration and Diaspora Studies.

“We are very excited to be working towards the launch of our new MA and graduate diploma programs, the first program in Canada to combine migration studies and diaspora studies,” says James Casteel, the program’s director. “Bringing these two fields into dialogue with each other is a productive endeavour that empowers students to address the multinational and transnational ties and practices of migrant and diaspora communities, both historically and in our contemporary world.”