An unprecedented collaboration between Ottawa’s four post-secondary institutions is underway. Algonquin College, Carleton University, collège La Cité and the University of Ottawa are partners in the Education City initiative, which will see the schools work together to develop more integrated “stackable” academic programs and shared research shops to help find solutions to challenges faced by businesses, non-profits and governments.

In late August, under the Education City banner, the four institutions formally launched the David C. Onley Initiative for Employment and Enterprise Development, which is aimed at developing knowledge, resources and tools to help students with disabilities advance their careers. Supported by $5 million over two years from Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MCTU), the Onley Initiative will examine factors contributing to lower rates of employment among students with disabilities and strive to boost them by engaging industry, building awareness, fostering entrepreneurial endeavours and developing employment supports in post-secondary institutions.

The four post-secondary presidents collaborating on Education City, whose executive lead is former Carleton interim president Alastair Summerlee, attended the launch of the Onley Initiative and met in September at collège La Cité’s new La Place facility, a high-tech centre for innovative thinking and design. They will also attend the upcoming official opening of the University of Ottawa’s new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) complex and the openings of Carleton’s new Health Sciences Building and ARISE (Advanced Research and Innovation in Smart Environments) facility.

Education City, a bilingual pilot project is supported by $800,000 over two years from the Government of Ontario, is included in Carleton’s Strategic Mandate Agreement with the MCTU. It will explore other opportunities for joint activities among the universities and colleges, and opportunities for enhanced engagement with the newly formed Indigenous Institutions across the province. The initiative’s ultimate aim is to create more personalized learning opportunities for students and provide them with the skills and experience they need to meet the workforce demands of the National Capital Region and Ottawa Valley. At the same time, it will create a “living lab” where post-secondary institutions can demonstrate the value of partnering — with one another and with external organizations, such as the economic development agency Invest Ottawa — to develop new ways to address common goals.

Education City was developed during the process that led to the current Strategic Mandate Agreement for Ontario universities and colleges in 2017. An advisory group, established by the four partners, will coordinate and manage the initiative and report on the outcomes to all stakeholders, including faculty and students, government, the business community, and Indigenous communities. Later in the fall, a co-creative summit will be hosted by collège La Cité to explore ways that faculty, staff and students from the four institutions, as well as organizations and businesses in the community, can work together to improve flexible pathways and ways of learning, and employability for our students.

Education City is looking to work collaboratively in six areas:

  1. Increasing opportunities for students to create more individualized programming, including access to a wider array of courses at both the colleges and universities in the city;
  2. Developing research shops in the community where businesses, government and not-for-profit organizations can seek help from multi-institutional teams of faculty and students to solve key problems;
  3. Exploring ways to interact with and support the development of the Indigenous Institutions that have been established across the province to improve access to post-secondary education for Indigenous students;
  4. Improving opportunities for students with disabilities to develop the skills they need to enhance their entrepreneurial and employability skills, and to carry out research with business partners to help them learn how to make appropriate accommodations in the workplace;
  5. Exploring ways for the institutions to collaborate and work together on administrative services, including opportunities to support disaster recovery strategies among the institutions — the possibilities include, for example, shared efforts in communications, cybersecurity, data storage and protection, human resources, library resources, and physical plant planning;
  6. Branding Ottawa as a destination city for education and supporting international students upon their arrival in Canada.