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Northwest B.C. college draws more than 40 international students

Global recruitment efforts by Northwest Community College seem to have been successful…
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NWCC ran a Business Field School program this summer with five domestic students and one student from India, one from the Philippines. In the back row are students Shubham Sood, Manpreet Singh, Liam Hollington, and in front is Sandra Hadjirul, Rajwinder Kaur, Yashica Gill, Navdeep Sahota. Standing on the right is instructor Annette Sorensen.

There are 45 international students coming to Northern B.C. to attend Northwest Community College this fall, most at the Terrace campus and three going to Prince Rupert.

Those students are finding accommodations in dorms, homestay and rental accommodations, said college spokesperson Sarah Zimmerman.

“We are so pleased with the warm welcome people in the community have given,” she said, adding that people have offered to host students in their homes, and to help them find part-time work.

Zimmerman said most of the international students are enrolling in the business program and the college is offering evening courses for business because of that.

Besides the 45 enrolled, another 20 students are coming from Mexico for a one-month program in English as a Second Language (ESL).

Zimmerman says that recruiting students from other countries will help the school offer more programs for domestic students. She cited the business marketing program which ran this summer with seven students, five domestic and two international.

NWCC expanded its international program in 2016, hiring recruiter Derek Lemieux with the goal of increasing its international population, which was 12 that year.

The aim was to recruit 40 by this September, which it did, and just last spring it devoted a specific category of the budget to recruit more. That amount was $580,000, with a total $390,000 from a provincial grant and the other $190,000 from college contracts.