ATHABASCA — Just weeks after being appointed as the new chair of the Athabasca University (AU) Board of Governors, Byron Nelson got the grand tour of the campus and the Athabasca area by a couple of longtime residents.
Nelson was in town June 21 and was able to see both the AU campus and Tim Byrne Centre, as well as the town by Town of Athabasca mayor Rob Balay and Athabasca County reeve Brian Hall, including lunch at the Athabasca Golf and Country Club.
“I was very impressed; certainly, I had not seen the university before but I was impressed with the older traditional building very much,” Nelson said in a June 24 interview. “I’m not a scientist, but the lab space was unbelievable and the building itself was beautiful.”
He admitted he wasn’t sure what to expect but it wasn’t an award-winning LEED-certified building in the Academic Research Centre (ARC) or the well-maintained grounds.
“I was actually blown away by how nice the campus area is considering that there have never been classrooms or anything there,” said Nelson. "There were students from (Northern Lakes) College when we were there, but I was blown away with how nice that was.”
He noted the Athabasca Regional Multiplex and Muskeg Creek Trails, as well as the golf course as places he’d like to come back to explore more.
“I regretted not having my golf clubs as soon as I saw the golf course. It was very, very nice,” Nelson said. “The good thing about Athabasca is it makes, at least with myself, it left me with the impression that a person wants to come back. I want to come back to golf, and I want to come back and walk those trails.”
It was something Hall noticed too.
“I sensed that he was impressed from his reactions,” Hall said in a June 26 interview. “I suppose he was impressed with the quality of the development around the campus, and certainly with the campus itself. To walk the campus and see the scale of the infrastructure and the vast empty parking lots tells a better story than any telephone conversation.”
Nelson has at the very least, met virtually with all the other members of the Board of Governors and said there has been discussion about having a summer meeting.
“There are a lot of newer members on the board including the ones that are sort of automatics like the student president and the grad student president … but there's a number of recent appointments to the board in 2022," he said. “We could have as much as a meet-and-greet meeting, but we haven't talked about a date.”
This meet-and-greet, however, made the mayor and reeve very hopeful.
“After the conversation, I feel much more confident that Chair Nelson understands the goals of the community and the goals of the university are not at odds with each other,” Hall said.
Balay agreed in a June 24 interview.
“We toured the facilities, we got to see all the buildings (and) I think it really gave him a clearer perspective,” he said. “Everything is up in the air until we see what Athabasca University comes forward with June 30 as far as the plan that the minister was asking for. After that we will know where we go from there as far as our continued lobbying efforts.”
Nelson didn’t want to breach the subject of the June 30 deadline for AU to submit a plan to Minister of Advanced Education Demetrios Nicolaides who was present in Athabasca during a town hall meeting with Premier Jason Kenney March 24. Both announced then they expected a plan from AU reversing their near virtual plan and bringing jobs back to the Athabasca campus by the end of June.
“We can talk after June 30 certainly. I'm sure I'll be talking to a lot of people then,” said Nelson.
“I think our collective hope is that AU administration provides a plan and not just a response or a rebuttal,” Hall said noting he knows more AU staff got a letter saying they were to work from home as recently as a week earlier.
