President’s Message
Innovation in Education for Canada
It is an honour for me to preside over the development of a young, dynamic, and innovative university hosting a variety of practitioner oriented degree and diploma programs, graduate level and undergraduate level, offered in a unique online/blended program format.
It is a source of great pride for me that Yorkville University’s Faculty of Behavioural Science, offering a Master of Arts program in Counselling Psychology, is among the first of its kind in Canada, a 48 credit hour masters degree program allowing students the flexibility to complete as many as 42 credits online in addition to completing a six credit hands-on practicum in a community based mental health setting.
The RCC Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Engineering Technology and Computing, our undergraduate division, offers both diploma and degree programs geared to both the hard and soft skills necessary for employment success in today’s exciting cutting-edge field’s of technology for which Canadian industry is internationally renowned. Another of our innovations is that students holding college diplomas in some areas of technology can ‘top-up’ to a bachelors degree on a convenient part-time basis with classes held evenings in downtown Toronto.
Some programs are offered in-class while others have significant online components which didn’t exist in my student days. Back then, anyone wanting to study clinical or counselling psychology, for example, had available to them the single choice of giving up the routine of their daily life and relocating to a university town and undertake full time study.
In those days, parents with financial and care responsibilities for small children need not apply. Adult children with care responsibilities for elderly parents who would not relocate likewise need not apply. People living in Canada’s great exurban, rural, and farming communities had no access unless they were willing to relocate. Perhaps willing, most were not able to move, so the dream of participating in many undergraduate or graduate level programs was beyond their reach.
Technology in education has changed all that, making it possible for students spread across this great country to participate in higher education in ways that were never before possible. The online course of study in Counselling Psychology is every bit as tough and rigorous as that which would be experienced in any Canadian classroom.
Our faculty are experienced teachers at the top of their fields. In Counselling Psychology all your teachers will have doctoral degrees and are licensed practitioners. In Engineering, on the other hand, many have doctoral or masters degrees and all have extensive practical laboratory experience.
You are going to find study with any of the divisional Faculties of Yorkville University to be one of the most rewarding challenges you will ever undertake.
We are invested in your success.
Rick Davey, Ed.D.
President
Yorkville University