{"id":19626,"date":"2020-06-16T09:24:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T16:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19626"},"modified":"2020-06-16T09:28:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T16:28:32","slug":"camosun-vp-of-partnerships-receives-award-looks-ahead-to-fall-semester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/06\/16\/camosun-vp-of-partnerships-receives-award-looks-ahead-to-fall-semester\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun VP of partnerships receives award, looks ahead to fall semester"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun vice president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst has worked hard over his career to cultivate international education in Canada. On June 1, Wilmshurst\u2014who started at Camosun in 2011\u2014was recognized by the British Columbia Council for International Education for his work in international education at the college, and in Victoria on the whole, including growing annual international student numbers at Camosun from 350 in 2010 to 1,900 today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf feels good to be recognized,\u201d says Wilmshurst. \u201cI feel really grateful to get that kind of recognition; it came as surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award comes in wake of a slightly uncertain future at Camosun due to the COVID-19 crisis. Wilmshurst says almost 1,500 of the 1,600 international students that were at Camosun in the winter semester stayed in Victoria. For the spring and summer, the college saw a 15-percent decline in international enrolment from last year at that time, which Wilmshurst says is \u201cnot too bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the spring and summer semester, we thought, \u2018Okay, this could be a very bad situation for us, as well,\u2019\u201d says Wilmshurst.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun vice president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst (photo by Sherri Bell).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

International offices are always prepared for that moment when something big creates a major change in enrolment, says Wilmshurst.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always scenario planning,\u201d he says. \u201cFor example, if the government of China decided one day that they were not going to issue exit permits to any of their citizens, what would we do?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Camosun International team has been great and part of the reason why the college didn\u2019t see a huge dip in numbers, says Wilmshurst.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we have more than 600 international students registered for summer programs is because [Camosun International] went to work right away,\u201d says Wilmshurst. \u201cWe got our international plans in place very, very quickly\u2014more quickly than any other part of the institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the main issues Wilmshurst\u2019s office is dealing with now is a backlog in study permits being issued due to visa centres around the world being closed because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve started to reopen them, so we\u2019re hoping students will be able to get them on time,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we do know that it\u2019s going to be quite a crush for students, right across Canada, trying to get study permits in time for September.\u201d<\/p>\n

A study permit is not required for international students enrolled in online classes for less than six months. However, Wilmshurst says the college is advising students to get permits so they\u2019ll be able to come to Canada once face-to-face classes resume. Wilmshurst says that an international student studying online will still be able to use that online study time toward their post-graduation work permit, which is critical for many international students. (According to Immigration Canada, students have 180 days after receiving their final grades to apply for that permit, but distance learning must make up less than 50 percent of their study program in order for the student to be applicable.)<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir online study experience will go towards the ability to get a post-graduate work permit,\u201d says Wilmshurst.<\/p>\n

Wilmshurst doesn\u2019t know yet international-student enrolment in the fall will look like, but doesn\u2019t expect it will be at usual levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do know is that the vast majority\u00a0of our courses will be online and that is definitely\u00a0going to be a problem for students who are not physically here, or not in our time zone,\u201d says Wilmshurst, \u201cespecially\u00a0they are [in] a synchronous\u00a0course versus an asynchronous course.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current data are showing that international applications are only down four percent for the fall, but about 30 percent more international students have paid their deposit than had at this time last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very good news,\u201d says Wilmshurst. \u201cBut what we don\u2019t know is, when it becomes\u00a0very clear\u00a0to students when they go to register in two weeks\u00a0time that most of the courses are going to be online, that may cause people to change their minds, so we\u2019re really waiting to see. And we probably won’t know until some time into July.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Wilmshurst says that the work Camosun has been doing with checking up on students and recruiting new ones \u201cwill go a long way to allowing us to at least have a reasonable number of international students.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBritish Columbia\u2019s really well positioned for when we get out of this situation,\u201d he says. \u201cOur management of the pandemic here has been really stellar. [British Columbia provincial health officer] Bonnie Henry has done an amazing job, and we\u2019re being recognized around the world for the fact that we\u2019ve managed the pandemic extremely well here, and I think it\u2019s going to give a lot of confidence to international students to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun vice president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst has worked hard over his career to cultivate international education in Canada. On June 1, Wilmshurst\u2014who started at Camosun in 2011\u2014was recognized by the British Columbia Council for International Education for his work in international education at the college, and in Victoria on the whole, including growing annual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19628,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19626\/revisions\/19628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}