{"id":2827,"date":"2012-03-21T08:37:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T15:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=2827"},"modified":"2012-03-20T14:57:33","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T21:57:33","slug":"ombudsman-here-to-help-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/03\/21\/ombudsman-here-to-help-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Ombudsman here to help students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College ombudsman Carter MacDonald is one busy guy. Having signed a two-year contract extension with the college in September, MacDonald finds most of his time split between his offices at the Lansdowne and Interurban campuses.<\/p>\n

As an ombudsman, MacDonald acts as an advocate of fairness for students. His duties include giving students advice on any number of issues regarding teachers, policies, and referrals to other offices, as well as attending meetings with students and the college to act as mediator. His position is funded equally by the college and the Camosun College Student Society; the funding is equal to maintain an impartial view. (Go to camosun.ca\/ombuds for more information on the services provided by the ombudsman.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mandate is to come to an informal resolution of issues, so in a lot of ways it\u2019s like being a problem-solver,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to help students solve problems that are bothering them or interfering with their success as a student here at the college.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Carter MacDonald, Camosun College ombudsman (photo by Vanessa Davies\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On average, MacDonald sees 25 students a week, and those numbers increase around end of term. He spends a lot of time between meetings networking to find solutions for the students he has spoken to.<\/p>\n

MacDonald retired from the position of college safety manager at Camosun four years ago, which he had done for nearly 10 years. After being contracted to help with college safety again, MacDonald found himself in the ombudsman role when then-ombudsman Gary Insley was off on long-term medical leave.<\/p>\n

When Insley didn\u2019t return, MacDonald became the permanent ombudsman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out that while it was a bit surprising for me to stumble into the role, I seem to have found something that suits me and I seem to suit the job. So I\u2019m quite happy doing it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Apart from his ombudsman duties, the busy MacDonald also teaches a course for the Camosun school of business on human rights, harassment, abusive authority, and bullying in the workplace.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve also taught non-violent crises intervention, self-defence for women, and a number of different things,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of those I don\u2019t do anymore, but I can do variations of them, and sometimes I get asked to do that. It keeps me quite busy, but I like to be busy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College ombudsman Carter MacDonald is one busy guy. Having signed a two-year contract extension with the college in September, MacDonald finds most of his time split between his offices at the Lansdowne and Interurban campuses. As an ombudsman, MacDonald acts as an advocate of fairness for students. His duties include giving students advice on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2877,"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":[15,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-march-21-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2827"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2879,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions\/2879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}