Saints rejoice as St. Clair College plans for expansion

St. Clair College is set to commence construction for their Academic Tower to match the influx of new students. 

The college has recorded 12,817 full-time students enrolled for fall 2019 and when part-time students are added to the mix, the count increases to more than 13,200 students. St. Clair College’s main campus has 6,000 students enrolled in more than 90 courses.

Janice Trpkovski, operations manager of the Zekelman School of Business and Information Technology, is involved in the expansions.

 “It will be a beautiful new building that will have an expanded eSports section and expansion to our entrepreneurship area,” said Trpkovski. “It will likely have more computer labs that will be wonderful for our students and will be able to hold more student clubs down there as well.”

According to Trpkovski, students will study office administration, accounting, finance, human resources, computer networking, sports and eSports.

“This building is going to be in the very high millions at this point,” said Trpkovski.“We’re still working on the planning and what the budget is going to look like.”

Kiara Clement, president of the Student Representative Council, said she thinks the new building will affect the students in a positive way. 

“I think it’s a great development,”said Clement. “We need more space on campus because we’re such a growing community. It is going to be an excellent location to foster the learning for students studying under that.”

Clement said the SRC support will be the same for the students in the new building as students at the downtown and south campuses.

Trpkovski is hopeful to open the new building for future students by fall or winter 2021.