NLC executives visit Japan, sign MOUs

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A couple of Northern Lights College (NLC) executives visited Japan in March and signed two MOUs while there.

President Todd Bondaroff; Jessie Drew, vice president of community relations & institutional strategy; and acting vice president of student services & community relations, Scott Clerk, visited Osaka and Tokyo from March 17th to 25th to renew and build new partnerships.

According to NLC, the visit marked the first in almost a decade, though the college has hosted more than 25 Japanese students annually in the past.

The team met with representatives from three universities: Jumonji University, Kansai Gaidai University and Tezukayama Gakuin University.

“The university partners we have in Japan are our oldest international institutional partners. Our partnerships have been in place for over 30 years,” said Clerk. 

“Their students coming here have had such an impact on our campuses and communities. We just wanted to make sure our partners [in Japan] knew how important they are to NLC so we can continue to have great working relationships with them to foster the flow of students from Japan to Canada and Canada to Japan.”

During the visits, NLC signed MOUs with Jumonji and Kansai Gaidai universities and began talks for a future MOU with Tezukayama Gakuin University.

NLC says the MOUs will restart English as a Second Language education activities at NLC and open up studying abroad opportunities in Japan.

The MOUs aim to bring these opportunities back to what they were before the pandemic.

“Our new strategic plan discusses the space the NLC occupies in our communities and in the world. And so, in that sense, it is completely natural and even necessary for us to prioritize partnerships like the ones we’ve just built in Japan,” said Bondaroff.

“Even more than that, that same strategic plan specifically calls for accessible and flexible programming and a robust plan for increased enrolment. This visit and the relationships it solidified for NLC in Osaka and Tokyo speak directly to those goals.”

The team also had the chance to meet with former NLC students who had returned home to Japan.

“We walked into the room where we were going to meet, and there were all these big smiles and one person wearing a bright pink ‘I <3 NLC’ t-shirt! I couldn’t have loved it more!” Drew said.

The executives also visited the Canadian Embassy and a student enrolled in the study abroad program. Drew even met with students who had stayed with her during a homestay program in Dawson Creek.

“We’re all about relationships,” said Drew, “How can we make people’s lives better if we don’t know what those lives are like if we don’t become part of them? It’s why I’m so very proud to be part of NLC and the way we are all moving forward together.”