SASKATOON - Once Saskatchewan Polytechnic's new campus is completed, most of its Saskatoon programs could be in one location. Sask Polytech's 11 other buildings, centres and offices are scattered around the city, besides its main campus on Idylwyld Drive.
On Monday, Aug. 26, Sask Polytech President and CEO Larry Rosia joined provincial leaders and University of Saskatchewan President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Peter Stoicheff in the groundbreaking ceremony of the first building on Research Drive.
The first building, the Joseph A. Remai Saskatoon Campus, is targeted to start construction in early 2026 after a capital procurement, possibly in the first quarter of 2025. The campus building in Innovation Place was made possible by philanthropist Remai’s $25 million gift.
The provincial government has provided $16M for the project since 2022, used for the continued planning and design of the new campus. They also committed $200M in September 2023 for the project.
“This is the start of something new in our province and Canada with the partnership between Innovation Saskatchewan, the University of Saskatchewan, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic on this Innovation corridor,” said Premier Scott Moe.
“It is an exciting time for the province and the students here. More broadly, I think what we’re bringing to the world is the education that will happen in these three locations: Innovation Saskatchewan, University of Saskatchewan, and soon Saskatchewan Polytechnic.”
Rosia said operations will remain on their current main campus on Idylwyld and the 11 other sites in the city. Once the new campus is operational in a few years, they plan to gradually move the classes and offices of the programs they offer from other sites to the new campus.
“It will be needed for several years while this new campus gets built. When we do the detailed design work for the building, which would be the Trades and Technology Building, followed by the Health Sciences Building, we'll know what programs will go in there,” said Rosia.
“We'll start bringing programs from the main campus over here. Some remote locations will move to the Idylwyld campus, so there'll be a domino effect until this campus is complete, which is quite a few years out. No real decision has been made until we get to that point.”
He added that the new location would also provide continuing education for students at Sask Polytech and U of S, as students from the former could enrol at the university and vice versa for additional learning.
“There used to be a time when we talked about a pathway from high school to post-secondary pathway from polytechnic or a college to a university. Those pathways have become two-lane highways,” said Rosia.
“Now, in fact, I refer to them as multi-lane highways because now we have the industry in the mix, and this new campus represents a campus with porous walls, where we'll invite industry into our classrooms. So those pathways become multi-layered and multi-level.”
Rosia said about 30 per cent of the students who enroll at Sask Polytech have already acquired university credentials and want a hands-on industry approach. A number of SaskPoly students also go to the U of S.
“That interplay is critical, and that's one of the ways we're going to disrupt the old educational models that we had in the past, where education was very linear, but there'll be a lot of on and off ramps, where students may want to take a few courses from [Sask Polytech], or, courses from [U of S] and then go work with an entrepreneur,” ended Rosias.
