ACC rebrands as Assiniboine College

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This article was published 07/06/2024 (583 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A western Manitoba college will remain community-minded — even when that word is dropped from its well-known moniker.

Earlier this week, Brandon’s 63-year-old college unveiled a whole new branding on its website at assiniboine.net, adding a new logo and a new name.

Assiniboine Community College has now become Assiniboine College.

“This iconic new symbol signifies the pathways that provide direction and meaning, whether through higher education, career growth or personal development,” reads a press release dated Thursday regarding the new brand identity. “It reflects the interconnectedness of teachers, students, programs, skills, knowledge, community and industry — all working together to guide and empower individuals toward success.”

The rebranding of the college was done in concert with the creation of its next generation strategic plan — also unveiled this week — which seeks to help guide the college to 2030.

The new logo features a stylized, geometric “A” made of red and purple triangles that not only represents the name Assiniboine, but also offers a nod to Manitoba’s Indigenous heritage and the tipi.

“It’s really also inspired by pathways,” said Anya McNabb, Assiniboine’s communications and marketing director. “And you know, how it’s fairly geometric — skillfully navigating pathways leading to goals, and building upon knowledge as well throughout that journey, which, you know, you can kind of take away from the triangular shape.”

While the Brandon institution has undergone several tweaks to its logo over the years, the biggest change comes down to its name.

In the 1970s, AC president Mark Frison said, it was common for new institutions like Assiniboine to use the “community college” naming convention in Canada. However, over the last 20 years, many educational institutions have chosen to drop “community” from their names, to the point where Assiniboine had been the last of four English-language colleges left in the country to continue to use it.

For example, Winnipeg’s Red River Community College dropped the “community” in 1998 to become Red River College Polytechnic.

But the name change was done on more than merely a whim. If you ask Frison about the removal of “community” from the name of the college, he will tell you that he was personally attached to the name he got to know when he first came to the institution several years ago.

“But one can’t ignore the research evidence.”

One of the big motivators behind the push for the name change was American interference in the use of “community college,” as several U.S. institutions use the term to describe themselves. But U.S. community colleges face challenges in many parts of the country, in terms of finances, enrolment and student retention.

“They’re actually not even colleges, they’re actually two-year university,” Frison said. “And so they don’t always enjoy a stellar reputation. And so that has caused difficulty for colleges in Canada, who, of course, are of a different character. And so … when we were doing this work on our brand, that was one of the things that the research revealed was, yes, this causes issues for us in the marketplace.

“I said to our staff yesterday, you know, ‘community’ is leaving the name, but it’s not leaving the DNA.”

The push for a new logo and name change started about a year ago, out of the college’s efforts toward creating a new strategic plan, with an eye toward 2030.

The plan outlines the college’s targets for growth, including key commitments to education and the wider community. By 2030, Frison says the college wants to deliver programming to 30 different communities every year, up from the 25 communities it currently operates within.

Other commitments include:

• A plan to help Manitoba grow by aiding 3,000 new people between now and 2030 to call the province home as a direct result of Assiniboine programming.

• A goal to graduate 2,030 graduates every year within six years.

• To cumulatively graduate 2,500 new Indigenous graduates by 2030 to contribute to the prosperity of the province.

• An aim to ensure access to at least 200 beds of student housing by 2030.

• Establish and formalize more connections for K-12 students to obtain college credits in key occupations.

• Expand and co-locate the college’s Winnipeg nursing programs in conjunction with a new state-of-the-art nursing simulation centre at Red River College Polytechnic.

Among its many other commitments, the strategic plan also notes that Assiniboine College is ready to secure ownership of its primary buildings and grounds.

After the provincial government transferred ownership of land to Red River College nearly a decade ago, a promise was made to Assiniboine that it was next on the list. AC took over ownership of its Dauphin campus in Parkland in the first week of April, and the Brandon campuses “are being worked on now,” Frison said, adding that he expects that process to be completed within this fiscal year.

“Obviously, we’re thrilled. I would say, you know, coming from — 14 years ago — coming from Saskatchewan, at a college where (we) owned our principal asset, probably the largest professional challenge I encountered here as a college president was having somebody else own our buildings. And so, yeah, we’re very happy to be now taking stewardship of these important assets.”

As for the rebranding process, McNabb says beyond the website it will be a gradual process to convert its campuses and products over to the new name and logo.

“I would anticipate it … taking a few months,” McNabb said. “We’re certainly going to take the summer to make a lot of those changes and focus on a lot of those changes and hope that as much as possible by fall is representing this new identity.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

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