UOP (University of Phoenix Vancouver Campus)

The Vancouver Campus closes its doors today and as with all endings there is opportunity for new beginnings that start with the goodbyes.

I started with the UOP in April of 2000 to help set up and teach in the Faculty of Education Masters of Education program. It was an exciting time, new programs, changes, great people both students and Faculty. Many of the first students in the program were the innovators, willing to try new adventures as were many of the Faculty.  It was exciting to work with and to watch the change in attitude, focus and type of students who I worked with over the last ten years. In the first years the students were mostly innovators, who challenged us and then moved on to other adventures and other new ideas.

As the reputation of the university grew, the early adopters took their place and while they challenged us, they also helped us to create courses, process and procdures that would help them. In the last few years we started to see the early majority start to enrol and we were headed to be the largest post secondary institution for teachers seeking their Masters degree in BC.  Then the UOP had a shift in focus at the National level and we closed.

Most of the first Faculty were, I believe innovators but I was one of the second group hired (the first were hired in 1999 and the second group was hired in 2000). The second group of faculty were a combination of innovators and early adopters and that combination worked well as we were willing to take a chance on a relatively unknown (in BC) University that catered to working adults. Over the next ten years I was fortunate enough to help redefine our program to meet the needs of Canadian (BC) teachers, to help market the program and work with and help to hire and mentor some of the best faculty in education in BC. In 2005, I moved from being a adjunct faculty to being Area Chair for Curriculum and Instruction. I was one of the first people trained in the online teaching (FlexNet) module and helped lead several training sessions on how to teach online.

I loved the opportunity to interact with the teacher leaders of tomorrow and wish them well and from their feedback they enjoyed working with me. Here are two comments received through the end of course surveys from my students.

Royce was extremely hardworking, knowledgeable and very respectful. I think he truly loved what he was doing and really cared about the success of his students.

He definitely knew a lot about curriculum and passed the knowledge to us.

Over the past ten years I have taught over 84 courses with small class sizes and because of that I had the opportunity to work closely with well over 1,000 teachers who are just now starting to move into leadership positions in their schools. I appreciated the opportunity to provide some leadership in education and I look forward to new challenges and opportunities.

Thanks to Darren, Joy, John, Mich, Cathy, and to all of the hard working staff and students who made the last ten years fly by in a blink of an eye.