Partners

Confederation College/Negahneewin College of Academic and Community Development

Negahneewin College of Academic and Community Development at Confederation College in Thunder Bay remains OSHKI’s valuable partner. They have had a major role in curriculum development in collaboration with OSHKI’s own programming staff. They are the academic institution that provides the accreditation for the certificate, and based on their experience with implementing Pre Health Sciences curriculum and programs over the years. They recognized a need to strengthen the skills in sciences, mathematics and English. Hence, the Pre Health Sciences Bridging Program. Negahneewin’s recommendation was validated by OSHKI’s current student profile: mature students with limited high school education and significant education gaps when compared with mainstream educational attainment. OSHKI’s decision to jointly develop the Pre Health Sciences Bridging Program was thus provided by Negahneewin’s awareness of how many students struggle in this programming due to weakness in the maths and sciences.

Meno-Ya-Win Health Centre

Oshki-Pimache-O-Win made the decision to deliver a Pre Health Sciences Program that will create Aboriginal human resources in the health care professions in response to the Meno-Ya-Win Health Centre’s request. The Pre Health Sciences Bridging Program will contribute in creating their future human resource requirements. As a partner, they would like to be in a position where they can hire qualified First Nation health care professionals for the new hospital facility that they will start building in the spring of 2008. In short, the Meno-Ya-Win request was the catalyst in OSHKI’s decision to offer the Pre Health Sciences Program, and the reason for this remains clear: there is a great need to increase the students’ competencies and success in the sciences, maths and English.

Northern Ontario School of Medicine

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay has expressed their support for addressing the academic needs of Aboriginal students, and they also feel that the provision of learning tools to meet the needs of First Nations learners is long overdue. NOSM has indicated that the use of visual e-Learning science objects together with culturally competent teaching models is timely. As a partner, they are an invaluable resource to OSHKI’s project.