Champlain Regional College, is an English-language Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEP) with campuses located in three distinct administrative regions of Quebec: Lennoxville, Saint-Lambert, and Quebec City. The college offers post-secondary pre-university and technical DEC diploma programs as well as vocational AEC certificate programs.
History
The college was founded in 1971 and named in honour of Samuel de Champlain, the first governor of New France. It traces its origins to the merger of several educational institutions which became public in 1967 with the creation of Quebec's CEGEPs and the collegiate system.
Organization and administration
Champlain Regional College (CRC) is composed of an Administrative Office located in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and three campuses located in different regions of the province: Champlain College Lennoxville, in the Estrie; Champlain College Saint-Lambert, in the Montérégie; and Champlain College St. Lawrence, in the Capitale-Nationale area. Despite having "Regional" in its name, CRC is not a regional college as defined by Quebec's General and Vocational Colleges Act. The only regional college under the Act is the Cégep régional de Lanaudière, which has a much more decentralized structure. This more decentralized structure has been proposed to the Board of Governors by administrators as a possible new organizational model for the college, but it was rejected as unworkable for CRC, in part due to the distances between the campuses.
The Director General and Director of Studies are based at the Sherbrooke Administrative offices along with the Director of Financial Services, the Director of Material Resources, Director of Human Resources and Secretary General, Coordinator of Information Technology, and their respective staff teams. All teaching and direct services to students are offered on the three campuses only.
The college is overseen by a Board of Governors with representation divided over the regions, following the usual structure except that CRC has one more faculty member on the Board than other public colleges, to ensure faculty representation from each campus and to account for the campuses' isolation from each other. Many members of the college community complain that their regions are underrepresented on the board, because its membership is divided between the four locations, giving the Estrie region approximately half of the board members. The 16-member Commission of Studies is also composed of Sherbrooke administrators plus faculty, staff and students from each teaching location.
Each campus is overseen by a Campus Director under the authority of the Director General. Each campus has administrators in charge of local management of human resources, finances, buildings and grounds, information technology, student services, registrar's office, and continuing education, all under the Campus Director's authority but also answerable to Administrators in Sherbrooke. Occasional issues arise due to this doubling of administrative services between Sherbrooke and the Campuses.
Campuses
CRC has three teaching locations:
Champlain College Saint-Lambert
The St. Lambert campus is located 148 kilometres from the College's Head Office, on the South Shore of Montreal Island in the Montérégie town of Saint-Lambert. It offers pre-university and technical DEC programs, as well as AEC programs and an extensive range of other continuing education services (including Recognition of Acquired Competencies or RAC) both on and off campus.
Champlain College Lennoxville
The Lennoxville campus is located only seven kilometres from head office in the Estrie region, in the Sherbrooke borough of Lennoxville, where it shares grounds and facilities with Bishop's University. It offers pre-university and technical DEC programs on its main campus as well as AEC programs and other continuing education services at a separate location.
Champlain College St. Lawrence
The St. Lawrence campus is located 227 kilometres from the Sherbrooke office in Capitale-Nationale region, in the Québec City borough of Ste-Foy. Originally an independent Classical College affiliated with Université Laval, this campus offers primarily pre-university DEC programs, one technical DEC program, and one AEC program. It is the only fully-English Cégep in Eastern Québec.
The college administrative offices are located apart from the teaching locations in the city of Sherbrooke.