The Martlet

University 101 celebrates five years on campus

Tina Lalonde (left) and Becky Cory are both involved with University 101, a program that provides free, non-credit university programs to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access post-secondary education.

Sol Kauffman

People facing barriers to post-secondary education don’t fit a demographical norm, which explains the diversity of students that have participated in the five years of UVic’s University 101 program.

“University 101 offers free, non-credit university programs to people ... who haven’t, for a wide range of reasons, been able to access, or who aren’t currently able to access, post secondary [education],” said Program Co-ordinator Becky Cory. The reasons range from being a single mother, to having unstable housing, to being on a disability pension due to a work-related injury, to having a mental health diagnosis, or an addiction, or just having bad experiences in the public school system. “I would say the common thread across many students’ experiences is not having the financial resources to access post-secondary, but it’s also more complex than that.”

The program runs two sessions. Uni 101 starts in the spring and focuses on the faculty of Humanities, and Uni 102 covers the Social Sciences in the fall. Students attend two 2.5 hour classes per week and the instructors donate their time. The topic changes each week, allowing a wide sampling of what the faculties have to offer.

“The choice of the content is based on the instructor’s passion rather than having a set curriculum,” explained Cory, “and I think that it is really inspiring for instructors to be able to go in and talk about whatever they are most excited about. And I think that really benefits the students because they feed off the passion that the instructors have.”

To maximize accessibility, everything is included in the program. Students get a meal before class, they are provided supplies and readings, and they receive child care and transportation subsidies.

“It provides the opportunity for students who otherwise would probably never come to campus to have access to the classroom, access to instruction, access to teaching assistants and help and all of those kind of things. So I think in that regard, it’s quite unique,” said Annalee Lepp. Lepp chairs UVic’s Department of Women Studies and has volunteered with Uni 101 for the past four years as an instructor and a member of various committees.

Lepp teaches the first segment of Uni 101, using popular culture to discuss critical thinking. Cory feels expanding the ability to think critically is one of the program’s key goals.

“I would say it is really at the centre of our program, both in terms of our explicit curriculum, that’s the first topic that we cover, but also in terms of our implicit curriculum, the way that the course is structured.”

The course structure does not include a grading system. Success is defined by each participant, allowing their individual needs and goals to be taken into account.

“That’s a really important part of the learning environment that we create, that students are the ones in charge of what they do and how they participate ... taking away the power dynamics that can otherwise happen in educational settings where it’s the instructor that dictates what success looks like or what failure looks like,” Cory said.

That’s important to Tina Lalonde. Lalonde was kicked out of high school, then went to Okanagan College when she was 20 to upgrade. She fell in love with higher education, but abusive boyfriends and a seven-day work week kept it out of reach. Then, while dealing with depression, she saw a poster for Uni 101 on her counsellor’s wall.

“I thought it was a way to pull myself out of the hole, which it did. Even once I heard about it I started feeling better,” Lalonde said in a phone interview. “I was scared absolutely stupid when I went there but it’s been an amazing experience.”

Though still fighting depression, the course material has inspired Lalonde. She’s planning on taking the Uni 201 program next, which is 11 months long, with each subject going for a month. Then she wants to move on to credited courses.

“I can very safely say that without this program, I’d probably still be sitting in my basement depressed and not interested in much,” she said.

Despite the wide range of life experiences among her classmates, Lalonde does feel there is one universal feeling.

“I think everybody’s coming from a position of uncertainty. I think for a lot of us it was hard to walk into that classroom just because it’s university and you don’t know what to expect.”

She was also coming from an environment that wasn’t supportive of her attending university. One of her abusive boyfriends used to ridicule her when she read or tried to learn about something new.

“I think people that are in school

. . . I know a lot of people appreciate it, but I think a lot of people take it for granted because they’ve been told they have to go to school or whatever,” Lalonde said. “I don’t know if they know what it’s like to not be encouraged in that direction or be told that it’s something that is unattainable.”

For students like Lalonde, it would still be unattainable, said Cory, if not for the support of the faculty, grad and undergrad students who volunteer their time as instructors and teacher assistants. She also thanks the deans of the faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences for being “rock solid” supporters of the program.