4.4K 
Following up after the grand opening celebration earlier this month, NorQuest College provided SkyriseEdmonton a private tour of the new Singhmar Centre for Learning, offering a glimpse into some of the more unique student facilities, classrooms, and technology that students will use as they train for their future careers.
The tour began at the 1000 Women Child Care Centre, the finishing touches on which were being completed for its official opening. This unique child care facility, which emphasizes building inter-cultural relationships and understanding from an early age, serves a dual purpose: It is both a daycare centre for young children of students who require those services, as well as a training facility for students currently studying in child care programs.
The tour continued inside the Indigenous Student Centre, including the open circular ceremonial room — which can be enclosed with a curtain for smudging ceremonies — decorated with symbols of significance to the First Nations of Treaty Six lands on which the building and the city were built. Overseen by resident Elder Tony Arcand, the centre is open and welcoming to everyone while offering cultural services for the college's Indigenous students.
Our guide took us through the Learner Centre, occupying much of the second floor and containing the college's library, computers and study areas for students, as well as meeting rooms and resources for students with disabilities.
The tour then went inside some of the innovative classrooms and labs for students training in the college's medical programs. These labs are outfitted mirroring hospitals and health care centres, providing a learning experience as close to real life as can be imagined.
Four "wet labs" include high-tech dummies for practice, which are comprised of interchangeable parts to suit specific needs. The lifelike dummies can be made to breathe, have a pulse, bleed, or be injected with fluids. Some can even have speech routed through them to simulate students communicating with real patients.
These labs are outfitted with one-way glass, enabling educators and supervisors to observe and monitor students candidly without interference.
In addition to its classrooms and labs, the Singhmar Centre has areas scattered throughout where students can unwind, socialize, or study, from nook-and-crannies tucked into corners, to the spacious student lounges on each floor in the massive sunlit atrium, to the ground-floor cafeteria which will soon serve fresh food by Pizza 73, Subway, and Tim Hortons.
Rounding out the tour on the ground floor is the first physical bookstore at NorQuest, as well as an ATB Financial agency next door which will offer banking services catered to students.
The DIALOG-designed Singhmar Centre for Learning is an important expansion for NorQuest and its 15,000-plus students. It has been specially designed not only for study in the programs that the college offers, but also for the ethnic and cultural diversity of its students, more than half of whom were born outside of Canada, and together speak over one hundred languages.
Check out the Forum Thread for more photos, and let us know what you think by leaving a comment there or below.
