FANSHAWE COLLEGE
Fanshawe College , or to give it its full title , Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology , has just celebrated its 50th anniversary . Established at London , Ontario in 1967 as the successor to the Ontario Vocational Centre , it has since grown to become one of Canada ’ s largest further education institutions , with additional campuses at Simcoe , St . Thomas and Woodstock . It enrols close to 45,000 full-time , part-time and online students each year , not only from Canada and south-western Ontario , but from some 80 other countries around the world , and offers more than 200 degree , diploma , certificate , graduate certificate and apprenticeship programmes . Subjects available include applied arts , business , healthcare , human services , hospitality and technology , and Fanshawe also provides re-skilling and skill upgrading opportunities for mature learners sponsored by business and industry or by government .
Since 2013 , Peter Gilbert been Chief Information Officer ( CIO ) of this hugely important regional college ,
adding a second key role to his portfolio in February 2017 – that of Chief Infrastructure Officer . So , he ’ s a double CIO : “ Over the last couple of years the opportunity arose to expand the purely IT work more into the actual running and building of our facilities , and it became clear that many of the challenges facing an IT department are shared by a facilities department .” Smart facilities , he explains , depend so heavily on IT these days that the old demarcations are disappearing .
As an example , he cites parking . Anyone visiting a large campus anywhere in the world will know what a pain it is to drive around looking for a space – and the cost in wasted time and missed appointments can be significant . Fanshawe has more than 3,000 parking spaces for students and staff , all on the flat , and of course there are never enough of them at peak times . “ We ’ re now starting to look at smart parking solutions that would direct people to available parking , rather than having to drive round and round ,” says Gilbert . Part of the solution would be for many more people to use public transport , but
100 March 2018