Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

RANKIN INLET (Jun 23/99) - With the graduation of students in the final phase of the Sivuliuqtit program at Nunavut Arctic College's Keewatin campus in Rankin Inlet tomorrow (Thursday) night, a highly successful program will come to an end.

Linda Pemik, co-ordinator of distance education and mentoring, said the management-development program was designed about five years ago and put into place with actual students a year later.

She said the program prepared Inuit students for middle- and senior- management positions with the Nunavut government and was a joint effort delivered through the Canadian Centre for Management Development, a federal civil service executive training department, and Nunavut Arctic College.

"There were three intakes each year and each group enroled for a three-year program," said Pemik. "Each program consisted of four formal learning sessions which brought together Inuit elders and management experts from across North America, including a video conference with well-known management guru Stephen Covey."

More than 60 people were involved in the program, which was delivered in every region of Nunavut. The overall program was quite unique because it facilitated the management trainees in developing a philosophy of management which incorporates the best of management practice and Inuit values and beliefs."

There were four major components to the program -- the formal learning sessions, work assignments, mentoring and distance- education assignments. Thursday's graduation is the culmination for the last group, with the first two having already graduated.

Pemik said a designed feature of the program was to have experts in the field, whether it be personal or community development or the civil service, talk about their jobs and mandates to encourage and stimulate the development of the participants in the program, many of whom are now employed in responsible positions.

"The program has been very successful as far as its placement rate," said Pemik. "We even have one person from the program elected as an MLA."

All that will remain for the Singvilutuk program after Thursday's graduation is a program wrap up and evaluation, which will occur between now and the end of September. The program was funded entirely through the Nunavut Unified Human Resource Development Strategy (NURDS).

The training dollars were provided through the federal government and the NURDS committee decided how those dollars would be spent.

"Although this was a once-in-a-lifetime program, it was also seen as a capacity building exercise by Nunavut Arctic College to develop expertise in developing management-delivery programs," said Pemik. "From the college's perspective, we intend to take the many valuable lessons we've learned through this program and incorporate them into future programs.

"One of the most important lessons we learned as an academic institute is that elders are not simply advisors. They are faculty and their knowledge is valued equally with ministers, deputy ministers and other accredited people.

"It was a valuable lesson for the college to learn, to appreciate the elders' knowledge and wisdom in a management context."