Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 04/99) - A group of professionals is attending San Diego State University without having to leave the comforts of Yellowknife.

Enrolled in the school's innovative masters of arts in leadership program, the nine students are able to take the majority of their course work in the NWT -- and completed the first Yellowknife-run course over the May 24 weekend.

"I'd been looking for a masters program for about three years," said Range Lake school principal Mike MacDonald, "but there'd only been two choices before -- to take a year off on sabbatical or to take a lot of courses over the summer -- when it might involve four or five summers."

MacDonald said neither option was very practical -- the first making supporting his family difficult and the second being too lengthy.

But the principal credits Judith Knapp with giving Yellowknifers the chance to get a great education while staying home and pursuing their careers.

Deputy superintendent at Education District No. 1, Knapp took the program herself and went on to receive her doctorate from San Diego State. She was so impressed she decided to bring the course back with her to Yellowknife.

Winning the support of both the university and the school board, she kicked off the program here in January.

"No university in Canada can do this for us," Knapp said Wednesday, explaining why she opted for the south-of-the-border approach. "The Canadian schools all want students to go down for long-term residency, and for people who live in the North with their jobs and families, it's pretty cost prohibitive."

Knapp said the course is not limited to educators like MacDonald. She said all the students study the core material together but then apply the practical research and project components to their respective fields -- in education, medicine, addictions services and business.

"The basic philosophy is leadership in general," she said.

Manager of ambulatory services, Lona Heinzig, said her studies have already been put to practical use in Stanton Hosptial's emergency wing.

"It's all about looking at how service is provided," she said. "So I've looked at how staff operates in emergency, how we track patients and what works and what doesn't."

MacDonald said another benefit of the program is that it brought the students together every three weeks -- something a correspondence course can't offer.

"If you want to do something like this in Yellowknife, there are few choices -- the Internet, teleconferences or correspondence," he said. "But what I liked was having group work and sharing ideas -- I think it was much more successful than being stuck in a room with a bunch of papers."

Knapp said 70 per cent of the masters work can be done in the Yellowknife but requires four-week stints in Surrey, B.C. and in San Diego itself. MacDonald said he and two other students would head down to the Surrey portion this summer and said he hopes to have completed his degree in two years.