South Alberta Collegiate features a fieldhouse among its many amenities. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

By Eli J. Ridder

New collegiate to enhance Prairie Rose school division’s specialized programs

Jun 20, 2024 | 11:30 AM

A new facility in Medicine Hat’s light industrial area will soon be bustling with flight academy students, athletes and other specialized Prairie Rose Public School Division programs.

South Alberta Collegiate features a workshop for plane building, a synthetic turf fieldhouse, classrooms, meeting spaces and a gym — all to improve the school division’s offerings.

In 2018, Prairie Rose started to work on enhanced programming when it launched the South Alberta Hockey Academy. Since then, it has expanded to other sports and a plane building and flying program.

Enhanced programming director Darren MacMillan said they eventually began to run out of room for all the programs.

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“We just didn’t really have physical space for all of our students and all of our programs,” MacMillan told CHAT News ahead of the open house Wednesday.

Darren MacMillan says the fieldhouse will be used by the Maverick’s baseball academy program. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

That’s when Prairie Rose found the former Case tractor dealership building south of the airport and started leasing the building last winter.

It was a quick turnaround to open the building by June and there’s still work to be done to get it all ready by September, officials said.

The new facility features a workshop where students can work on building planes. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

Prairie Rose Superintendent Reagan Weeks said the new hub is all about improving the quality of the student experience.

“Whether that be our flight academy or various sport options to further develop athleticism or our fire academy, this is the place that we will use to really help students engage in place-based learning and just really enhance overall learning experiences in our division,” Weeks said.

The school division received $600,000 from the Alberta government to launch the collegiate and pay for the lease, according to Weeks.

With many collaborators, partners and programs involved in the new collegiate, MacMillan said it will take time to reach its full potential.

Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

‘Everybody’s got a little vision of what we’re going to do here but I think it’s going to take at least a full year to roll out what this place actually looks like,” MacMillan said.

The collegiate’s impact goes beyond just Prairie Rose, he added.

“It’s so much more than just our school division, but also the community as a whole.”