BCBusiness

40 BCBusiness August 2015 as the establishment of UBC's Okanagan campus. The UBC board, chaired by then- president Martha Piper, recommended in 2004 that the province extend "the mandate of an existing provincial uni- versity to Kelowna." They took over independent Okanagan College, closer to downtown, and then built a brand new campus for UBC near the airport a year later. Today UBCO is home to 8,500 students, has an annual payroll of $86 million spread across seven faculties and injects an estimated $1.5 billion into the local economy ($2 billion when you throw in Okanagan College). The univer- sity has fostered or augmented a whole community of interwoven disciplines in the city, most notably in education, medi- cine and technolo¥y. Deborah Buszard—a tall, slim English horticulturist with a steely magnetism and dry wit—is deputy vice-chancellor and principal of UBC Okanagan. Like many people who have found their way to the region, she arrived in Kelowna in 2012 by degrees: after taking her doc- torate at the University of London, she moved to McGill University and then onto Dalhousie, where she was a professor and member of Dal's College of Sustainability. "I found the idea of being part of a great western university in its formative years, to be part of that in its ˜rst decade—well it's the most excit- ing gig in Canadian academia," says the Yorkshire native. I n e c o n o m i c terms, tourism argu- ably enjoys greater visibility in Kelowna, but the $653 mil- lion generated by that sector pales in comparison to the $2 billion generated by the city's post- secondar y institu- tions. And there's an important ancillary impact that UBC Okan- agan is having on the local economy too: a generation ago, many young university stu- dents who went to study in Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary simply didn't return to Kelowna. Now there are more oppor- tunities in the valley—and after a decade, a couple of impressive statistics have emerged: "Fully 60 per cent of our grad- uates stay in the region," says Buszard, "and this injection of young, talented and adventurous individuals is a tremendous bene˜t to our community." And indicat- ing that the outŸow may have actually reversed is the fact that 18 per cent of the UBCO student body now comes from the Lower Mainland. One of the reasons why more graduates are staying in the valley is the region's b u r g e o n i n g t e c h sec tor. Accelerate Okanagan is a multi- tasking incubator in downtown Kelowna, funded by govern- ments and the private sector, that supports nascent technolo¥y businesses. Founded in 2010, it wouldn't have advanced as far or as fast without the inter-relationships it enjoys with UBC Okanagan. "We connect on many levels with UBCO and Okanagan College," says Brea Retzla‹, a 20-something OC busi- ness grad and community manager for Accelerate Okanagan. "Perhaps most importantly, we connect graduating students with employers and introduce them via co-op internships." While the community's biggest suc- cess stories—Club Penguin and Vineyard "Our immediate challenges are manag- ing our growth e‹ec- tively, limiting sprawl by encouraging development within town centres and building out a better public transit system. And we're also tack- ling homeless issues by going to their root cause: mental health" — Colin Basran NEW LOOK (from left) Interior Health's new community Health and services centre; buzzy new restaurants and bars around downtown Kelowna; lakeside views

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