The City of Moncton signed a memorandum of understanding with the Université de Moncton this week, formalizing their longstanding relationship.
Mayor Dawn Arnold says there are several areas in which the two organizations can work collaboratively, including infrastructure, and research.
“There’s arts and culture, there’s international students, there’s job placements, I mean, we have a lot of jobs in our community right now, so working really collaboratively with the university to ensure that we can find those students to fill those jobs,” says Arnold.
She continues by saying they often heard about newcomers having challenges integrating once they had arrived.
“We really want to integrate into our community, we want them to become part of our community,” says Arnold. “A lot of them want to stay here, but they were really struggling with, sometimes, learning English, sometimes integrating properly, so this will help us.”
She says the MOU includes working together on a minimum of one research project per year.
“When things come up, or challenges at the City, when we’re trying to figure things out, how’re we going to figure out a complex problem, to be able to speak with researchers here and see if there is a way to collaborate on these research projects” is invaluable, says Arnold.
In addition, the city is also investing $2.5 million over ten years in the University’s Evolution fundraising campaign.
The municipal funds are split over five different areas:
1: $500,000 for the City of Moncton Scholarship Fund
2: $500,000 for the City of Moncton Immersion Scholarship Fund
3: $500,000 for the establishment of a scholarship fund for University athletes from Moncton
4: $500,000 for the establishment of an International Students Integration Fund
5: $500,000 for the Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson’s digitization project, to serve to make the archives public.
Jacques Paul Couturier, Vice-Chancellor of the Université de Moncton says “this donation will enable the Université to improve its scholarship and financial aid programs, to support the project of creating a centre of excellence in Acadian studies, and to help international students settle in Moncton.”
He goes on to say in terms of the scholarship funds, the university does not touch the principal amount of money, and instead invests it and uses the revenue to fund the scholarships themselves.
