UNBC has added a new position to its administrative leadership team.
Mark Dale, the current provost and vice-president academic, will be the university's first dean of regional programs.
"We feel that it's important to have academic leadership in this role and so we created this position," said Dale, who's also the interim president until Daniel Weeks takes the position.
"It's, I think, a position that's really important for the future of UNBC, it's part of our mandate and so in my time as interim president I was thinking about the things we had to do better and this was one. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I should just do it myself."
Dale said it does seem odd for somebody to move from a vice-presidential position to a dean but the move is not a step down in any way.
"It's an unusual dean position because it's so broadly based both across the university and across the north of the province and so it actually is essentially vice-presidential in scope," he said.
The challenge of carving a new path with the role also appeals to Dale.
"If I do it myself the first time, it gives me the opportunity to define what the role is and what it does and an opportunity to make sure that it will work," he said.
In the 2012-13 academic year, 553 students took 147 courses at regional campuses in Quesnel, Fort St. John, and Terrace, said the university's website. That made up 13 per cent of UNBC's student body and 15 per cent of the university's courses.
The university will strike a search committee for Dale's replacement in September, he said.
"Now that I've agreed to do it, I'm actually impatient to get started, but I won't be starting until Jan. 1," he said.
