by Terry Lavender
Photography by Greg Ehlers, SFU LIDC

Simon Fraser University's Surrey campus is definitely not a traditional university campus: there's no football stadium, no student residence, no cafeteria. But there is an online game club, a web-based housing service, and a food court.

SFU Surrey is located in a shopping mall in Surrey, south of the Fraser River, 15 kilometres southwest of the main Burnaby campus and 25 kilometres southeast of the downtown Vancouver Harbour Centre campus.

It opened its doors in the Central City mall to 400 undergraduate and 40 graduate students in September 2002. The space had formerly been occupied by the Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC). Earlier this year the provincial government closed TechBC and transferred responsibility for its students, programs, and assets to SFU.

TechBC was first announced by the provincial government in 1995 in response to spirited lobbying for a Fraser Valley university. It had been envisioned as a high-tech institution, using online teaching techniques and industry partnerships. However, TechBC struggled from the start, its troubles aggravated by a boycott by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and and by frequent changes in direction from the provincial government. A combination of high start-up costs and lower-than-projected enrolment led the new Liberal government to close TechBC and ask SFU to establish a Surrey campus.

Former TechBC students and faculty have mixed emotions about the transition to SFU. Tammy Mooney, former president of the TechBC Learners Association, fought hard for TechBC's survival. Mooney and her colleagues are cautiously optimistic about the SFU transition, though they wonder whether TechBC's culture will survive.Says Mooney, "Perhaps the biggest difference in cultures is that SFU Surrey is a great deal smaller than SFU Burnaby. This makes it much easier to get to know more people. And the TechBC pedagogy incorporated a substantial amount of team-based work in all courses, which created an environment where students had no choice but to adapt to address differences, learn project management skills, and work collaboratively together."

The courses at SFU Surrey differ from those on the main campus in several ways. Classes are taught through a mixture of online and classroom instruction and in five-week modules, with the first four modules used for instruction and the final module for evaluation. All students take a common first year that includes courses in communication and teamwork as well as more traditional mathematics, science, and arts courses.

Students don't lug around piles of textbooks and handouts - most course materials are online. And if students miss a class or are having problems with an assignment, they can get help from their classmates on the SFU Surrey electronic chatboards, which tend to be busiest at around 1 a.m.

SFU has hired many of the former TechBC faculty to teach at the new satellite campus, including Kay Weise, a leading researcher in three-dimensional visualization of molecules, and Steve DiPaolo, an acclaimed facial animation expert. Other faculty members have expertise in areas as diverse as dance, web design, music, mathematics, and computer circuitry.

For example, Interactive Arts professors Susan Kozel and Techla Schiphorst combine interests in dance, artificial life, and "wearable computers." Laura Trippi is interested in both branding strategy and computer game environments. Vadim Kyrylov does research in business modelling and robotic intelligence.

All told, SFU Surrey's 22 research faculty are busy in a variety of areas, including information networking and multimedia, technology-mediated learning, computer games, electronic business applications, and knowledge management. The institution is developing four research labs - a Shared Virtual Environment Lab, an InfoNet Media Lab, an Interactivity Lab, and an Electronic Commerce, Educational Technology and Community Informatics Usability Lab.

Besides the undergraduate and graduate programs, SFU will also offer continuing studies courses at the Surrey campus. The university already has strong connections to Surrey with more than 1,800 of SFU's current students and 130 faculty and staff making their homes in Surrey. SFU's economic impact on Surrey amounts to nearly $16 million annually.

Over the short term SFU will continue to offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in two of the three TechBC programs -interactive arts and information technology. The smaller management and technology program will no longer be offered, but its students have been given the opportunity transfer into programs at the main campus. A Senate planning committee is looking into the long-term future of the program. aq

• Located at 2400 Central City Shopping Centre, Surrey, in a converted Zellers Department Store
• Opened September 5, 2000 (as TechBC) with 104 first-year and 96 second-year students
• 400 undergraduate and 40 graduate students in September 2002
• 36 faculty members and 25 administrative staff
• Offers degrees in information technology and interactive arts
• Offers some online instruction in all courses - some courses are completely online
• Houses four research labs and five research clusters (groups of researchers sharing research interests and engaged in collaborative or closely related research)
• Has faculty doing research in such areas as information networking and multimedia, technology-mediated learning, computer games, e-business, and knowledge management

© 2002 aq magazine