A $200,000 grant from the Municipal Coal Transition Funding Committee will go towards a new Centre of Sustainable Innovation at Southeast College.

The college made the announcement Monday as part of a new partnership with the University of Regina.

Southeast College President & CEO Vicky Roy said the new initiative will benefit a number of industries in the southeast corner of the province.

“This is about value for agriculture, sustainable energy, carbon capture, tourism, and hospitality,” said Roy. “We are just very action-oriented working with the industries on the problems and to solve the issue or a challenge, and working on it to make it happen.”

“We are so excited about the applied research,” Roy continued. “That grant that we got from the coal transition will really really help us to move our centre to the next level.”

Roy added that the new centre should help the college attract new students, both locally and internationally.

“This is one of our main focuses, is to attract more domestic students and to have students that can stay here in the Estevan region, and to attract international students,” she said. “We’ll have a really unique program that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Saskatchewan.”

Roy said there is already a room designated for the program on the second floor of the college, and they hope to acquire a second space near the college.

“It has started already, so we are at the beginning,” she said. “Hopefully other grants to grow the centre will happen in the next couple months. Depending on where we are on our growth, if we get what we want, we’ll probably go on a huge fundraising campaign and try to find other partners who will be strategic partners with us.”

“We want to grow the college, so we probably need a capital project, but at this time it’s just about the feasability approach.”

Roy said the college will be hiring a vice president for the new centre shortly.

She said more information about the new centre will be released in the next couple months.