Kasia Majewski asked administrators what biology students will get in return after the university nixed operations at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus.

University of Saskatchewan biology students have been left out to dry with the temporary closure of the Emma Lake Kenderdine campus where a required honours course in fieldwork was offered.

The satellite campus was put under immediate suspension Nov. 15 and will remain closed until 2016 when the fate of the facility will be reconsidered.

Since 1935, the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus has been a multi-use field facility with experiential learning courses in biology, soil sciences, land use and environmental studies. Art, drama and art history courses were also offered.

The campus has been used by the province’s art community for various workshops since its doors opened. The local Emma Lake community also used the campus for wilderness and remote first aid certification courses as well as canoe trips.

U of S students pursuing an honours biology degree are required to complete a fieldwork course that has been offered solely at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus.

The president of the U of S Biology Club, Kasia Majewski, said that the closure of the campus not only eliminates the opportunity for biology majors to obtain an honours degree but also takes away the department’s competitive edge over other universities.

At “most other colleges you can specialize in zoology. At an undergraduate level you can start to specialize your degree. We don’t even have that here,” Majewski said. “Really the only thing we had going for us was the fact that we had the Kenderdine location and we had field excursions.”

In the summer of 2012 alone, over 200 U of S students took courses at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus.

In addition to the honours fieldwork course, a fieldwork course in lake ecology was offered at Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus. Majewski said that there are no other labs available for this course and it will no longer be offered with the closure of the campus.

Though the university is planning to find a replacement facility for the courses, Majewski said that it will be impossible to replace the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus’s unique ecology.

“Anyone that has taken the field course knows that the ecology of that area is really an integral part of what we study there,” Majewski said. “It is absolutely necessary that we have it there.”

Head of the Department of Biology Jack Gray said that the temporary closure of the campus came as a shock. He said the university did not consult with the department in regards to the suspension of activities at the campus and the effects it would have on the department.

U of S Students’ Union President Jared Brown believes that although this is not good news for the biology department, there is hope in the temporary closure. That is, instead of permanently closing the facility, the university may reopen the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus in the future.

“I think what this shows is that there is still a commitment to the Kenderdine campus,” Brown said. “They’re not completely just going to say ‘No, we’re done with it’ and cut their losses. They’re going to continue moving forward with it. Just right now, it’s not going to work.”

The university, which is currently dealing with a projected deficit of $44.5 million for 2015-16, does not have the millions of dollars needed to repair the facility’s structural issues.

The three-year suspension of activities at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus will save the university roughly $500,000.

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Photo: Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf