The sudden closure of the Emma Lake Kenderdine campus Nov. 15 was a shock to both the fine arts and biology departments and has left each scrambling to make curriculum changes.

Susan Shantz, art and art history department head, said that university administration did not give the department any notice the campus would be shut down until 2016.

“There’s always been a little bit of a sense of ‘we need to make things happen here to make things viable.’ That’s been an underlying issue,” Shantz said. “But I would not have thought that it would come to this. It’s the abruptness [of the closure] that has taken everybody aback.”

Founded in 1935 by the former head of the art department, Augustus Kenderdine, the Emma Lake Kenderdine campus — then the Murray Point Art School — would go on to become an integral part of the art department at the U of S.

The annual Emma Lake Artists’ workshop began in 1955 and was offered until 1995 when it took a 10-year hiatus before resuming in 2005 on a biannual schedule. The workshops were created to unite Saskatchewan artists and break the isolation that many artists felt throughout the province in the ‘50s. The workshops brought together the Regina Five — a group of abstract painters known for their 1961 National Gallery of Canada exhibit, “Five Painters from Regina.”

In recent years, the art department has brought guest lecturers to the Kenderdine Campus and has offered special interest art courses such as the Reanimating Textiles course and the Painting Icons and Thangkas course.

None of the courses offered at the Kenderdine campus were requirements for a fine arts degree but Shantz says they provided valuable skills for students who took them as electives.

Students are going to be able to complete their honours  program, it’s just a matter of how they’re going to be able to do that. — Jack Grey, biology dept. head

“What we will miss there is the chance for a really great experiential learning opportunity,” Shantz said, adding that the courses provided “a different way of having an intensive experience with an instructor and working on a project.”

The art programs at the U of S are not jeopardized by the closure of the Emma Lake facility, but historical sites like the Ernest Lindner Studio and the cabin that was built by Augustus Kenderdine, which are significant parts of the art department’s history, will not be used for at least the next three years.

“There is a kind of sense of local history there with the art and the artists because it is about a lot of the landscape painting and the work that was done in specific to that locale,” Shantz said.

Ernest Lindner, an Austrian man who immigrated to Saskatoon in 1926, built a summer home and studio on Fairy Island at Emma Lake. There he painted watercolour landscapes and became famous as a late modernist artist. His studio, now owned by the U of S, is a provincial heritage property.

During the 1960s and 70s, New York art critics and British artists brought international attention to the remote location. Clement Greenberg, an influential art critic from New York, created a connection between western Canadian artists and the New York art scene after his visit to the campus in 1962.

Greg Fowler, acting vice-president of finance and resources at the U of S, said the university is currently in negotiations with the province to decide what will happen to the Ernest Lindner Studio, since the university’s land lease on Fairy Island expired May 31, 2010. A newly drawn provincial park now claims the island, despite the university still owning the studio.

The biology department is also feeling the effects of the closure.

The department of biology moved into the campus in 1965 and began offering courses in ecology, zoology, botany and limnology. Since then, a fieldwork course required for an honours degree has been offered solely at the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus.

Head of the biology department Jack Gray said that the department was not consulted by university administration about the closure and, like fine arts, was given no notice.

“There was no communication directly to me from the Provost’s office about this. I found out about it like everybody else did through the general announcement,” Gray said.

Gray said that the closure of the facility has left the biology department scrambling to find a replacement course for students planning to take the course in August 2013.

“We were told that they’re letting us know now so that we have enough time to plan, but that’s not enough time to plan,” Gray said. “Now we’re scrambling to even try to come up with ideas.”

According to Gray, it takes at least a year to properly change a program and that faculty, staff and students need to discuss the situation and create a contingency plan for the students planning to take the course in nine months.

“We’re going to take care of the students, they don’t have to worry about it,” Gray said. “The students are going to be able to complete their honours  program, it’s just a matter of how they’re going to be able to do that.”

Chair of the Biology Undergraduate Affairs Committee Tracy Marchant said that aside from reprogramming the course, faculty and staff need to become familiar with the new location of the campus for the safety of students.

“We have to understand its geography. We have to know that intimately because the last thing we can do is take students up into the boreal forest and lose them,” Marchant said. “We have 50-some years of experience with [the Kenderdine Campus]. We know it like the back of our hand.”

A new facility and infrastructure will also be needed for the future site of the fieldwork course. Marchant said that the biology department has not received any word from university administration that there will be financial aid given to restart the fieldwork course.

However, before university administration can provide funding or the support needed by the departments, Fowler said that they have to tell administration what it is they need.

“We have to hear from the departments what their needs are and then move on from there,” Fowler said.

A tight financial situation led the university to close the Emma Lake Kenderdine campus. The university is expected to save $500,000 over the three years of temporary closure.

Fowler said that the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus requested an operating budget of $240,000 a year with an additional investment of three million dollars for repair and maintenance to maintain the facility for the next four years was not financially viable for the university at this time.

“What we needed to do was make this decision and work through the implications of it and then try and plan for the future to see if we can find something that is financially sustainable.”

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Photos: U of S Archives & Jeff Hudson