Meet Jake Baird

Jake Baird

On February 12 we met with J.S.(Jake) Baird, Executive Director of the Institute for Adult and Community Education at Holland College.

How did you become involved in adult education?
I taught in the public school system for four years and then I left education. I ended up working with the federal government at HRDC for about 16 years. Then I moved to the provincial system and to make a long story short ended up at Holland College. I’ve had a varied career at both levels of government. When I came to the College it was to work as Director of Human and Corporate Services which was working with financial administration and in resources area of the College. I did this work for about three and a half years.

Previously I was always involved in program delivery so when Albert Fogarty resigned and this job came up — it was for me. It really tied together my past experience and allowed me to be closer to the program delivery area. While at HRDC I worked with the community a lot with program delivery and I really enjoyed that aspect of the work. This job brings me back to my passion.

How is the Institute funded?
Essentially from governments. We get funding from the provincial government and the federal government through the Labour Market Development Agreement (LMDA).

We get a block of funding to supplement our budget from the provincial program for students in the day program and in adult night school. The provincial money has no requirement attached to it in terms of who can come.The federal funding only supports an EIeligible participants so that’s where it gets tricky since this is the bulk of our funding. We spend a lot of time managing enrolments with a balance between EI and non-EI participants. We get funding for EI participants on a per diem basis.

We have 11 different communities with two sites each in Charlottetown and Summerside. The other communities are Montague, Souris and Morell in the East and Ellerslie (night school), O’Leary, Palmer Road, Tignish and Westisle (night school) up West.

One of our objectives is to make our programs accessible. For example, most recently we’ve had discussions with people in Wood Islands. We’ve held an information session. If the people want to come to a program and the numbers warrant we will set up a program there.