Municipality of Port Hope News Release
Thursday, January 18, 2018 – Port Hope, ON – A new partnership has been penned by the Municipality of Port Hope to join forces with McMaster University and Loyalist College, with a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to collaborate on future sustainable and environmental remediation efforts within the Municipality.
“This is an excellent opportunity for our community,” exclaimed Bob Sanderson, Mayor of the Municipality of Port Hope. “Council is fully supportive of this important, collaborative partnership, and we look forward to the research and projects that will be planned to promote the future health and vitality of our environment.”
The scope of the MOA includes determining how best to access, where appropriate, external funding opportunities to support research projects based on environmental stewardship and sustainability, and to determine the types of educational programming that best supports current and future workforce development needs in the growing field of environmental studies and sustainability. The partners have agreed to work collaboratively towards this vision, drawing on resources from within their organizations to support the goals.
“McMaster is excited to work in collaboration with the Municipality of Port Hope and Loyalist College,” says McMaster’s Senior Manager of Academic Sustainability Programs, Kate Whalen. “This partnership will provide our students with opportunities to apply their research and knowledge of environmental remediation and sustainability, while helping to inform the development of future policy, processes, and programs that will bring about impactful, positive, and sustainable change within the Municipality of Port Hope.”
“Building on our partnership with the Municipality of Port Hope, we are looking forward to working with McMaster University and the Municipality to design and implement projects, which help to redevelop remediated sites,” said Ann Drennan, Senior Vice-President Academic & Chief Learning Officer at Loyalist College. “Together we provide the region with a wide range of nuclear-specific radiation safety post-secondary education options, including Loyalist College’s one-year Radiation Safety certificate program, which began last September.”
Within the MOA, the Municipality has committed to ensure that the focus of the Centre of Excellence for Recycling Working Group – currently an established committee of Council – will explore the possibility of developing an institute devoted to environmental remediation and to end all forms of environmental degradation. McMaster University offers connections to faculty, staff, and students who are able to support and collaborate with Port Hope and Loyalist College through research and student experiential learning. Loyalist College offers access to state-of-the-art technology, as well as in-house expertise in supercritical C02 extraction of natural products and college level programming.
This MOA between the parties will ensure collaboration and appropriate and effective levels of communication in support of this partnership, identify regular meetings and schedules, provide a channel for sharing of progress updates and a commitment to work jointly to formalize the long term partnership.
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For more information, please contact:
Municipality of Port Hope
Kate Ingram
Communications / Community Engagement Coordinator
905-885-4544 x2248
kingram@porthope.ca
McMaster University
Kate Whalen
Senior Manager, Academic Sustainability Programs
905-525-9140 x21575
whalenk@mcmaster.ca
Loyalist College
Kerry Lorimer
Director, Marketing, Communications and Recruitment
613-969-1913 ext. 2536
klorimer@loyalistc.on.ca