The Destination Project will bring together faculty and students from across the science disciplines, promoting and enabling curricular innovation, helping students achieve their academic goals and fostering a community of science at the U of L and within southern Alberta. It will create new environments and subsequently new paths by which information and ideas can be shared. These facilities will house exceptional research laboratories. They will build on the U of L’s demonstrated success in attracting world-leading researchers to Alberta who are working to solve some of the most pressing problems our society faces today. This will be where scientists not only invite industry, community groups and government to learn about their latest discoveries, it will be a place where bench space is shared between them. It will be where partnerships are born and ideas become reality.

The Destination Project will be a place where undergraduate and graduate research opportunities flourish, where knowledge transfer and commercialization happen; the place the next generation of researchers, scientists and scholars credit for the start of their science careers. It will be a place where undergraduate and graduate students can begin their careers in the sciences, where they can take their ideas and, with the help of faculty researchers, entrepreneurs and industry mentors, turn them into productive businesses. It will include incubation space to be used by industry, entrepreneurial Albertans and investors from around the globe. The Destination Project will be the bedrock that ensures Lethbridge is home to one of Canada’s renowned high-tech and innovation hubs and southern Alberta continues to create wealth for the entire province.

This facility will be a centre for community engagement. It will offer rich resources for lifelong learning, provide meeting places for citizens and the research community, support schools and contribute to the cultural and economic vitality of communities. It will be an educational resource for teachers who provide curriculum-aligned learning opportunities and experiences for the K-12 system in Alberta. The great science teachers who already emerge from the U of L will attain a new standard of education and training unmatched anywhere in the world. It will also be a welcoming, interactive and fun venue for children and their families to visit for a day or a week through already-established community initiatives like science camps. The Destination Project will enable a hands-on approach to learning that will ignite a greater curiosity for science in our community.