Filling a skills vacuum in the West

JEFF HALE

Sept. 03, 2008 03:42 PM EDT

CALGARY — When Ryan Innis graduated from the mechanical engineering program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in his hometown of Edmonton in April, he felt he wasn't ready to start working.

Ryan Innis

Mechanical engineering graduate Ryan Innis – now studying for a bachelor of technology – chose the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology because of its ‘hands-on’ approach.

Ryan Innis

Mechanical engineering graduate Ryan Innis – now studying for a bachelor of technology – chose the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology because of its ‘hands-on’ approach.

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Ultimately, he wants to be a project manager or a supervisor for a company, and he decided he needed to improve his leadership skills to do so.

That's why Mr. Innis, 21, turned to NAIT once again, enrolling this fall in the institute's recently minted bachelor of technology in technology management. The BTech, as it is known, was introduced in September and allows those with two-year engineering or science diplomas, such as Mr. Innis, to obtain their degree in two more years.

As to why he chose NAIT, Mr. Innis says, "They're more hands-on. It gives you a greater sense of what works."

And what works for students is also good for companies looking to hire skilled workers in an environment of labour shortages in Western Canada. Educational institutions like NAIT have a variety of approaches to graduating students who are ready to offer businesses what they need.

At NAIT, for instance, Mr. Innis will discover more of NAIT's hands-on style with the capstone project, a key part of the BTech. Students go on-site and tackle a specific problem, such as inventory control, at a business or in an industry.

"That's the difference in terms of what these students will be doing," says Sam Shaw, president of NAIT, which has 86,500 full-time, part-time and occasional students.

"They're not going in and doing original research. They're going into a company and dealing with some real key problems."

It is one of the methods Alberta's two major institutes of technology are using to better prepare students for dealing with the province's economic boom. Both schools aim to produce graduates who are ready to jump in and help business right away.

"We have two customers," says Gord Nixon, vice-president, academic, for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, based in Calgary.

"Our direct customers are our students here on the campus but our ultimate customer is the employer."

Success rates

No one can argue with their success rates. Ninety-nine per cent of SAIT graduates last year were employed within six months of leaving the school and 95 per cent have been similarly successful within the past five years, the school reports.

At NAIT, 95 per cent of the 2005 class found jobs within six to nine months of completing their studies, according to the institution.

Both schools cite a thriving partnership with business and industry as one of the reasons for that success. They both employ advisory councils: industry professionals who lend knowledge, advice and direction to instructors and in creating curriculum.NAIT has more than 700 people on advisory councils and SAIT has a council for each of its 80 programs, comprised of 12 to 20 people that generally meet two or three times a year.

"These committees are critical for us," SAIT's Dr. Nixon says. "That's our connection into the future in what industry needs."

Graham Jackson, a senior staff development engineer for Husky Energy Inc., has served on SAIT's petroleum technology advisory council since 2000.

"They'll come to us with course changes and we'll give our opinions," says Mr. Jackson, a 1977 graduate of SAIT's petroleum technology program. "We have board members who are quite adamant about what grads should and shouldn't have. They express pretty strong opinions at times."

And those opinions are valued. SAIT changed its information technology program from a two-year diploma to a three-year applied degree after consulting with the information technology communications (ITC) advisory council. That council also worked closely with SAIT when the IT program was recently revamped over an 18-month period.

"It's making sure when the students come out that they have a relevant education to what the work force is looking for," says Barry Oxby, the chair of SAIT's ITC advisory council and the director of consulting services for Sierra Systems Group Inc., an IT consulting firm with an office in Calgary.

Evidence of NAIT's partnership with business and industry can be found in the Petro-Canada Centre for Millwright Technology, which opened in September. Petro-Canada contributed $2-million to its construction and NAIT expects the centre to contribute 200 badly needed prospective millwrights to the work force each year.

"The thing that keeps me up at night is the people side of it," says Neil Camarta, Petro-Canada's senior vice-president of oil sands. "I always say my top three priorities are people, people, people."

For an oil sands project such as Fort Hills, Mr. Camarta estimates Petro-Canada will need 500 people to manage construction, 3,000 contract engineers, 8,000 workers to build the facilities and 1,500 to run it.

Mr. Camarta acknowledges Petro-Canada's backing of the centre is "very mercenary" — many of the millwrights will most likely go to work for the company — but adds there is satisfaction in working with NAIT.

"We want to put our money where our mouth is," Mr. Camarta says. "We're complaining about labour shortages in Alberta so let's fix it."

At Olds College in Olds, Alta., the need for tradespeople has meant the college has reintroduced a program for welding after a 10-year absence and added programs for millwrights and carpenters.

Niche trades

With an enrolment of about 1,400 students, Olds College specializes in niche trades, such as seed and grain technicians, who run the export grain business; and farm equipment technicians, the people who provide service and repair.

But the college found that prospective students in those fields were opting for the higher wages of Alberta's oil and gas industry. So, companies have started recruiting high school students to the farm equipment program, much as sports teams try to lure an athlete, by dangling incentives such as scholarships.

"We have an obligation to those industries," says Robert Wilson, vice-president of academic research at Olds College."We're the only trainer they have. Those industries can't carry on without a supply of human resources."

Apprenticeships

Another option for students is apprenticeship programs.

About 20 per cent of SAIT's 13,000 full-load equivalent students — a calculation that includes part-time students — belong to the apprenticeship trades program, which covers occupations such as cooking, tool and die, and recreational vehicle service.Students spend 20 per cent of their year in the classroom and the remainder on the job. SAIT has handled the growth in the program by scheduling classes in shifts, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon.

After working with at-risk youth for 11 years, Kelley Prevost decided to change careers and enrolled in the carpentry apprenticeship program at SAIT, attracted by the money available to trades in Alberta and a preference to work with her hands. She is on track to enter the work force in about a year and appreciates the preparation the apprenticeship program has given her.

"We get a variety of experiences," she says. "You get an opportunity to see what you enjoy about the trade and what you're not keen on, so that when you are looking for work, you can focus on companies who do the things you like." The school has also turned to e-learning, where students can complete a portion of their classroom studies online, allowing them to stay on the job longer.

Another form of distance learning, Dr. Nixon says, is when instructors go to the job site for between half a day and several weeks to teach, as in SAIT's project management courses, when teachers journey to the Fort McMurray area.

NAIT, on the other hand, has created mobile classrooms: Initially introduced in 1981 as a trailer that taught the carpentry and wood trades, these classrooms are now state-of-the-art labs, measuring 16.5 metres long and seven metres wide.

The mobile classrooms have helped in the institute's general efforts to reach a wider set of students.

They have allowed NAIT to take instruction to native people, identified by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business as the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian population. According to the CCAB, aboriginals presently comprise about 4 per cent of the population, or about 1.3 million people.

NAIT is also trying to attract more women, whose enrolment in civil engineering has already increased 21 per cent, says Dr. Shaw. "When you look at the technology that's out there, you don't have to have a lot of muscle. It's intelligent use of technology. That will offset the skill shortage."

Such growth requires room to manoeuvre, though, which is why both schools have plans for expansion.

SAIT is considering a new trades-and-technology centre as well as new buildings for the hospitality industry and new media programs.

NAIT's plans are more sweeping. It has proposed a 10-year, $1-billion expansion to be conducted in two five-year phases, to be fully completed by 2017.

"My mantra with government is that we need to invest in technical education because this is how we will be competitive on the world stage," he says.

Special to The Globe and Mail

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