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No science background?

Rebecca Penner wants to take the paramedic program at Georgian College in Barrie. It'll be tough to get in, but without the pre-health sciences certificate program she's taking now, also at Georgian, a successful application would have been out of the question.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2005-11-02 ]

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MADORIN
Georgian College

Sean Madorin, co-ordinator of the certificate program and the paramedic course at Georgian, says pre-health sciences has been offered at the school for seven years and was designed specifically with students such as Penner in mind: they want to work in the health care field but lack the science background. Once they've completed the two-year full-time certificate they can apply for any of Georgian's health care programs or those of other colleges around the province.

The only place that doesn't accept the certificate is the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences in Toronto.

This September, Georgian accepted 225 students into pre-health at Georgian's Barrie campus, with about another 45 being enrolled at the Owen Sound campus. A further 20 signed on at Georgian's campus in Mississauga.

What the program also does, Madorin candidly admits, is expose more students to Georgian's culture in the hope that they stay at the college rather than move on.

Direct admission into the pre-health program is pretty rare, Madorin says. Applicants need only Grade 10 English. Students enrolled in the program range in age from the early 20s and up, he continues, with the bulk of them under 22. Most come from Ontario but there are some from out of province and a few from overseas. The program runs two semesters -- September to April -- and there are 11 core courses to complete.

"Currently the students are studying introduction to biology, which is cells, tissues, genetics," says Madorin, who has a doctorate in physiology from the University of Western Ontario.

There's also a critical thinking course the students have to take, and a math course. "It's a fairly broad introduction to everything from statistics and probability, to trigonometry, to solving equations, so it's really basic." Tuition for the course is about $1,820.

As for levels of difficulty, both Penner and Karen Krzyworaczka, another student in the program, say it's no walk in the park. Penner says there's homework every night and on weekends, and Krzyworaczka adds that although the classroom requirements seem similar to those of high school, the amount of work students are expected to get through is high.

Krzyworaczka, who spent a year studying business administration at Fanshawe College in London, has worked for the same trucking company in Barrie for nine years. She says she hasn't made up her mind about what program she'll choose when she completes the pre-health sciences course. "There are so many opportunities open to me," she says, with nursing and respiratory therapy at the top of her list.

If Krzyworaczka does choose nursing -- Georgian has a collaborative agreement with York University, which means students do two years in Barrie and two years in Toronto -- she won't be much different from the majority of Madorin's students. Most of them, he says, head into nursing.

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