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Education/training

Schools help foreign trained professionals

About 20,000 professionals trained abroad settle in Ontario every year. Some slip straight into a career commensurate with their qualifications and work experience. But a good many more get stuck doing anything that pays the rent -- engineers delivering pizza and doctors driving fork lift trucks are all commonplace rather than being urban myths -- and still others end up unemployed.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2006-11-29 ]

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One of the reasons why so many foreign trained professionals (FTPs) find themselves in such dire straits is a simple lack of information. One of the newest programs available to help correct that absence is Humber College's Centre for Internationally Trained Professionals.

Melinda Kao, co-ordinator of the centre, says the four-week, full-time program attracts IT specialists, engineers, accountants and others with training at a similar level. What the centre doesn't do, however, Kao says, is take anyone who has trained in an occupation which is regulated in Canada -- typically those in the health-care field.

For those trained in health care the best place for them to start is a professional college. The Ontario College of Pharmacists, for example, is one of the leaders in helping pharmacists trained abroad qualify to practice here. Another leader is the Ontario College of Nurses.

Both they and other colleges have programs to direct FTPs to the appropriate schools and universities. (For anyone unfamiliar with the professional colleges it should be noted they are regulatory and licensing bodies rather than teaching establishments.)

Kao says her centre offers free training in Canadian business culture, communications, resume preparation and job and search techniques. Students are also video taped during a mock interview to see how they perform, and the centre offers mentorship and unpaid job placement help.

"FAST-TRACK" PROGRAM

"They (the students) get an interview and a bit of a self-assessment to see how they relate to the Canadian job market," Kao says.

Seneca College offers a full-time program similar to Humber's. At Sheridan College there are two more programs worth investigation. The first is Fast Track to Technology Occupations for Internationally Trained Individuals. The other is Canadian Journalism for Internationally Trained Writers.

Also new is the college teacher training program at George Brown College. Rosalind Gilbert, the co-ordinator, says the program is a pilot project to train and qualify internationally trained college teachers so they can work in Ontario. The first intake is next January, Gilbert says, with a second intake in May 2007.

The program runs full time for 36 weeks, and so far the applicant pool is running about 50/50 male and female, Gilbert says. "We have students from all over," she says. "We have doctors from Ukraine, (those with) Master's degrees, PhDs from Burma, from Asia." Applicants are also a little older, she continues, recalling she'd just spoken to an Iranian woman in her late 20s or early 30s.

Gilbert's program offers English language training for educators, an online course in co-operation with the University of Ottawa on theoretical and practical aspects of teaching in Western society, and three hours a week in a paid teaching practicum at George Brown. The course costs $900-$1,000 -- it's not yet fixed -- and isn't OSAP eligible, Gilbert says. However, teaching fees of $35-$50 an hour will mean students can recover their tuition by the end of the program, she notes.

These programs are but a sample of what's available to FTPs. For a full inventory, your best bets are government of Ontario and government of Canada websites and those of the colleges.