Education/training | Making Connections | Personal Advancement | Self-employment | Career Options

Education/training

Seneca launches Faculty of Workforce Skills Development

There are plenty of academic upgrading programs and job skills training options available in the GTA, but they tend to be scattered across numerous schools and agencies.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2007-08-22 ]

Send to a friend

STAN TALESNICK
Dean of Faculty of Workplace Skills Development at Seneca

Seneca College has decided to address this lack of focus with the introduction of its new Faculty of Workforce Skills Development. The faculty is already at work, although its new dean, Stan Talesnick, says there will likely be an official launch some time in September.

Adults -- whether Canadian or newly arrived -- youth, and internationally-trained professionals can use the services that the Faculty provides.

"We think there's increased demand," Talesnick says, explaining why the new Faculty was launched. "It will position our services more clearly. What we're going to be doing is building on these areas we have already pulled together."

The areas Talesnick is talking about include business office skills, academic upgrading, and academic and career entrance help. The new faculty will also deliver employment-related training that includes re-employment services for international professionals, employment resource centres, the testing of essential workplace skills, Job Connect, The Mentoring Partnership and the Centre for Entrepreneurship.

The faculty's services are being delivered at Seneca's Newnham and Markham campuses, as well as its community locations in Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Scarborough, Markham East and North York (Jane St. at Finch Ave.). "Pretty much anybody" can use the services, says Talesnick, who also notes they are not free. "Everybody is charged a fee; it's a question of who's paying it." So where there's a demonstrable financial need -- and the person qualifies for help -- there are bursaries available so would-be users of one or more of the services don't get shut out because they haven't got the money to pay for them.

As examples of what users of the new services can expect, Talesnick points to business office skills, the Centre for Entrepreneurship and the employment resource centres. Unlike other business courses at Seneca, he explains, business office skills training is of short duration and is intended to provide students with an entry into the working world. The Centre for Entrepreneurship will be a sort of nursery, Talesnick continues, where people with business ideas will be nurtured. And at the employment resource centres, Seneca will be working with the YMCA in some areas.

Despite the greater focus and better positioning of the college's services, Talesnick says Seneca isn't going it alone. "We're part of a network. What's key is that no one organization can meet everyone's needs."

However, one person whose needs the college definitively has met is Lisa Giutsos. Giutsos, 27, had worked in early childhood education for four years, and had completed her ECE training at Seneca. But she wanted an opportunity to work in the business world. "Basically, a change of career was what I was looking for," Giutsos says.

Last fall she took the business office skills course at Seneca -- before it officially became a part of the Faculty of Workforce Skills Development. Giutsos says she found the business English and computer skills she was taught the most useful, and has thrived since her graduation. Avoiding employment websites, which she doesn't like, she applied for a vacancy she saw in a newspaper. "I found a full-time job pretty much right away," she says, and now works as an administrative assistant at a vehicle leasing company in Markham.