Education/training
Colleges partner with Hydro OneIt gets dark early this time of year so at some point during the late afternoon you turn on the lights. Now imagine a world where there isn't enough staff to restore the power after an outage or to ensure the lights stay on after you've flipped the switch. DAVID CHILTON -- Special to the Toronto Sun |
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 [ 2007-12-05 ] |
That isn't a world Hydro One wants to inhabit, so the provincial Crown corporation, which delivers electricity across Ontario, has partnered with four colleges to ensure that as baby boomer staff start to retire there are enough younger employees to fill the vacancies.
The four colleges are: Mohawk in Hamilton, Georgian in Barrie, Northern in Timmins and Algonquin in Ottawa.
Cheryl Jensen, vice-president of Technology, Apprenticeship and Corporate Training at Mohawk, says two existing programs at the school largely met Hydro One's requirements -- the two-year electrical engineering technician certificate and the three-year electrical engineering technologist diploma.
Adjustments to the curriculum are under way to ensure all of Hydro One's requirements are met, Jensen says. "What we're doing now is a bit of a gap analysis to find out what the needs are," she says. Students enrolling in the two-year program will be the first to see the changes beginning in September 2008.
The minimum requirement to enrol in either program at Mohawk is high-school graduation with a college-level credit in math and preferably another in physics. "These are programs where students should have a high interest in math and technology courses," Jensen says.
Bob Emptage, dean of Engineering Technology at Georgian, says the admission requirements are the same for his school, although "there will be slight differences to what the colleges do," with the principal distinction being one of power distribution versus operations. Georgian focuses on distribution, notes Emptage, because the entire electrical grid for Ontario is controlled from Barrie. "It's like the bridge of the ship on Star Trek," he says.
Georgian has one intake of 90 students every September to its three-year Electrical Engineering Technology program. To meet Hydro One's demands the college has been able to make immediate curriculum changes, with more gradual adjustments planned in the near future. More significant changes will be introduced starting next September.
Mohawk accepts 160 students into the two-year program every fall at its Stoney Creek campus, with a further 180 students enrolled in the three-year program at its main Fennell site. At both Mohawk and Georgian the programs are about 90% male, although both Jensen and Emptage say their colleges are working to change those numbers. Tuition fees for the programs don't vary much. Mohawk's three-year diploma costs about $1,900 a year.
Although the Hydro One-linked programs aren't exactly a breeze -- Emptage says his is one of the more difficult at the college -- the prospects for employment in the sector could hardly be better.
There are no job guarantees, say Jensen and Emptage, even with the Hydro One partnership, but Georgian's dean speaks of 100% employment rates for successful graduates, and Jensen notes that 40% of Hydro One's workers are eligible for retirement in the next few years.
"This is a very promising field for students to enter," Jensen says. That's entirely true. But it's also true that it's a sector that doesn't get much public recognition -- unless the lights go out.
QUICK FACTS
- Mohawk, Georgian, Northern and Algonquin colleges have partnered with Hydro One.
- There are some variations to each of the college's programs.
- Applicants need a high-school diploma with college-level math.
- Curriculum changes will be made over time.
- Classes are about 90% male.
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