St. Clair College is doing its best to create some opportunities for our community.

By now everyone probably knows that the college received $32 million to build a new Centre of Applied Health Science.  That building will keep a number of construction workers and skilled trades people working for the next year and a bit.  More importantly it will allow the college to expand the number of programs available and improved laboratory and classroom space to better train our future health-care workers.  I know that sounds like a party line but, we need health-care workers and they need good facilities to learn in. The most interesting part is the memorandum of understanding between the college, the U and the hospitals to work together to improve local health care and learning opportunities.  The proposal has a medical clinic and pharmacy for the local community and that will create positions for students to gain valuable experience.

Next up, the new building for training construction trades and technicians is on-track to open in time for the new school year.  The new space for plumbing and electrical trades is a huge improvement over the existing lab space.  The new building allows for increased enrolment in plumbing and electrical trades as well as carpentry and other trades like drywall and masonry.  There is also a new construction materials testing laboratory for civil engineering, construction technician and architectural technician students to learn about the properties of common building materials and quality control testing procedures.

Here’s something that is very cool and maybe some of our readers may be interested.  A new articulation agreement with Lawrence Tech. University (Southfield, MI) will allow graduates of the Architectural Technology program to enter their bachelor of architecture program in the fourth year.  So many St. Clair grads have gone on to LTU and performed so well, that the faculty was able to work out this deal.  Starting in September third year students will be able to apply for the LTU stream to carry on to university.  There will still be a traditional third year curriculum for those that are not interested in going on.

Coming soon, projected for Jan. ‘10, will be a new program for wind-turbine maintenance.  You may have heard this on CBC radio in the past few days.  The initial offering will be a seven month course for those holding a Certificate of Qualification as an electrician or industrial mill-wright.  In Sept. ‘10 the plan is to open a two year technician program for all post-secondary students.  These programs will use space in the existing Ford Centre.

Most programs across the college have opened new slots to accommodate a surge in applications.  Many, many people in this region are taking the opportunity to learn new skills.  I have heard that the department I used to work in will have 200 openings for first year students in civil, construction and architecture (the first year is common for all three programs - students usually figure out by the end of first year what field they want to pursue).  For the past five or so years those programs have accepted around 120 students so this is a pretty big increase.

The news out of the college and the university can be used to generate new opportunities for regional economic diversification.  The more people that attend post-secondary institutes the better, simply because we can use it to create a learning culture.  Maybe instead of trying to get more stuff people will start to see the value of education.  Maybe the college and university will be able to use this momentum to raise their status and instead of relying on the auto industry, something more sustainable can come from this.