Southeast College is looking to serve the industry needs in the region through a partnership with Viterra.
There is a marked demand in the southeast for industrial mechanics, so students enrolled in the Industrial Mechanic/Millwright Applied Certificate Program based in Estevan will be given all the help they can to excel in the program and get into the workplace. The partnership and the course are part of Fuelling the Future, a fundraising campaign that targets certain programs that align with business and industry needs.
“At the crux of it, there are opportunities for Viterra not only to provide scholarships and funding, but the opportunity for them to come into the classroom, engage students and build relationships,” said Dave Harazny, manager of college advancement for Southeast College. “By the time students graduate, there’ll be a career connection for them that meets Viterra’s needs as well.”
By default, students enrolled in the program will receive the $1,000 Southeast College Entrance Scholarship and, if they graduated from a high school within Saskatchewan, they will also receive the $500 Saskatchewan Advantage Scholarship. A number of scholarships available through the partnership with Viterra are forthcoming later in the year — the amount and the date they will become available are still to be determined. Harazny said students enrolled in the program can expect those scholarships to become available for application in the middle of the coming academic year.
Viterra plans to use various strategies to cultivate student engagement throughout the program as part of its partnership with the college. These include Career Connections events for students, as well as various promotions on campus and in college publications.
Harazny noted the partnership between Southeast College and Viterra is the result of a great deal of planning and analysis of the needs of local industries. The college and company determined what programs needed the most support, and compared them to which industries and sectors need more employees. Harazny said looking at market demands is a regular process for the college, which analyzes those demands on a yearly basis.
“We have labour market services folks here that deal with our clients and find out what their areas of need are in the next year, two years and so on, and what types of employees they’re looking for,” said Harazny. “We select our programs and allocate our budget to those programs according to that research.”
Industrial mechanics are eligible to work in a variety of fields, as Harazny noted that the the training involves “working on any machine that does not have wheels.” Industrial mechanics can work in sectors that include commercial and industrial operations involving machinery like wood, cereal and meat processing, power generation, hard rock and potash mining, mills and refineries.
Whether the program runs one year or several depends on its success in the coming year, said Harazny. The college plans to review how everything goes by the end of the year, to determine whether or not it will continue, like the Power Engineering Technician course, which has been running for several consecutive years now.
The Industrial Mechanic/Millwright program is still accepting applications and begins on Sept. 14. For more information or to enroll, contact Southeast College at 306-634-4795.
