High school students now have another option, thanks to a $34,000 agreement between the B.C. Mining HR Task Force, School District 54 and Northwest Community College.
The agreement allows Grade 11 and Grade 12 students to enroll in environmental monitoring courses at NWCC as part of a dual credit program, SD54 Assistant Superintendent Michael McDiarmid explained.
The Environmental Monitoring Assistant Program is currently offered at the NWCC as an eight-week camp-based program.
“The key elements are that we are meeting the needs of industry and we’re working with the school district and the high school to help them meet their requirements,” NWCC Project Adminstrator with the School of Exploration and Mining Danielle Smyth said.
McDiarmid agreed.
“This program allows us to provide more choices for our students,” he said.
“It [EMAP program] also provides students with very specific job skills.”
The agreement funds the establishment of a four-month pilot program that is classroom-based with shorter field-based components, Smyth said.
“Because we’re dealing with the high school semester, it just makes more sense in planning to stretch the program over four months as opposed to a condensed eight-week program,” Smyth explained.
Graduates of the program are qualified to work as environmental monitors in the minerals industry, or they can use the courses to ladder into other programs at NWCC such as the applied coastal ecology program, Smyth said.
NWCC and SD54 have set aside 50 per cent of the spaces for First Nations students.
Students can take the course tuition-free as the funds, donated by the Mining HR Task Force are earmarked to help cover tuition costs for the program with the remaining tuition fees covered by SD54, Smyth said.
If successful, Smyth said, additional agreements could be arranged between other school districts and post-secondary institutions to offer the program across the province.
The program is slated to begin in September 2013
The program is sponsored by Imperial Metals Corp and the Smithers Exploration Group.
The Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation and The Office of the Wet’suwet’en are also supporting partners in this project.