A NEW DIRECTION FOR ENVIRONMENAL TRAINING
The Centre for Environmental Training Niagara College, St. Catherines, Ontario
prepared by Jon Ogryzlo, General Manager Centre for Environmental Training
--Used with permission of ACCC, Environmental Citizenship Program.
The Centre for Environmental Training in St. Catherines, Ontario is forging a new direction in the transfer of environmental skills to businesses and their managers.
The Centre offers market-oriented programs and services developed in close cooperation with its customers in the business community. Inspired by the philosophy of quality management and continuous improvement, the Centre is committed to the sustainable development goals of a healthy environment and strong economy.
The Centre is uniquely positioned both geographically and philosophically. Located in the heart of Ontario's Niagara, near the U.S. border, it is well situated to take on the role of a truly international institution. Philosophically, the Centre's commitment to meeting the needs of customers and employers has been key to the development of relevant, useful programs. Its programs and services are designed to increase its client's capacity to achieve their economic and environmental goals within the framework of sustainable development.
"The philosophy behind quality management and continuous improvement has guided the Centre forward," says Lynn Johannson, Director of E2M Management Corporation and a member of the Centre's Board of Directors.
The Centre strives not only to provide information and transfer skills to individuals and corporations, but also to provide tertiary benefits such as pollution prevention, waste minimization, and cost savings to companies. Its organizers identified an opportunity to help companies move toward integrated, holistic actions that will enable them to become more competitive, enhance quality and sustain the environment.
The Centre's programs were inspired by the observation that the majority of employers continue to obtain environmental skills by trial and error, in the absence of proper training.
Founded in 1991, the Centre was born out of an initiative to generate economic activity in the Niagara region of Ontario, an area hard hit by the impact of the recession causing a faltering industrial base. Organizers at Niagara College identified the environment as a prime source of opportunity for job training and employment.
Environmental and waste management were selected as the Centre's primary focus, largely to support provincial and national goals to achieve a minimum 50 percent waste reduction by educational, training and applied research solutions. The focus was selected not in isolation from "the real world," but on the basis of market-oriented values.
This approach draws on the projected needs of the employment market, and is backed up by hard numbers, including a Canadian federal government study which projects eight percent annual employment growth in the environmental field in this decade, even after the effect of the current economic downturn is taken into account. Demand for the program has already proven itself. In the 1993-94 academic year, the Centre had 180 applications for just 35 potions in its Post Diploma program.
Once this concept was in place, Niagara College sought partners in local government and the private sector to put it into action. The Centre's customer focus is reflected in the fact that 11 of 15 members of its board of directors work in the private sector or for industry associations. They have played a central role in shaping the direction and content of its programs.
"We want to expose these people to things that industry is concerned with," says Vince Benvenuti, a member of the Centre's board of directors and Director of Planning and Administration at QUNO Corporation, a major newsprint manufacturer based in the Niagara region. "It's the new approach in terms of the environmental field."
As with any start-up, the Centre is working out the bugs as it sets in place a core set of programs and grapples with expanding enrolment. The Post Diploma program in environmental management, currently with 35 students, is expected to grow to 70 places next year and level off at 100 students the year after.
In addition, there are two adult certification programs: the Environmental, Health and Safety program, with 20 students, and the Waste Management Coordinator program, with 16 students.
The Centre also develops and delivers a wide range of training products including seminars, on-the-job training, customized training, Ontario Environmental Training Consortium/Ministry of the Environment and Energy courses, consulting services and special initiatives. It has developed a resource base of information and research materials available to business, industry and government. It also conducts applied research, particularly in the application of new technologies to the environmental field, in partnership with employers, government and other educational institutions.
Partnership, and the focus on industrial training needs drive a number of customized programs designed to meet specific industry environmental challenges. These specialized courses are tailored to deal with industry and business-specific issues such as the transportation of dangerous goods, emergency response, total quality environmental management, wet laboratory operations, regulations and compliance, waste minimization, pollution prevention and office recycling. The Centre works with staff faculty and an associate network to develop and deliver programs on-site for business and industry.
The Centre is pursuing other initiatives, including a push toward international activities. These include a joint venture project to establish a new Centre Industrial and Environmental Training at Burapha University in Thailand, which is funded in part by the Canadian International Development Agency; articulation agreements with Brock University, and a new diploma program in Environment Health and Safety.
Reflecting the shift that is sweeping through so many North American institutions, both private and public, the Centre was created on the principles of self-sufficiency and partnership. In keeping with this philosophy, every attempt is made to offer programs in partnership with business, government, associations and other educators. These partnerships have played an important role in much of the Centre's activities.
The Niagara Industrial Training Advisory Corporation, an industry-driven organization that promotes and purchases worker training to meet business needs, is a key partner of the Centre. They have supported the development of research programs into environmental skills needs, the delivery of the one-year Waste Management Coordinator program, and the development of employer-specific training in Environmental
Management Systems. Another major supporter of new programming is the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission, which has funded the Environment, Health and Safety Program as part of its efforts to help displaced workers train for new jobs.
As part of Ontario's community college system, the Centre provides job-related training which focuses on applied concepts, as opposed to theory. The idea is to transfer the latest skills and technologies so that graduates can improve the environmental performance of businesses, institutions and communities.
The one-year Post Diploma program offers a well-rounded selection of course subjects which gives students a broad range of skills. It is a full-time program developed at the post graduate level and all entrants into the program must have a university degree or college diploma. Graduates of this program earn a Post Diploma certificate in Environmental Management.
The following is a brief outline if the courses in the post diploma program:
Environmental Laws and Regulations covers the latest laws and regulations including a systematic approach on keeping up-to-date. Material includes case studies. Environment Earth is a technical course on ecosystems, geology and the role humans play in the environment. Environmental Analysis I &II focuses on the methodologies and tools required in environmental assessments and audits. Waste Minimization and Pollution Prevention offers a detailed and integrated approach to implementing a waste minimization and pollution prevention program for industry. Environmental Communications I & II provides instruction on communications in business organizations and with regulatory agencies. Energy Management focuses on the design and implementation of energy audits and energy management programs. Business Management for the Environment is a course on business management skills specific to the needs and markets of environmental industries. Hazardous Waste Operations focuses on hazardous waste removal, reduction, containment and elimination. Health, Safety and Environmental Audits provides students with the basic knowledge and skills to perform audits and assessments in the health and safety field and environmental fields. Waste Management Systems enables students to identify and recommend options for waste processing and collection systems, and the procurement of waste management equipment. Industrial Processes and Waste looks at industrial processes and waste management practices in a cross-section of industries. Management for Sustainability and Quality familiarizes students with the principles and challenges of sustainable development, plus the principles and practices of total quality environmental management within a sustainable development framework.
The latter course emphasizes the importance of changing organizations and behaviour to become proactive rather than reactive in handling environmental affairs. Participants gain facilitation skills which enable them to champion the growing need for development of environmentally responsible products and zero waste generation. They also acquire the ability to develop specific environmental improvement objectives, action plans and measurement methods that will challenge and exceed previously established standards.
Students in the Post Diploma program come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds ranging from university degrees in business administration to college diplomas in human resources. The mixture of backgrounds is appropriate to the realities of the rapidly revolving job market, which has a broad variety of private and public sector opportunities.
The concept of mixing skills and backgrounds is driving a proposal to link the Centre with Brock University's Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies. The Centre will reserve up to 10 spaces in its Post Diploma program for students enroled in the Institute, likely beginning in 1994. Institute Director, John Middleton describes the proposed linkage as the perfect combination of a liberal university education with practical job training.
Lorrant Vaska, a mechanical engineer who graduated in June 1993, describes the Post Diploma program as "ambitious" in scope and depth He found it helped him land an environmental planning job at Proctor & Redfern, an engineering firm active in environmental work. Vaska is now working on landfill site selections for three Ontario municipalities, a role that utilizes his skills and knowledge in both engineering and environmental affairs.
Although the environmental job market has been affected by lingering economic stagnation and government cost-cutting, the Centre is optimistic that tougher regulations and the trend toward greener corporate operations will lead the private sector to absorb the majority of its graduates. With its graduates fulfilling their role in the greening of corporate operations, the Centre will have moved closer to its goal of acting as a positive force for sustainable development by supporting a healthy economy and environment.

filetype:doc
file time: 2008-02-16
file size:23040
Click Here To Download...