Alberta’s Education Minister was on hand for a ribbon cutting ceremony of the newly renovated Metals Building at Olds College of Agriculture and Technology this week.
The Central Alberta Collegiate Institute (CACI) was one of first 12 partnerships that had been approved as collegiate programs by Alberta Education in 2023.
Jackie Taylor is the Executive Director of CACI – pronounced kay-see – and the Community Learning Campus Director for Olds College and Chinook’s Edge School Division. She highlights the fact that with the approval came grant money which was used for the completion of the Olds College facility in those welding shops for the CACI programming for youth to participate in real high level training and programming while they are still in high school. Taylor says “we were able to take the two spaces, join them together and develop out brand new state of the art welding bays. We went from 15 older bays to 22 brand new bays. So it allows us, one, to have state of the art facility for our youth to train in with the Olds College instructors, as well it really just gives us more booths and space where we can just simply get more students from our schools into the space across a calendar year.”
Taylor points out that their particular focus for youth is around skilled trades training and being ready for launching careers in the trades. She says “if we’re looking at per class capacity, we now can do 7 more students per class and we run approximately 250 learners a year through that space currently. So we should be able to then increase that, obviously, by another 70 to 100 students annually.”
CACI’s kindergarten to Grade 12 partners are four school divisions – Chinook’s Edge, Wolf Creek, Red Deer Catholic, and Red Deer Public. The partnership also includes Olds College, Red Deer Polytechnic, as well as Careers the Next Generation. Alberta Education had awarded $4.4 million to CACI to renovate the Olds College Metals Building and $2.6 million for similar upgrades at Red Deer Polytechnic.
It is really all hands on deck to get our youth ready for careers in the skilled trades, according Taylor. She points out that they have gone from 8 students that she inherited in 2016 when dual credit was still in its pilot project stage in Olds to now and Olds College has partnered with 56 school authorities around the province for it. She says “for Olds College, we are touching the lives of a thousand plus individual learners a year for dual credit and for my Chinook’s Edge hat on we are touching the lives of probably five or six hundred students annually in different dual credit experiences but with this CACI facility is really is about our region, it’s about central Alberta’s youth. So us as four school divisions, two post-secondaries, and industry it really is about reaching out to hundreds and hundreds more, as much as we can into the near future.”
Taylor highlights the fact that we know the skilled trades, like many other careers, are facing labour shortages. She says “we need more and more journey persons in the very near future for many of our industry areas as they grow and develop and expand. So I think for our community to know is, you know, if you are an industry that employs skilled trades journey persons, any help we can get with getting students started in that first and second year of apprenticeship is so important to them becoming that successful third and fourth completed apprentice and then getting their journey person certificate.”
She encourages our youth who are looking to careers within the skilled trades to reach out and work with their school teams to understand the journey. Taylor adds, youth need to make sure they are applying themselves really well in school – particularly in the maths and sciences – and building a strong foundation that will launch them into apprenticeship. She notes it is important for the community and the central Alberta region to understand that the province is focused in on this but we need to stay focused in on it.
Listen to 96.5 The Ranch’s conversation with Jackie Taylor.
