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The environment, sustainability, hospitality and culinary arts are emerging as in-demand programs

Schools respond to education trends

It's that time again when pundits and prognosticators trot out their predictions and hope for the best.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2008-01-16 ]

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ANITA SHILTON
Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University

The post-secondary education sector is no different from any other, although its look ahead is rather more serious than most.

Anita Shilton, dean of the Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University, says there are several important trends worth considering for which her school has prepared new programs.

The environment has become a high priority for governments and individuals, the Ryerson dean says, and the acceptance of sustainable practices is gathering more and more speed.

As a consequence, the Chang School is launching a sustainability program this year.

And still on the environmental front, the Continuing Education division will also introduce a Food Security Certificate program, the only one of its kind in Canada and the United States.

Admission requirements to the program vary, but an undergraduate degree in any field or the approval of the academic co-ordinator and five years professional experience in an area relevant to food security are various ways ways to be accepted. Among other things, graduates can expect to work assessing and monitoring food security and designing programs and policies to achieve food security at different levels, whether individual, local or national.

"Those (environmental) topics are of increasing interest," Shilton says. "There's a whole industry growing up (around them)."

Another trend that has emerged for which the Chang School has developed a program is the once dormant but now very much awake demand for mainframe operators. Shilton says demographic changes -- yet again it's those boomers heading for retirement -- have lead to the expectation of a huge gap in the skills necessary to keep these computing heavyweights working.

"We've sort of skipped a generation," Shilton says. "After the mainframe the really sexy stuff came from the personal computer."

The Chang School partnered with IBM to develop a one-of-a-kind mainframe operators' program, she explains, with classes offered on Saturdays to accommodate the schedules of working IT professionals. Enrolees can expect to complete the certificate course in less than a year.

At Humber College, Barbara Riach, associate registrar, Enrolment Services, says sustainability is also a trend her school has identified. As a result, the college is offering a new Sustainable Energy and Building Technology diploma this fall.

Other trends Humber has picked up on and for which programs or courses are either in development or have recently got under way include Web-based journalism and interior decorating.

Also in renewed demand is training for the hospitality and culinary sectors, Riach says. "We seem to be on the rebound from those (damaging) incidents," she says, referring to SARS and the other upsets that knocked the city around a few years ago.

Although all these and other programs are a result of applicant and industry demand, another trend -- if that's the right word -- has emerged from greater social awareness and has found a home at Centennial College.

Vicki Bismilla, vice-president Academic and Chief Learning Officer at Centennial, says a General Education requirement for all of her college students in all diploma programs should be complete by June 2009. The one-semester Global Citizenship course has students examining historical and other inequities in Canada and around the world, Bismilla says.

That's a trend worth encouraging, and something Centennial students obviously agree with it because, she says, the feedback on the requirement has been highly positive.