KAMLOOPS – The first cohort of students enrolled in the TRU Water Treatment Technology Program’s face-to-face delivery format will meet their instructors and each other at a “meet, eat n greet” breakfast to be held at 8 am on September 11th at the city’s water treatment facility on Lorne Street.

The first cohort of students, 25 First Nations students from around the province, will attend classes in four one week sessions occurring over the fall 2006 session, starting in September and ending in November.

The classes will be held at TRU’s Trades and Technology Centre and in the educational facility located at the new Centre of Water Quality, created through a partnership between the City of Kamloops, Zenon Environmental Inc. and TRU to provide current and future training and research opportunities in the water treatment industry.

“This initiative is a slice of our first semester,” explained Steve Benoit, coordinator of water education programs at TRU. “The entire two-year program consists of 20 courses. What we’re offering this time is the first section from each of the first five courses.”

Benoit, a 1980 electrical grad from TRU who taught at the university for 15 years before getting hired as water education coordinator in January, 2005, explained that the abbreviated program is aimed at allowing First Nations water systems operators to get the required training they need to become certified operators and also participate in an institutional credential system.

“This is a model program under TRU’s mandate to provide open and accessible education relevant to expressed needs,” he said, noting that “The current four-week face-to-face program represents a unique hybrid training opportunity for First Nations water treatment operators for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

“It’s designed to provide operators with a flexible combination of in-class lectures supplemented by hands-on practical training, and other smaller regional water treatment facilities will also be used in order to ensure that a wide range of technologies will be represented in our program so that operators will not only enhance the skills necessary to operate and manage treatment facilities, but will be able to access a laddered institutional credential system through the university.”

The program has been running in distance-delivery format for just over a year, with 20 students currently enrolled. Just as the university anticipates attracting students for the program from all over the world, the current distance cohort is all over the map, too, said Benoit.

“Some of the students are just out of high school, some have been working in the water industry for some time, while some are looking for a career change,” he noted.

The Water Treatment Technology Program supports a progressive credential structure (certificates, diploma, degree) in keeping with the laddering concept the university pioneered in the province, and also allows for prior leaning assessment and recognition, as well as a flexible distance delivery format.

Those wishing further information on the program may call Steve Benoit at 250-314-6749 or email: sbenoit@tru.ca, or check out the TRU water education and research centre web page

For more information, please contact Steve Benoit at 250-314-6749