Power engineering ending at Marconi

SYDNEY — This fall’s intake of students taking power engineering at Nova Scotia Community College Marconi Campus will be the last class to do the program.

The Nova Scotia Community College academic union told the Cape Breton Post that four faculty members were told on June 6 that the program would be suspended after the 202223 school year.

Nova Scotia Community College academic chair Bruce Clark confirmed the power engineering technology program was being suspended permanently.

“Like other programs, the college is always reviewing programs to make sure they are relevant to the needs and demands of our industry partners,” said Clark, the chair for the School of Trades and Transportation and Trades and Environment.

Working in collaboration with industry partners and the Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency, labour market demands for NSCC power engineer graduates provincially were reviewed. Clark said it was determined only two programs offering power engineering were needed: the current and longer-running programs in Dartmouth (Akerley Campus) and Port Hawkesbury (Strait Area Campus).

“The school, along with Marconi Campus, recommended suspending this program because it was really redundant,” Clark said.

WRONG DECISION

With full intake and placement high, NSCC academic union vice-president David Pearson was “a bit shocked” by news the program was being axed.

“The program itself is a little bit unique,” said Pearson. “In this particular program, they’ve combined it with process operations. So you can work in different plants and industries across the country.”

Pearson explained that Marconi Campus is only one of two places in Canada where process operations is offered, the other is the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

“That makes it a crafty thing when someone is leaving power engineering (at Marconi). They leave with a fourth class engineering ticket and then they can also work as a process operator ... a bit of a leg up.”

Pearson said there is still a need for skilled workers in these areas and the labs associated with the program, a steam lab and process operations lab, are too important to lose.

“We’ve had students from Angola, Russia, Papua New Guinea, I’m missing a few here but students from all around the world have come here to train on that process operations simulator, so, through Imperial Oil,” Pearson said. “It was a bit of a shock.”

Clark said the course was always full but intake was only 15 people.

LOST JOBS

The union is also concerned about the loss of four fulltime jobs with benefits. Clark said they are regularly meeting with the faculty who are affected.

“I think we’ve assured them we will continue to work with them to find options for them come next year,” said Clark, who has been with NSCC since 1989 and an academic chair for 10 years. “We’ve met to discuss the rationales as to why the program was being suspended and assured them we will continue to work with them and explore other options and also explore other program opportunities within the college.”

NEW CAMPUS

The cancelled program has nothing to do with the new downtown Marconi Campus slated to open in 2024.

But that doesn’t mean there might not be new programs added.

“We are also exploring with the college and our industry partners other technology programs that we could put in the new campus,” Clark said. “We don’t refer to it as a loss of a program as much as program replacement. Replacing it with something that’s new, that’s innovative and that meets the needs of our industry today and tomorrow.

Located along the Sydney harbour, the new campus is expected to house a student population of 1,300 to 1,400 students. The current location off of Grand Lake Road has a student population of 1,100 to 1,200.