Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Moose Jaw campus opened its doors to the community on Wednesday to show off the programs the school has to offer.
Two open houses were held. One in the afternoon aimed towards high school students and another in the evening for parents and prospective students.
One of the programs on display and giving tours was the Civil Engineering Technology and Water Resource Engineering Technology program.
Instructor and temporary program head Shawn Lamothe said it was great to have an open house to let everyone know what Saskatchewan Polytechnic is all about.
“It’s great to see the community come in here and know what we do. There’s nothing worse than running into people in public somewhere and saying ‘Oh SaskPoly, you guys are a business school.’ Well, do we have a business program at the school? Yes, but we aren’t a business school. There are many, many different (programs) between trades and engineering technologies that are here as well,” Lamothe said.
During the afternoon, the Civil Engineering Technology and Water Resource Engineering program had at least a few students stop by their booth that showed an interest in the program.
“It’s fantastic to see, especially when we have the involvement of Prairie South and Holy Trinity coming in and we can get them in with their students. It would be nice to be able to bring in the entire group of Grade 12s independently and show them through our career stuff and that’s kind of our goal. We’re trying to work towards that,” Lamothe said.
Lamothe said they run a five-semester program that includes an eight-month paid work term. The first year, the students take a common year of both civil engineering and water resource engineering before branching off into a major.
Students also have a capstone project where they build something using the knowledge that they’ve learned. A few of the capstone projects underway now include creating greener concrete, reducing the cost of self-healing concrete by 1,400 to 1,500 per cent, drainage designs for Wakamow Valley and small structure designs.
Lamothe said they have about 50 to 60 per cent hands-on learning methods. They have 25 hours of contact time, meaning time spent meeting with students in a lab setting.
“Things like our concrete, soils, asphalt stuff, our hydraulics programs are very hands-on. We’re going to be coming in doing the actual testing, seeing what data we get, processing that data and putting it in a real-world scenario,” he said.
The Civil Engineering Technology and Water Resource Engineering Technology program has an intake of 48 students, but they currently have about 36 students.
Those who come out of the program can end up is a wide variety of careers including project management at water treatment plants, project or construction management, project coordinator, or water rehabilitation projects and monitoring with the Water Security Agency or SaskWater. Also, with no geomatic program, surveyors also come through the program.
Lamothe said they are also happy to do one-on-one tours for prospective students and their families to do a walk-through of the facilities. You can set up a time by emailing Lamothe at lamothesh@saskpolytech.ca or call 306-630-2660.
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