UFV is developing a short-term, skills-focused coding program for students studying physics and computer information systems (CIS). Though still in the early stages of development, the program is expected to focus on the training of third- and fourth-year students looking for employment in the technology industry.
The funding for this program comes as a one-time grant from the B.C. government of $500,000 divided among nine post-secondary institutions. The government, through their BCTECH Strategy has proposed to grow and invest in British Columbia’s tech sector.
The reason for the funding is to address a problem commonly expressed by local employers, that they cannot recruit skilled workers, especially those directly out of university. B.C.’s technology industry is currently growing faster than Canada’s overall economy and wages for these jobs are 60 per cent higher than B.C.’s industrial average. As the tech sector grows and evolves, more trained workers are needed to fill the growing demand.
Each institution involved is able to use the funding to develop programs as they see fit to serve the needs of their respective communities. While some institutions developed their courses with no prerequisites so that anyone could enroll, UFV’s focus will be to work with already experienced students looking to join the tech industry in order to provide them with the experience necessary for employment.
Liana Thompson, UFV’s director of continuing education, expects the program to be a non-traditional, roughly six-week program incorporating hands-on work training and classroom learning.
“We want our students to have long-term sustainable employment,” said Thompson. “Our hopes, our end goal is that this short, focused programming will give them the skills to be immediately employable in a tech industry position.”
Because it has largely been local tech industries expressing the need for more skilled workers, UFV will be working closely with employers in order to develop the program, integrating representatives from tech companies as well as faculty into the program working group.
“They’re not only going to help us write the curriculum, they’ll tell us exactly the skills they would be looking for in prospective employees,” said Thompson.
Additionally, some tech representatives have agreed to get involved with the program itself through guest-speaking arrangements. Liana also hopes that students will be able to work within some of these partnered tech companies to gain real world work experience and potentially finish the program leading into a job.
Currently, the short-term program is expected to take place from May to June next year. “We want to give students a bit of a break after exams in April but then get them right in there.”
It is not yet known if the pilot program will continue after it first takes off in 2017 because of the government’s one-time funding approach. Although this kind of funding works well to get new programs started, if often fails to address the need to continue the program. Despite this, UFV hopes to continue the program to better equip students for employment.
“We’re super excited,” Thompson said. “This funding will provide potentially employ for our students right out of university.”
