Invaluable experience: northern College puts focus on experiential learning.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay

For students training to be water treatment specialists, the best hands-on experience can be found working in municipal labs. But provincial regulations won't let students experiment with municipal drinking water, and so, until now, that experience has been elusive.

Northern College has solved that problem by building its own water treatment facility.

At its Kirkland Lake campus in December, the college cut the ribbon on a brand-new, miniature version of a municipal water treatment plant where, because the plant operates independently from the municipal water system, students in the environmental technician--water and wastewater systems operations program can train without fear of impacting the public water supply.

The project has been done with the support of the Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA), the Crown corporation that oversees municipal water treatment services for more than 500 municipalities across the province.

Northern College president Fred Gibbons said the pilot plant finally gives students the experiential learning the college strives to provide in all its programming.

"We've developed a fully operational water treatment plant where we take water from the lake and put it through the full process and have potable drinking water at the other end, so our students are able to physically get involved in creating potable drinking water," Gibbons said.

Testing done on site allows them to not only understand the filtration process and chemicals that are used, but they also participate in the chemistry analysis to see how close they are to having potable water, he said.

Gibbons thinks this training will have "immense appeal" down the road; in particular, with regard to First Nation communities, which have faced challenges accessing and sustaining clean and safe drinking water.

The school is also working on off-shore partnerships with schools in China and India, countries that face similar challenges, to have students come to Northern for their training.

Beyond earning a certificate, the experiential training gives students a leg up when looking for work post-graduation.

"It's the closest we Can come to getting the students that three to five years' experience employers are looking for," Gibbons said.

Because water treatment plant operators are required to continually enhance their education to maintain certification, Gibbons

said Northern has a secondary opportunity to work in conjunction with OCWA to serve as a regional training...