Action Sports Park Development

Exploring the World of Outdoor Adventure

In the fall of 2000 Algonquin College’s Pembroke Campus launched one of the most innovative college programs in Canada. The Outdoor Adventure program capitalized on the growing worldwide thirst for high adventure activities and the need to train individuals to work in the industry.

Greg Arminen ice climbingFast forward 17 years and the program is known around the world as its graduates have become the program’s greatest ambassadors, sharing their story of how they found a college program that finally met their expectations for post-secondary education. Students in the program spend three days a week on campus completing business courses in topics such as risk management, accounting, finance, and marketing. The other two days are spent at Wilderness Tours Resort, Mount Pakenham ski hill or other outdoor destinations where students earn certifications in a variety of outdoor skills including swift water rescue, alpine skiing and snowboarding, rock climbing, ice climbing, mountain biking and more.

Outdoor Adventure, Algonquin College, Pembroke Campus

Students also have opportunities to participate in international expeditions, such as the group of second-year Outdoor Adventure students who recently spent a week in Iceland testing fat bike technology in a country that is struggling to deal with its overnight success as a tourism destination. That learning experience was recently highlighted by CBC Radio, giving the program some great exposure and demonstrating how innovative the program has become, in this case as a leader in testing new technologies to address sustainability concerns.

Action Sports Park Development, Algonquin College, Pembroke Campus

The introduction of the Outdoor Adventure program has resulted in several spin-off programs being created that allowed the Pembroke Campus to carve a niche as Eastern Canada’s leading outdoor education post-secondary school. Other programs that are also offered at the campus include Outdoor Adventure Naturalist, Action Sports Park Development, and Environmental Technician.

The next time you go on a big adventure, don’t be surprised if your trip guide is a graduate of Algonquin College’s cluster of outdoor adventure programs. After all, program graduates are scattered in countries around the world, because the adventure tourism industry holds no geographical boundaries. The world is truly at each student’s fingertips.

Posted by Jamie Bramburger, Manager of Community and Student Affairs

Celebrating 50th Anniversary with New Programs at Waterfront Campus

As Algonquin College prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017, it will also launch several new programs at its Waterfront Campus.

Building on the success of its unique programs that attract students from across Canada, the campus is adding three programs to its line-up that are expected to draw students from both within Renfrew County and beyond the region’s geographical boundaries.

The most unique of these programs is the Action Sports and Park Development one year certificate program. As skateboard parks, BMX biking trails and snowboarding facilities become common place, this growing industry requires skilled workers who can build, design and maintain these extreme sport parks.

Algonquin College, Action Sports and Park Development

 

This is the first college program of its kind in Canada, and compliments the already very popular Outdoor Adventure program which was introduced at the campus more than 15 years ago, leading to a significant surge in the campus’s out-of-town population.

Urban Forestry-Arboriculture is also on the docket for the fall 2017 intake. This is also a one year certificate program, and while some other colleges also deliver this program, it will help the Waterfront Campus open up more opportunities for students who are looking for a career in the forestry sector. Over the past several years, the Forestry Technician program has had pent up demand, resulting in some students being placed on a wait list because all of the seats in the program were filled.

Urban Forestry - Arboriculture, Algonquin College

The third program being introduced is actually an expansion of the Radiation Safety program. The program will be renamed to Applied Nuclear Science and Radiation Safety and move from a one year certificate to a two-year diploma program, primarily to ensure the curriculum is meeting the expectations of the nuclear industry.

Bruce Power, Ontario’s largest private electricity generating company, has already endorsed the program by publicly choosing it as among a hand full of programs that it will endorse for its future workforce needs.

Applied Nuclear Science and Radiation Safety student experience

In addition to these new programs, others are changing. The Police Foundations program that has been traditionally offered as a two year diploma, will move to a compressed format allowing students to earn their college diploma in one calendar year.

The General Arts and Science Pre-Nursing and Pre-Health Sciences programs will also be getting a new name. There have also been some curriculum updates to these programs to allow them to offer enhanced pathways to college certificate and diploma programs and college and university degree programs. These changes are province wide and should be announced soon.

2017 will be a very special year of celebration for the college, and there is no way to better celebrate than by offering more programming.

 

Posted by Jamie Bramburger, Manager of Community and Student Affairs