Education opens doors from previous page

Tourism Vancouver, the city has set records for tourist visits for four straight years.

VCC’S assistant department head of hospitality management, Monique Paassen, told the Straight that the diploma enables people to find entry-level and supervisory positions. “Once you continue with a bachelor’s degree, you have made a decision that this is going to be your full-time career and your goal is management,” she said.

There’s also a bachelor of hospitality management (executive cohort) for people with seven years’ experience in the industry who are working in a managerial capacity. It’s offered once a week on Tuesday evenings rather than the three days a week that students must commit to as part of the full-time bachelor of hospitality management program.

“It’s exactly the same as the daytime bachelor’s but it’s geared for industry people who have full-time jobs,” Paassen said. “It just takes longer for them to graduate.”

Students can enroll in VCC’S diploma in hospitality management every January and September, whereas the bachelor of hospitality management intake only occurs in September. Both programs are offered at the downtown campus (250 West Pender Street), and students have the summer off so they can gain industry experience.

Paassen said students in the bachelor’s program take courses in operations management, multiculturalism in business, labour relations, service, marketing, entrepreneurship, and new media. They also do a research project over three semesters.

“Sometimes if they are already working in industry, we say, ‘Approach your supervisor or your manager and try to do a research paper that’s linked to your property or the business you work in,’ ” Paassen said.

That way, she added, the student’s major project can help benefit them on the job.

“One thing that really makes us stand out from other institutions that offer hospitality management is that there are only hospitality students in each course,” Paassen said.

VCC’S hospitality-management programs also host an “interview week” each February for industry employers to meet the students. According to Paassen, at least 90 percent of the students who go through these interviews end up finding jobs.

“Lots of different companies are contacting us saying, ‘Do you have any more students?’ They’re still screaming for people out there,” she said.

One of the advantages of a hospitality career is the opportunity to work in hotels in other parts of the world. Paassen has firsthand experience finding employment in different jurisdictions, having graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international hospitality and tourism management in Switzerland.

“There are jobs and jobs and jobs,” she said. “You can go anywhere in this industry. Go to Dubai, if you like. There are a lot of properties there.”

To learn more about VCC programs, visit its open house at its Broadway campus (1155 East Broadway) from 3 to 6 p.m. on April 25.

FUTURPRENEUR CANADA

Mai Eilia laughs easily these 2

days. And why not? As project manager and founder of New Westminster–based Magnum Construction Services, she’s making a mark in the booming home-renovation and interior-design industry.

She launched her company last year, just four years after coming to Canada as a well-educated refugee from Syria who spoke fluent English, French, and Arabic.

“I want to hire more tradeswomen,” Eilia told the Straight. “This is my objective.”

She makes a point of hiring refugees, whether they’re from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, or any other country torn apart by violence. She also volunteers at MOSAIC, a Vancouver refugee-aid organization, as a way of giving back to her community.

“I didn’t have experience myself when I was hired in my first company here,” she said. “My boss trusted me.”

Eilia is from Aleppo, which has suffered the greatest damage of any city in the Syrian civil war. Fortunately, she was able to bring her father, mother, two siblings, and their families to Canada.

“It’s very difficult for me to watch what’s happening or to see photos about my city,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Eilia has a great deal of experience as a marketer, and she’s an adept researcher. While investigating how to start a business in Canada, she learned about a nonprofit organization called Futurpreneur Canada, which has been fuelling the dreams of young entrepreneurs since 1996.

It’s the only national nonprofit group that provides financing, mentoring, and support tools to aspiring business owners. Its loans can be leveraged to borrow more money from organizations such as the Business Development Bank of Canada, Vancity, and the Women’s Enterprise Centre.

Eilia spent a couple of months preparing her business plan.

“When I submitted it to Futurpreneur, I felt like I was putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the sea,” she recalled with a chuckle.

When she received a call from Futurpreneur requesting a phone interview, Eilia started jumping up and down with joy. She said she then called her mom, saying: “Oh, my god, they picked it. They read it. They want to know more!”

Each year, Futurpreneur provides loans to more than 1,000 young entrepreneurs across Canada. It doesn’t take an equity position in the companies it finances, nor does it get involved in the operation of the business.

But unlike conventional lenders, Futurpreneur provides mentorship. Eilia said she felt confident about many aspects of doing business but needed help with bookkeeping. So Futurpreneur arranged for her to receive instruction in this area from an expert, Isidro Saguindan.

She meets him about every six weeks, and he also responds immediately to questions she sends via email.

“I will call him and say, ‘I need help. Can you check my Quickbooks to make sure I’m not doing anything wrong before sending anything to the client?’ ” Eilia said. “He’s a very awesome guy.”

Eilia pointed out that many refugees in Canada have skills and education, and she’s never met one who

wants to be on welfare. She’s also aware that North America’s most famous entrepreneur, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, was the son of a Syrian immigrant.

At the same time, she recognizes the pain that refugees feel when they’re forced to flee their homeland. She said they are grateful to be given a new life in Canada but they can also be plagued with sadness over what’s been lost.

“They have a hole in their heart and it’s showing on their face,” she said.

This is a powerful motivation for her.

“I want to do well for this country,” Eilia stated. “I want to help as many people as I can along the way. To me, it’s not only about money.

“Of course, I want to make money, but I want other people to experience the same,” she continued. “I want to help others. If they’re facing difficulties at the beginning, I tell them, ‘It’s going to be all right. You’re not alone.’ ”

CAPILANO UNIVERSITY LEGAL ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

The convenor of Capilano University’s legal administrative 2

assistant program, Lindy Tucker, is well aware of one of the biggest challenges facing some B.C. law firms. They simply can’t find enough trained legal administrative assistants—known as Laas—to fill all the job openings.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Tucker said she recently attended a meeting hosted by members of the B.C. Legal Management Association’s human-resources subsection, where this was the dominant topic of conversation.

“We can’t graduate enough students to fill the demand,” Tucker said. “They’re coming out of their two-week practicum and they’re getting job offers right away.”

To become an LAA, students have traditionally enrolled in a full-time nine-month certificate program at Capilano University’s North Vancouver campus. There, they learn about various legal documents, aspects of the law, and how to do administrative work such as filing documents in court, scheduling trial dates, and arranging meetings.

But this fall, Capilano University is launching an online part-time certificate program with the same courses as those offered in the face-to-face program. The online program can be taken over six terms, enabling people already in the workforce or stay-at-home parents to study when it’s convenient for their schedules.

“They get an introduction-to-law course to give an overview of the Canadian legal system,” Tucker said.

There are also courses on basic conveyance and mortgage procedures, business writing geared to a law firm, corporate procedures, wills and probates, securities procedures, organizational behaviour, and word processing, among other subjects.

In addition, students learn about basic litigation procedures and documents commonly used in the legal arena, including affidavits and notices of civil claim.

“We also do a virtual legal-office course,” Tucker explained, “which is getting you to work hands-on with a mock legal file, so you’re doing real-life tasks that you would get in an office.”

All the instructors either are working or have worked in the legal field, so they bring a wealth of experience into the program.

Online courses will have the same instructors as the oncampus program; guest speakers will be broadcast live online. For students who can’t be available at those times, the lectures will be recorded.

The online program is well suited to people living in other parts of B.C., as well as to those in entry-level positions at law firms who want to upgrade their skills.

Starting salaries for LAAS in Vancouver begin at a minimum of $35,000 per year, according to Tucker. She said that because of the current labour shortage, some students come out of the Capilano program and receive offers of up to $40,000 per year.

“It’s a rigorous program, but they’re going to be rewarded in the end with job offers and with really good starting salaries for a certificate program,” Tucker said. “The other great thing is it can be used as a steppingstone to enter the paralegal-certificate program and work their way into the paralegal profession, if that’s what they want to do.”

Both the full-time and part-time LAA programs include a two-week practicum at a private law firm or government agency.

LAAS learn transferable skills, which can open other doors, like working for a licensed immigration consultant or in other administrative positions.

There is no deadline for applying for this fall’s online LAA program.

“Our admission requirements are high-school graduation,” Tucker said. “There’s also mature-student status that you can apply for if you didn’t graduate from high school and now you have more life experience.”

VCC CONTINUING STUDIES HEALTH SCIENCES

It’s not always necessary to take a four-year program to 2

escape the grip of a low-wage job. At Vancouver Community College, there are continuing-studies programs that offer a pathway to a secure future in a fraction of that time.

In the health-sciences area, there’s a full-time certificate program for medical-device-reprocessing technicians offered every September and February that only takes four months to complete. These technicians—often called Mdrts—learn how to clean, reassemble, and sterilize reusable surgical instruments in hospitals, private surgical clinics, and dental clinics. For three of the four months, students are on a practicum in a hospital setting, where they are paired with a working technician.

“Our instructors are on the department floor for the entire practicum,” VCC continuing studies health-sciences program coordinator Rebeccah Bennett told the Straight by phone. “We’re the only college in Canada that provides that.”

According to Bennett, there are small classes of only 14 to 16 students, and the presence of instructors throughout a practicum ensures a high success rate. MDRTS earn about $23 per hour.

“I would say 90 percent of the students get hired within two months of completing the program,” she said. “There is a huge labour market for MDR technicians right now because a lot of the hospitals are expanding their emergency departments. They’re expanding their operating rooms. And all that means they need more surgical instruments, which need to be cleaned and sterilized.”

Bennett pointed out that MDRTS play a vital role in patient safety and infection control. That’s because reusable surgical instruments are inserted into the body. She called the MDRT department “the heart of the hospital” because without it, the work would grind to a halt.

“We always encourage our students to think of the possibility that the surgical instruments that they’re working on may end up being used on a loved one,” she said.

That’s not the only VCC continuing-studies program in health sciences where there’s high demand from employers. Bennett said that there’s a five-week dietary-aide course that includes a two-week practicum at a long-term care facility.

This course provides students with knowledge and skills to prepare and deliver nutritious food to people in institutional settings. As part of the course, students go on field trips to hospitals and long-term care facilities, where they can observe on-site kitchen demonstrations.

They also become Foodsafe- and Whmis-certified. “When they finish, a lot of the long-term care facilities pay them $18 an hour,” Bennett said.

VCC continuing studies also offers professional-development courses, ranging from one day to one week, for licensed practical nurses and registered nurses. Among the most popular are stand-alone courses in foot-care nursing, IV therapy and insertion, physical assessment for nurses, and nursing leadership and ethics.

“LPNS will typically get around $25 to $30 [per hour] on the high end,” Bennett said, “but if they take this weeklong footcare nursing course, they can get up to about $65 an hour doing their own business.”

In addition, the health-sciences program in continuing studies offers one-day Foodsafe courses taught by retired publichealth inspectors, with certificates coming from Vancouver Coastal Health. “A lot of people opening restaurants take this course,” Bennett said, “or established restaurants send staff to take the course.”

CAPILANO UNIVERSITY TOURISM MANAGEMENT

Capilano University instructor Christy Dodds takes 2

cooperative education extremely seriously. To her, it’s far more than job shadowing for a few weeks.

“It’s monitored, it’s interpreted, there’s a reflective piece, and there’s faculty support all the way through the process,” she told the Straight by phone.

As the coordinator of cooperative education in Capilano University’s tourism-management program, Dodds places between 45 and 50 students on work terms, which are a mandatory component of the program, usually in their second year.

Students need to have a certain number of credits before they’re eligible to enroll in a career management course, and then ladder up into the co-op work term. Dodds teaches this course so they can define their skill sets, develop a short-term and long-term vision for their career advancement, and get down to the nitty-gritty of learning how to write résumés and performing well in job interviews. There’s also an astonishing number of interactions with people in the industry before students do their first co-op.

“The students in my course this September, had they chosen to attend all of the additional opportunities available to them— such as industry-panel day and a number of on-campus activities where employers came to recruit specifically the co-op students, as well as some off-property networking opportunities—they would have had the opportunity to meet over 100 industry members just in this semester, and literally engage in one-on-one conversations,” Dodds said. “It’s not just meeting strangers in a large networking situation but very specific opportunities. The industry members are aware that these are coop students who have committed to the industry.”

Capilano University’s tourism management co-op program is accredited by the Accountability Council for Co-operative Education and Work Integrated Learning, a.k.a. ACCE-WIL. According to Dodds, this council provides and encourages consistent program guidelines and standards.

“There’s a lot of criteria that goes on with providing a substantial co-op program,” she said.

Capilano University’s tourism management program has had a co-op component for as long as Dodds can remember, and she has been working there for almost two decades. Over the years, it’s expanded from a two-year diploma program to include a four-year bachelor’s degree, with specialties in general management, hotel and resort management, and adventure tourism.

“I’m really helping my students build their professional brand very, very early in their studies,” Dodds said.

One way to achieve that is by ensuring that they go on co-op terms with reputable employers. They can range from destination management organizations—such as Tourism Vancouver or Tourism Whistler—to top hotel chains like Fairmont to established local companies such as Capilano Suspension Bridge, Grouse Mountain Resorts, and Harbour Cruises.

As part of the co-op program, Capilano University tourism management students can also transfer to University of California Riverside, where they take courses before being assigned to work at Walt Disney World. In this instance, the student is away from Capilano University for six months.

“It’s an international program and they reach out to only a select number of Canadian universities, and we are one of them,” Dodds said.

Dodds won an Alumnni Award of Excellence in 2016, in part because she has such a high level of enthusiasm for what she does.

“I get energized by my students,” she says in a video on the Capilano University website. “I get so excited when they land positions or co-op placements that they were just really pining for and prepared for and interiewed for. They get accepted and I get to celebrate with them.”