BCIT: 50 years and counting
Institute broke new ground and launched thousands of careers.
In 1960, the Chant Royal Commission on Education recommended that British Columbia start a “technology institute” to meet the growing demands of industry.
It took four years, but on Oct. 5, 1964, the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) opened at Willingdon and Canada Way in Burnaby.
Six hundred and forty-seven students were enrolled in 16 programs, including hotel, motel and restaurant management, mining technology, and chemical and metallurgical technology.
It was a huge success, and BCIT grew in leaps and bounds. Within a decade, 647 students had turned into 14,331.
Last year, it had 47,320 students (17,981 full-time, 29,339 part-time).
The original 16 programs have mushroomed into more than 300, and the two original BCIT buildings are now part of a complex of 51. There are also satellite campuses in downtown Vancouver, North Vancouver, Richmond and Delta (the new Annacis Island campus).
BCIT marks its 50th anniversary Saturday at the Burnaby campus from noon to 4 p.m. There will be 1964 cars on display, a room-sized 1964 computer, and all sorts of vintage photos and equipment. They’ll even be trotting out the original logo, which is very Star Trek.
The spaceship Enterprise on Star Trek was supposed to explore the cosmos, to boldly go where no one had gone before.
BCIT hasn’t done anything quite that dramatic, but in its own way it is boldly venturing into new realms. Courses are constantly being adjusted to meet the needs of the employers who hire BCIT grads.
“I think our hallmark is working with industry,” said BCIT president Kathy Kinloch. “Government as well, but largely industry, to ensure that we have the best-skilled future employees for what’s needed in the economy. To keep the relevance, we’re constantly changing to make sure the connection is relevant and timely for the employers of tomorrow.”
It seems to work. BCIT has stellar numbers when it comes to job placement.
“If you look at our degree graduates, about 93 to 95 per cent have jobs in their field before they graduate, compared to the B.C. average of about 80 per cent,” said Kinloch.
“If you’re graduating with a diploma, the average in B.C. is 66 per cent, at BCIT it’s over 80 per cent. For those who are in the skilled areas, 95 per cent of people who complete apprenticeships have a job in their chosen trade before they leave.”
Wynne Powell knows this first-hand. The recently retired CEO of London Drugs is a BCIT grad, and spent several years as BCIT’s chairman of the board.
“I think I was in the second business class through BCIT, I graduated in 1968,” said Powell. “I became part-owner of my own company when I left, but I (also) had seven firm job offers. All good job offers, like IBM and companies like that. They all wanted BCIT grads.
“In fact, a lot of London Drugs’ management is BCIT grads. Clint Mahlman, who is chief operating officer, is a BCIT grad, as is his wife, who works in the emergency room at Royal Columbian.”
Powell decided to go to BCIT because he could fast track his education.
“I looked at it and thought ‘ I can get a four-year commerce degree out of BCIT in two-and-a-half years of intense work, 80-hour work weeks,’” he recalled. “That appealed to me.” Fast-tracking your education appealed to River Chiban off, as well.
Chiban off is studying to be a CNC machinist technician.
CNC stands for computer numeric control.
“It’s computer- guided machining,” he explains. “Manual machines are all done by hand cranks and stuff like that. A CNC machine is 100 per cent the same thing, except the motor is hooked up to all the cranks and the computer tells the motors where to turn to.
“You write the program telling the computer how much to move things — what direction, up, down — and the computer knows how to tell the machine in computer language.”
The two-year program has three semesters.
“The first term you do all manual stuff, you learn the milling, the lathes, surface grinding, drilling, even hand-filing, all that stuff,” said Chibanoff. “How to use a hacksaw.”
The second semester is spent on the job getting practical experience. Chibanoff worked at Modern Engineering.
“I worked there for eight months, and still work there on weekends,” he said.
“It’s one of the more high-end machine shops in the Lower Mainland, it’s all CNC.”
The third semester is spent back at BCIT, getting the CNC technology down pat.
Chibanoff said i t’s an “intense” course, but worth it.
“As you’re older your mindset changes a little bit,” said the 29-year-old, whose last job was driving a forklift at Costco.
“In high school, I wasn’t really into school. Now I’m actually doing something that’s interesting, it’s fun. You actually care about what you’re doing. Now I’ve got a career out of it. And I enjoy going to work.”
Many BCIT classes are hightech, such as the mechatronics and robotics program.
“Mechatronics is a blend of mechanical and electronics,” said instructor Brent Dunn.
“We’re all about the control of mechanical devices using computers and electronics. A robot is just an example of that, a small subset of mechatronics. We teach a lot of electronics and computers, and a little bit of mechanical, so they can blend it all together.”
Student Danilo Dal Cengio said the two-year course is “really hard work.” But that’s what he wanted. “At BCIT, you’ve got to put in the time, you’ve got to study, you’ve got to work hard,” he said.
“(But) the labs are a lot of fun. Everything you learn in the week is all put in the lab, right away. So everything you learn you get hands-on (experience) by the end of the week.”
Dal Cengio built a small-scale elevator for the course with PLC programming.
PLC stands for programmable logic controller. And he quickly found out how it was applicable to industry.
“I had a job as a co-op at an engineering firm in Port Coquitlam, and it was centred on PLC and all the industrial automation,” he recounts. “So when I went there, it was great, because I immediately knew what to do. PLCs, oh, I’ve seen this before — I know how to program this. It’s a lot of fun.”
Dal Cengio has been offered a job when he graduates.
• BCIT already had a captive market when it arrived on the scene. In 1962, BCIT’s first principal, E. C. Roper, estimated the province was only training 2,400 of the 8,400 skilled workers British Columbia needed per year.
“We are desperately short of technicians,” Roper told The Sun in 1964.
“We have had cases where B.C. industries have had to bring men from Britain or the East to repair new equipment. That isn’t good.”
Demand was high, with 1,500 people applying for the 647 positions open at the $7 million campus, which was carved out of a second-growth forest next to the Burnaby Vocational Institute (later the Pacific Vocational Institute). It was a different world. In a photo of the 1964 grads, the male students are all in suits and ties — and almost all the grads are male.
Social Credit Premier WAC Bennett was high on BCIT, perhaps because the federal government paid for 75 per cent of it. Industry was enthused enough to form “advisory councils” for the various programs, a tradition that remains to this day. But there were some bumps along the road. During a recession in the early 1980s the provincial government decided to take a hard look at post-secondary institutions like BCIT.
“The business school in particular was under strong review. (They said,) ‘since it’s the same education somewhat as the universities, why not just collapse it?’ ” said Powell, who was chairman at the time.
“We were able to save it, because industry came out in force and said to the government, ‘ Don’t touch our success story. These graduates are job ready, they know how to work, they’ve survived an intense environment and we can put them to work the minute they hit our companies. So leave it alone.’ So they did.”
Today, 20 per cent of BCIT students already have a bachelor’s degree or higher — they enrol there to get the real world experience that leads to a job. Sixty-eight per cent of BCIT students have a degree from another post-secondary institution.
But staying on top of the evolving job market is like changing on the fly in hockey.
“Industry needs are changing so much, in the trades, in the academic areas,” said Kinloch.
“What we’ve been teaching traditionally in post-secondary always needs to be on the change curve, so we’re positioning for where industry and education, in an applied model such as BCIT, can move forward.
“An example of that is that at the end of November, BCIT in partnership with VCC (Vancouver Community College) will be opening a motive power centre of excellence on Annacis Island.
“That’s where we’ve consolidated together the two schools for heavy duty and motive power, which means trucks and heavy duty commercial transport,” said Kinloch.
“We even have a railway line out there that we’re teaching students on.”
Hey, BCIT already has its own aircraft hangar on Sea Island where it trains students to be aircraft maintenance engineers, gas turbine/jet engine technicians, airport operation specialists and commercial pilots.
Who knows, maybe one day BCIT students will be building their own Starship Enterprise.