NBCC wants to connect students with employers: CEO

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The New Brunswick Community College wants to make big changes to the way it connects employers with people who want to improve their skills and find new jobs, the CEO said Thursday.

“We can connect people with employment opportunities and identify the skills and competencies necessary to give them a pathway from where they are to the job that they want to get,” Mary Butler, President and CEO of NBCC said Thursday at the Moncton campus. The province’s community college system has six campuses with approximately 12,000 learners each year in a wide range of programs. Many of them are immigrants and mature students who have gone back to school to improve their marketable skills.

On Thursday, BMO Canada announced a donation of $200,000 toward the NBCC’s “Every New Brunswicker” campaign. BMO was one of more than 700 donors who supported the campaign, which raised $21.8 million to speed up skills development and innovate its educational programs with new technology.

Butler said the “Every New Brunswicker” campaign will help connect learners with educational and employment opportunities by recognizing the skills and experiences they have today, creating more diverse ways to access education that go beyond traditional methods, and cultivating community partnerships that offer wraparound services.

“Whether you are coming to this country and the qualifications you have are different and are not recognized in Canada, or you are someone who didn’t have the confidence or the opportunity to go to post-secondary education and went to work, and developed many talents, skills and competencies over the 10 or 20 years and you want credentials and qualifications to go with that, this program gives people the opportunity,” Butler said. “It recognizes what people can do.”

Many jobs have changed, or been eliminated, because of technological change over the years, and NBCC wants to help them find a new path.

“What the ‘Every New Brunswicker’ initiative seeks to do is take that individual who was working in one area through their career and now has to change, like a mill closure or a plant closure. We want to put them onto an accelerated path to a new area, instead of making them start over from the beginning.”

She said the practical methods of making it work are still in progress. It may be a logical idea, she said, but putting it into practice means changing policies and methodologies.

“This is a very different approach and way of looking at things, so we need to break down barriers. But we are getting there, and it will be a game changer.”

Butler said many New Brunswickers have a wealth of on-the-job experience who would like to obtain formal qualifications or expand their skills for a changing job market.

“We see newcomers who are fully trained in their field and who are ready to work but need local certification first,” she said. “Regardless of the situation, we know too many people in our province face hurdles to having their skills and qualifications recognized and getting hired. As a result, many are underemployed while our employers need their talent.”