Kenjgewin Teg’s Trades and Skill Centre becomes approved Canadian Welding Bureau (CWB) Testing Site
First Group of Alumni and Current Students Pass their Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) Test
MNIDOO MNISING – Kenjgewin Teg’s Anishinabek Skills, Innovation and Research Centre (ASIRC) is pleased to share the good news that the Skills Centre is now an approved testing location by the Canadian Welding Bureau (CWB).
Since first opening its doors in the Fall of 2018, Kenjgewin Teg’s ASIRC facility has focused on introducing and offering skilled trades fundamentals education and training with its valued partner, Canadore College. Kenjgewin Teg’s ‘still new’ shop is known informally by many as the ‘trades centre’ and can accommodate up to 10 students/learners in the welding shop specifically, at any one time with its modern welding stations and equipment (pre-COVID 19 pandemic). Like many other post-secondary institutions over the past year, adjustments and transitions for safe hands-on learning at Kenjgewin Teg have been a necessity. But a global pandemic hasn’t meant that Kenjgewin Teg’s trade centre staff have lost their creativity or commitment to students. The staff is always working to find new ways to continue engaging students in their learning – and this is precisely how becoming an approved CWB site came to be.
Arranging and coordinating for ASIRC to become an approved testing site with the CWB was largely done by Kenjgewin Teg’s welding instructor, Dave Barnes. Dave has been teaching with Kenjgewin Teg in its partner college programs in the trades during the past two years, and he saw that this opportunity with the CWB was worth looking into further.
“While all learning is good, I also know that employers out there want employees and graduates to also have the ‘certified technical skills’ that are applied and used in practice on-the-job. Becoming an approved testing centre for CWB means we are helping the employability of our trades graduates during and after they have come to us at Kenjgewin Teg,” said welding instructor Dave Barnes.
The results of Dave’s efforts this past Fall have now resulted in a small cohort of students who prepped over the past few months to take Kenjgewin Teg’s first CWB Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) testing onsite in M’Chigeeng First Nation, where Kenjgewin Teg is located.
“We hope and look forward to this being the first of many certifications from the CWB that the trades centre here at Kenjgewin Teg will be doing in the future,” said Dave Hall, Manager of Kenjgewin Teg’s ASIRC programs and facility. “We work well together here with all of our instructors and students, and I wholeheartedly supported Dave as the welding instructor in pursuing us becoming an approved testing site of the CWB”.
December 16, 2020, marked the first testing date when CWB came onsite to examine and certify the skills of a small group of welding program alumni, and current students in the Shki-Maajiinakiing trades program. CWB Certification Services Representative Gilles Fournier shared that Kenjgewin Teg’s trades centre “definitely has a well laid out welding shop, and it is obvious that all the students are committed and were well prepared for the testing today.”
At the end of the testing day, Gilles was pleased to confirm that Destiny Debassige, Clay Dickson, Teresa Jackson, and Dean Hare all successfully passed and received their Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) welding ticket.
“The welding trade has so many different certifications that can be certified by the CWB, and today was the start of what will be many more on-site testing dates in the future – all in support of our students getting good, well-paying jobs in their trade,” said Dave Hall.
The CWB Group certifies companies, inspection organizations, inspectors, and welding consumables through a review and qualification process to ensure that they meet the requirements for a variety of product and safety codes as well as standards. As the Authorized National Body (ANB) for the International Institute of Welding (IIW), the CWB Group provides several levels of internationally recognized certifications and qualifications for welding professionals along with certification for welding companies.
Kenjgewin Teg is located on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island, ON) and is one of seven members of the Indigenous Institutes Consortium in Ontario providing Indigenous culturally relevant community-based access and lifelong learning for adult post-secondary students.
For more information on this announcement, please contact:
Beverley Roy, Director of Quality Assurance
Office location: M’Chigeeng, ON (Manitoulin Island)
E-mail: beverleyroy@kenjgewinteg.ca
www.kenjgewinteg.ca