News
NBCC signs province-wide geoexchange training agreement

Montréal, QC — The Canadian GeoExchange Coalition (CGC) recently announce the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with New Brunswick Community College (NBCC). This is the first province-wide training agreement which enables all of New Brunswick’s English language colleges to offer full-semester CGC-recognised courses as part of their curriculum.
 
“The Canadian GeoExchange Installers’ Course has already been fully integrated into NBCC Moncton Campus’ Electrical Engineering Technology: Alternate Energy Systems program. Today’s announcement builds on this success and recognizes the visionary approach taken by the college network within the province” said Denis Tanguay, CGC President & CEO. 
 
“We are pleased to take part in a collaboration that allows us to build on our programs while responding to industry needs. Through this MOU, we can collectively work with the CGC to expand our technical knowledge and train accredited designers and installers of geothermal systems. This is a great step for NBCC that allows our students to achieve their potential,” said Bill Stroud, Industrial Sector Lead for NBCC.
 
Since 2006, the CGC has been working in close cooperation with dozens of industry experts who provided their technical expertise and knowledge to build comprehensive geoexchange courses. It is the result of this broad industry participation and cooperation that is made available to colleges through the CGC training material. In return, colleges bring into the equation their valuable training expertise as well as linkages with the broader academic community. 
 
As part of its market transformation efforts to build a strong and professional geoexchange workforce in all provinces and territories, the CGC made an early commitment of transferring its training courses to colleges and institutes of technology across Canada. This process establishes an iterative mechanism whereby colleges make recommendations on how to improve the training approach from an educational and technical point of view and experts from the industry, through the CGC Training Committee and the CGC Technical Committee formulate recommendations on the technical content based on field practices.
 
CGC presently has active Memorandums of Understanding with 11 Canadian colleges and is currently working with over 15 colleges who are eager to integrate geoexchange into their curriculum. Once colleges/institutes have adopted and incorporated CGC training standards into their curriculum, CGC fully recognizes the students trained by those institutions as industry-equivalent. 

For more information visit www.geo-exchange.ca.

December 4, 2009  By Newswire