Career Planning
In the last part in our series on Continuing Education classes in the Toronto area, we look at schools east of Toronto.Blood and gore -- and so much moreIf you've ever fancied yourself as a forensic sleuth, head to Oshawa. DAVID CHILTON -- Special to the Toronto Sun |
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The city's Durham College offers a one-day Continuing Education course called CSI Durham: The Real Deal.
Nancy Martin, the school's director of Continuing Education, says the course, given by members of the Durham Regional Police and other experts, separates fact from fiction and offers a real show and tell of what they do, rather than what TV says they do.
But if blood and gore and DNA analysis isn't for you, the college, just east of Toronto, has a spread of Con Ed courses that are far easier on the nerves. There are courses on sewing, flower arranging, gardening and a new course on wine tasting, for example.
Balanced against these eminently practical courses -- and the tough reality of the CSI workshop -- is what Martin calls the "New Age stuff." There's a Tame Your Restless Spirit course, for instance, and others called the Language of Symbols and Inner Child Workshop.
NO AUTO REPAIR
Ironically, for a city that's synonymous with General Motors, there aren't any Con Ed automotive courses at Durham. Martin says it's not so much that instruction on topics such as auto repair wouldn't be popular; it's more a matter of space. The college doesn't have enough of it to allow Con Ed students to bring in the cars to be worked on.
Space, on the other hand, is not a problem at Fleming College in Lindsay in the Kawarthas, about 30 miles east of Oshawa.
Catherine Staples, Fleming's manager of Environmental Training, School of Continuing Education and Skills Training, says the school offers courses on such topics as nature awareness; native species plants to make teas, jams and juices; the use of GPS in the wilderness and so on. And for the truly hardy, Staples says the college runs a winter camping course, although too little snow has caused some problems. Next year the school will offer a course teaching people how to track anyone lost in the bush, Staples adds.
Urban survival
Many of the students who take Fleming Con Ed courses come from urban areas, Staples says. And those who took the Urban Survival course -- the one-day workshop is finished for the year -- may be onto something. What it does, Staples explains, is teach the necessary basic urban survival skills should a natural disaster strike the students' home turf and knock out power and the other conveniences taken for granted. "It's actually a lot of fun," Staples enthuses.
Just as much fun is Fleming's School of the Arts in Haliburton, about 50 miles north of Lindsay. Staples says students, both children and adults, "come back summer after summer" for painting, drawing and other art courses such as jewelry making and stained glass creation.
As well as the personal or general interest Con Ed courses that Durham and Fleming offer, there are credit courses on tap, too, for the diligent. Durham's Martin says the Con Ed students who take these courses at her college tend to be "improvers" or "formalizers" of their credentials. This is especially true of the part-time students attending the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa.
CONTINUING EDUCATION QUICK FACTS
Schools east of Toronto offer hundreds or even thousands of Con Ed courses -- in the case of UOIT they are part-time courses -- across many areas. However, it's worth noting that there are fewer schools within easy reach east of the city compared with west of it. It's also worth noting that two of the three mentioned, Fleming and UOIT, have a definite subject focus. For Fleming it's the outdoors, the environ-ment and conservation, although the School for the Arts in the lovely town of Haliburton is something else again. For UOIT, technical subjects such as mechanical engineering hold sway. As always, the best place to start looking for a Con Ed course is the school's website. There you'll find details about registration, times, tuition fees and the rest. Visit:
www.durhamcollege.ca/EN/
coned/index.php
www.flemingc.ca/
www.uoit.ca/
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