It’s a space that’s been needed for two years.
On Aug. 31, SIAST Woodland Campus opened up their electrical college expansion.
“It was a great benefit, in the past our numbers have increased and we were short on classroom space,” said Dwight St. Amand, program head of the electrical department at SIAST.
“In the last two years we had to run some of our classes in the evening and we had one class who had to camp out in a shop, and some of our instructors had their desk in a shop, and in one little office designed for two people we had four people.”
He said the expansion gave them an addition 6,500 square feet of space. It was about a 75 per cent increase.
With the new space come more students. This year SIAST will have 39 intakes of students, compared to the 32 they had last year.
“The addition has a new level one apprentice shop. In the old shop, that we are still using it could only hold 12 students at a time and the class has 24 in it so they have to take turns,” St. Amand said.
Powell Kerekes is a second year electrician student. He has been back at the school for two weeks.
He said it is easier now that the whole class can be in the shop together.
“When the class is split up going into the groups, when you go in half at a time, half the people are learning things and making mistakes so you don’t see the pitfalls others might have. So if you all go in together you all learn together so you learn off each other’s mistakes and less mistakes are made,” he said.
The expansion did not come cheap. It cost $2.35 million and includes two new classrooms, a lab volt shop and a new level one lab.
“We have lots of expansion, we sure needed the extra space,” said St. Amand.
klavoie@panow.com
