June 2007

Durham College builds connections with 300 potential students at second annual event

Invited guests are hard at work building mousetrap racers at the Connecting Elementary Students event held recently on campus.

The first day of college came early for hundreds of Grade 7 and 8 students earlier this month as they were welcomed to campus to participate in Connecting Elementary Students on Tuesday, May 22 and Wednesday, May 23. The event's focus was to promote the college as a post-secondary destination for students.

Each student had the opportunity to build and test drive a mousetrap racer with DIECAST (Durham Industry/Education Committee for the Advancement of Science and Technology) for half of the day. The other half was spent attending a variety of workshops offered by numerous college faculty.

The workshops provided the students (selected from the Durham, Durham Catholic, Kawartha Pine Ridge, and Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District school boards) with hands-on activities related to college curriculum such as:

• The School of Business offered a computer simulation called Biz Cafe in which students started a small business and made decisions regarding location, purchasing, staffing, etc.  At the end of the simulation, students were able to see how successful their businesses would have been;
• At a School of Information Technology workshop, students created their own web pages and learned to how network a series of computers;
• The School of Applied Science & Technology set up a number of work stations in one of its labs so students could rotate through different activities;
• The School of Health & Community Services provided a tour of the dental labs and enabled students to use some of the equipment;
• The School of Justice & Emergency Services showed students how to create an emergency kit, explained the role of emergency management personnel in a disaster situation, and invited students to participate in online emergency management games;
• At a School of Integrated Studies workshop, Professional Golf Management representatives were on hand to assist students with designing their own golf course (after a brief theory presentation) and;
• The School of Design had students draw individual segments of the Elephant Tree similar to the project now on display in the main reception area of the Oshawa campus.

Connecting Elementary Students is part of the Building Connections @ Durham College project. Other Building Connections events held this year include Connecting Teacher Candidates (with UOIT's Faculty of Education), Connecting Elementary Teachers, Connecting Law and Justice Educators and Connecting Technological Educators. 

Building Connections has been funded by the School College Work Initiative (SCWI) since 2002. The organization is a co-operative effort of the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) and the Committee of College Presidents (COP). It is jointly funded by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

"Our various Building Connections initiatives give us opportunities to connect directly with teachers, students, and parents to give them the information they need to make informed choices about post-secondary destinations," confirms Kathy Rhodes, a professor with the School of Integrated Studies and SCWI project facilitator.