Skip to content

Colleges collaborate on mining program

Northern College and Confederation College in Thunder Bay are collaborating to share delivery of the Haileybury School of Mines (HSM) programming.

Northern College and Confederation College in Thunder Bay are collaborating to share delivery of the Haileybury School of Mines (HSM) programming.

Graduates of Confederation’s mining techniques certificate program will be able to enter the third semester of the HSM mining engineering technician diploma program at Confederation College.

The arrangement between Northern and Confederation stemmed from a pan-northern memorandum of understanding signed earlier this year involving six colleges in Northern Ontario. The colleges collaborate in developing recruitment strategies to attract learners to career-specific programs with identified skill shortage.

“As exploration activities surge in northwestern Ontario, mining is quickly becoming a dominant economic driver. In order to meet the future workforce requirements of the rapidly growing mining sector, Northern and Confederation explored the possibility of making the HSM mining engineering technician diploma program available in the region,” said Fred Gibbons, president of Northern College.

“This agreement increases access to mining education in northwestern Ontario,” said Jim Madder, president of Confederation College. “The mining sector is among the highest paying sectors of the economy. We are pleased to be able to support people locally to enter this sector as demand for workers in the mining industry is on the rise.”
The HSM program at Confederation College will include on-site and distance learning as well as field school courses.