The Portage Rotary Club received a presentation from the Portage Campus of the Red River College this afternoon.

Portage Regional Campus Manager for Red River College Guy Moffat shares some highlights.

College building now 100 years old"I gave an overview of what Red River College does as a whole. I gave some history on Red River College in Portage la Prairie. We've been around since 1985. And we were the very first regional campus of what is now five different regional campuses. We were first located on the Avenue and then relocated to Southport, and then in 2011 moved back onto Saskatchewan into the old Victoria School. Our building's 100 years old this year, which is kind of exciting."

Moffat shares some of the programs the college offers the community.

"So, if there's a business or a company in town that wants to deliver something very specific to their employees, that they don't have the ability to do or the know-how to do -- if they were wanting to do a training session on emotional intelligence, or critical thinking, for their staff -- they could contract us to develop a program to their specifications. And then we would either give it to them to deliver, or deliver it on their behalf to their employees."

He notes there are the regular courses offered that everyone knows about, including full-time programming and part-time programming: Health unit clerk, health care aid, business administration, early childhood education, paramedicine, as well as evening and weekend courses for safe food handling, first aid, general interests like photography and do-it-yourself. He says there's also availability for people to rent space if they're doing a meeting or conference, and office space for long term lease, with three currently in place.

He says, "We also do different projects. So, if someone has a project on putting together a training program to learn how to make French fries, that's something we'd be able to do for them, as well as applied research. If someone has something they're wanting to further develop, they can contract Red River college in order to help them with the research aspect of that."

Moffat notes some other plans.

"I also talked about where we are going. I want to see Portage la Prairie a college town as a result of our campus. I know a few people in Portage la Prairie and their extra-curricular interests, the things that they do in their day-to-day lives, are really interesting. I don't know that people in Portage typically know there is an opportunity to share their knowledge, to share their hobbies, their passions, and dreams with others. I am hoping to have an evening course very soon where they can get some accreditation in some adult education, and delivering adult education programs. And then if there's a course that they're interested in delivering, and there's people interested in taking it, we'd love to facilitate that and offer that course. This will do a few things. Number one, it's increasing our product offering to individuals who are interested in learning about something, as an example, like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- how to fly them, and the regulations -- if there's someone in town who knows a lot about that. And it also will give the availability to a part-time job, if you will. If somebody's wanting to pad their winter getaway fund, they would be able to potentially deliver a program and evening class at Red River College, and make a few dollars during four to six evenings out of a week. If the program's two to three hours each evening everybody wins, and we're able to grow as a community."

Moffat adds the Portage campus is statistically doing better than the other Red River College campuses.  

"Our employability for our students is very, very high. It's in the top 90's -- around 98%. For the last couple of practicums that we've had from our administrative assistant program, as well as health care aid, it's around 98% of those students who complete that program who are hired on before they're actually done. Two of our business administration graduates who just finished up last month had job offers before they were done our program. Our students are highly sought after. And it's really interesting. Our practicum placements, the businesses in the community that allow these people to come into practice their education, end up hiring them on the spot."