Students of the line tech program show off the skills they’ve learned. Photo credit: facebook.com/northlandscollege

Nine students are celebrating their completion of the Line Tech Fundamentals program at Northlands College.

Thursday started with a demonstration of line tech skills by students, followed by a lunch and speeches from Northlands faculty.

Graduates of this program are typically employed in the energy sector.

“These are power lineman positions. So what this does is it gives them a really good understanding and the basic skills that they can then use to apply for jobs with either the Crown corporation, SaskPower, or the powerline companies that there are many of around the country,” says college president and CEO Toby Greschner. “We’ve had students that get work as far away as New Brunswick.”

The line tech program is an annual program that has been running since 2015. The program is based out of Air Ronge and most of the intake comes from northern communities.

“Our intent is to make this into an ongoing yearly program,” says Greschner. “We want to provide learning experiences not only for students of northern Saskatchewan, they will always be our number one priority, but because we’ve developed a good product we are looking for students outside the region to come take the program, as well.”

The class of 2017 is composed of nine graduates, down from 12 in 2016.