Get involved! - OACC

Members, make sure your voice is heard!

There are many different ways to get involved with the Ontario Association of Career Colleges. OACC has several active committees you can participate in to help affect positive change for the sector.

Currently, there are two major areas relating to the Regulations that the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities will require input on in the months and years to come:

·         Program Standards/Program Assessment

·         Key Performance Indicators

Your 2009-2010 Board of Directors has two committees, comprised of OACC members, that are focusing on these two regulatory topics. The purpose of these committees in the past has been to develop an OACC position to present to the Ontario government.

OACC’s Program Standards/Program Assessment Committee met with the MTCU in June 2008 to review their draft proposal on how a future program assessment process would dovetail with program standards and the Ontario Qualifications Framework (OQF).  The committee prepared a response paper that was passed by the OACC Board and submitted to the Ministry on July 4, 2008.  More recently, OACC Committee members have participated in 2009 in focus groups involved in setting subject-specific standards for truck driver programs and for an esthetician program.  On November 30, 2009, the full committee met with MTCU officials to begin discussions of how the Ontario Qualifications Framework will be implemented within the private career college sector.

This will be an active committee for several years to come as the program standards initiative for private career colleges is rolled out.

The Key Performance Indicators Committee met twice last year to develop a position on how the entire career college sector will gather and publish meaningful performance indicators as required under the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005.  This position was passed by the OACC Board of Directors in April 2008.  The OACC President and Executive Director shared elements of this position when they participated in discussions with a government-appointed third party consultant in July 2008 to assist in the development of a KPI framework for all PCCs. It is anticipated that the KPI committee will participate in lengthy discussion and debate with the Ministry over performance indicators throughout 2010.

Other OACC main committees that will be active during 2009-10 include:

• Strong Support Committee
• Strong voice Committee
• Student Success Committee
• Ministry Liaison Committee

Under Strong Support and Strong voice, there will be several sub-committees that will be formed to deal with very specific topics such as:

• Instructor training and resources
• Member training
• OACC business services review (e.g. financial aid office and transcript service)
• Marketing and Public Relations
• Government Relations
• Membership building
• Conference/Annual general Meeting
• Student Financing (OSAP and other)
• Employment Ontario (Second Career and Skills Development)

For 2009-10, the OACC Board formed several specialized committees to address very specific issues of importance to the PCC sector that are outside the realm of the on-going work described above.  These include:

·         On Line Programs and OSAP Designation Committee

For more information about what positions are available and how you can contribute, please contact Paul Kitchin, Executive Director at paulkitchin@oacc.on.ca, (519) 752-2124 Ext 103.