Alberta Minister of Education visits Olds for ribbon cutting event on CLC campus

Chinook’s Edge is celebrating, along with other partners of the Central Alberta Collegiate Institute (CACI), the official opening of the CACI space within the Olds College Metals Building. Alberta Education Minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, joined CACI partners, as well as a few CACI welding students in a ribbon cutting event on April 2.

Alberta Education provided $4.4 million in funding to renovate space within the Olds College Metals Building. The funding allowed Olds College to renovate an older welding shop space, and to add a fourth shop space. This will expand the number of welding booths available to CACI learners and provide industry quality equipment for training.

Minister Nicolaides congratulated CACI on the opening of the facility. “The Collegiate’s focus on the trades is remarkable. Career education is important because it offers opportunities for students to find their interests, explore them early on, and have access to a pathway to a rewarding career in the trades.”

Jackie Taylor, Executive Director, CACI and Community Learning Campus, says, “When we position provincial and local resources around youth career readiness, we see tremendous results in student confidence, career certainty and overall skill development which allows them to successfully leap immediately into an apprenticeship placement.

“We are very grateful for the focus of youth career development by Alberta Education through the continued support of facilities like this transformation of space at Olds College, as well as their continued support of the programming that we will be able to offer from this location and more like this across the province. We are excited to see similar space at Red Deer Polytechnic open in Fall 2025,” says Taylor.

Two of the three students who attended the event are from Chinook’s Edge. Salvador Vermeulen, from Ecole Olds High School, and Logan Swanson from Didsbury High School, as well as a student from Red Deer Catholic, were congratulated on their successes at recent Skills Alberta competitions and achieving Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.

CACI is the successful collaboration of four partnering school divisions (Red Deer Public Schools, Red Deer Catholic Regional School Division, Wolf Creek Public Schools and Chinook’s Edge School Division), two post-secondary institutions (Olds College and Red Deer Polytechnic) and CAREERS, a not-for-profit organization that collaborates with schools to connect youth with employers, providing valuable paid internship opportunities and the start to important apprenticeship careers.