CREDIT: JOHN SING
(Centre left) Vice president and general manager SG&I Division at Intergraph Canada Ltd., Rob Patten and (centre right) Fanshawe College President Peter Devlin with faculty and students at the ceremony sealing the deal on October 28.

Excitement surrounding the School of Public Safety reached a high on October 28 when Intergraph Canada announced that it would be donating software to the School.

Intergraph, the world's largest supplier of 9-1-1 first responder software, donated close to $750,000 of software to the dispatch centre to be in use starting September 2014.

“Boy oh boy, it's big,” said Mark Hunter, interim chair for the School of Public Safety. “What they've provided us is a very large bundle of software that will allow our students to [get] a direct hands on experience of using the same type of equipment in [the industry].”

Intergraph's software is used in the Emergency Response Service industry worldwide, and Hunter said that implementation of software into practical experience for the students will be a large benefit to the students of Public Safety.

“Now our students are going to be working in dispatch centres doing the same thing they would do when they go to work,” Hunter said. “It's really increasing their employability.”

What makes the software work even better is that students will be working with real data, courtesy of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, London Fire Department and Ontario Provincial Police.

It works to the students' advantage when it comes to learning.

“Students will be familiar with the geography, familiar with the maps that are flashing up,” said Rob Patten, vice president and general manager SG&I Division at Intergraph Canada Ltd. “Some of our customers within the area have donated their data to this so we could set it up ... It is a real environment.”

Hunter said the School is always looking to meet the communities' needs, while preparing students to go into the workforce.

“[We] focus our efforts on delivering quality programming that will meet [the community's] needs, and in doing so is going to provide our students with the best employability options that we can.”

The ball started rolling when a faculty member attended a tradeshow Intergraph participated in, said Desmond Khor, senior marketing specialist at Intergraph.

“Sherry Jacklin (coordinator of the Emergency Telecommunications Program) has been a leader in this, and she has done a wonderful job of connecting with Intergraph and laying the groundwork,” said Hunter. “They're a company with a large reputation. They recognize the quality of education that we're delivering and that convinced them to partner with us.”

“When you have better adoption in the industry and you couple that with the training that Fanshawe and other educational institutions have in place for the students, we're able to better train and motivate the next generation in order to save lives,” said Khor.

To Hunter, the most important thing is that students will benefit from this, “and it's because of the connections our faculty have within this industry, they've made this come alive.”