Civil Engineering grad holds deep RRC roots through support and certification
If anyone knows the power of an industry relationship, it’s Robert Okabe.
As CEO of the Certified Technicians and Technologists Association of Manitoba (CTTAM), Okabe leads an organization that certifies aspiring engineering and applied science technicians and technologists, while connecting them to important resources — and to each other.
It’s a role he’s been in since 2015, and one that keeps him close to his Red River College roots.
“Most of our members are graduates of the College,” says Okabe. “So I find it a really good experience for me to interact with future graduates or current students and hopefully, in some way, be able to mentor them and make it easier for them post-graduation.”
A Civil Engineering Technology grad from 1983, Okabe recognized early on in his academic life that he wanted to work in the engineering industry. By changing the path he’d initially embarked on and choosing RRC, he helped project his younger self to where he is now.
“I went to university and took the first year of sciences and found myself at a crossroads: is it about the degrees you pick up or the skills that you develop? I was thinking that the Bachelor of Science didn’t prepare me for working out there in industry, so I made the change to go to Red River College. I could see that there was a niche that I knew I could fulfill.”
After graduation, Okabe went to work at the City of Winnipeg, where he was a supervisor of public operations for 31 years.
In 2015, he joined CTTAM — an organization that’s been around for 55 years and has worked in sidestep with RRC for much of that time. Back in the mid-1960s, when the College was still the Manitoba Institute of Technology, it was the first school in the province to graduate technologists.
Both Okabe and CTTAM have generously supported the College throughout the decades. Okabe participates in all nine of the school’s Engineering Technology Advisory Committees — which provide direction and curriculum support from those working on the ground — and in 2008, established the Robert Okabe Achievement Award for Civil Engineering Technology.
His reasoning for the support is simple, as he recognizes how important that helping hand can be in propelling students from the world of academia into a lifelong career.
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