Sarah Brazauskas always knew she didn’t want a one-size-fits-all career. As it turns out, the 27-year-old graduate of Red River College’s Graphic Design program walked into a dream job that could have been custom-tailored just for her.

As the first full-time Storyboot School coordinator for Aboriginal footwear phenomenon Manitobah Mukluks, Brazauskas pours herself into her work heart and sole, bringing together Aboriginal artists and students in the community and at the company’s Point Douglas headquarters.

“We’re teaching the art of mukluk- and moccasin-making to Aboriginal youth in an effort to keep the tradition alive within the community and spark the next generation of crafters and artists,” she says.

The job ticks all the boxes on the fulfillment front: Creatively satisfying, it has positive social implications and it resonates on a personal level too, connecting Brazauskas with her Aboriginal roots.

The school grew out of the Storyboot Project founded by Manitobah Mukluks CEO Sean McCormick. Storyboots are moccasins, mukluks and other craftworks created by Aboriginal artists who receive 100% of the proceeds from sales. Starting in 2013, classes were organized under an informal management framework, and Brazauskas took on the role of coordinator last April.

Six months later, she was featured in Maclean’s magazine’s Cool Jobs series. The experience was humbling — Brazauskas doesn’t like to be in the spotlight — but it was exciting as well. Her mom Jocelyn bought several copies of the magazine and it was posted in the Rennie Hotel, making her a minor celebrity in her small hometown on the outskirts of Whiteshell Provincial Park.

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Navigate Winnipeg’s Know Your Zone program with ease using Snow Your Zone, a free app developed by Red River College grads Jeffrey Fulton, Rob Ring, and Mackenzie Plowman of Tilted Compass.

Avoid parking tickets (or costly tows!) by searching parking zones by address, street corner, or business name and getting notifications about upcoming bans.

The app uses data from the City of Winnipeg; using a map view, it shows your location, the zone you’re in, and whether there’s a ban affecting you right now or within the next 24 hours.

Snow Your Zone is available for free download on Apple and Android products.

The Embassy and Consulate General of Canada in Vietnam are building a Canadian Alumni Network that will bring together Vietnamese from all walks of life who have one important link: a Canadian education.

They are hoping that Vietnamese alumni from Red River College will join this network to help strengthen the important people-to-people links between Canada and Vietnam and encourage others to choose Canada as their study destination.

The Canadian Alumni Network in Vietnam will hold its inaugural events in March 2016, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

If you are interested in participating in this new and exciting network, let them know by sending an email message to HOCHI.Alumni@international.gc.ca.

In an era where vehicles practically drive themselves, you’d think the automotive trade might have evolved with the technology. But female mechanics are still almost as rare as flying cars.

Elaine Lagasse is hoping to change that.

A graduate of Red River College’s Automotive Service Educational program, Lagasse is also RRC’s first female automotive instructor. She sees the number of female students walking in – or perhaps kicking down – the door of the Automotive Technician Certificate program, and it’s not pretty.

“We probably average three or four per cent women,” she says. “So (in a program with 100 students), that’s three or four women. The numbers are very, very low.”

Lagasse was the only woman in her program’s class of 2004. She graduated with top marks and received the Ken Preboy Memorial Award before moving on to become a Red Seal Automotive Technician for four years, then landed her current position as an RRC instructor in 2008.

“There’s no reason why the numbers haven’t picked up more than they have,” Lagasse says of the program’s relative lack of female students. “I think the big thing is just breaking the barrier and realizing that there’s nothing that makes (the automotive trade) more suited for men versus women.” Read More →

There’s no dust settling on Winnipeg eco-entrepreneur Todd Burns.

The globetrotting president of Cypher Environmental has travelled far since he graduated from RRC’s Business Administration program in 2001, taking Cypher’s dust-suppression, road-stabilization and water-treatment products to dozens of countries.

“The last time I counted it was well above 35, so I’m probably around 41 or 42 right now. Last year I went to a few countries for the first time ever — Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia.”

Even jet-lagged, the 34-year-old entrepreneur is usually the freshest face in the room wherever business takes him, whether he’s networking with local, national and international trade groups, or meeting with Cypher’s distributors in Asia, Africa, Europe, the U.S., Mexico and South America.

“Our distributors worldwide, the owners of those businesses have children my age,” he laughs.

Burns was by far the youngest executive invited to fly to Mexico with former prime minister Stephen Harper to attend the Three Amigos Trade Summit in February 2014 — an “awesome” experience that came three months before he joined a youthful peer group at a meet-and-greet with Prince Charles at AssentWorks during a whirlwind royal tour. And he was among a handful of local business owners asked to take part in a federal round-table on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Last year, he returned to RRC to speak to students in the International Business program, and he’s collaborating with RRC staff and students to further develop Cypher’s environmentally friendly dust-suppressant Dust Stop, with the support of a $65,000 Applied Research and Development grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

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An award of distinction, the Honorary Degree/Diploma is the highest honour Red River College can bestow upon an individual. This award recognizes individuals in diverse fields who are distinguished by their significant accomplishments and contributions – locally, nationally or internationally – and whose receipt of the award will bring honour and distinction to RRC.

Past recipients of this award have included Ace Burpee, Lisa Meeches, Gail Asper, and The Honourable Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair. Consider nominating an individual if he or she:

1. Has made significant contributions to either: (1) Red River College; (2) a particular field of post-secondary study; and/or (3) post-secondary education on a local, national or international level;
2. Has accomplished great success in either a paid or volunteer position that reflects the values of Red River College;
3. Enhances or promotes the College’s image/reputation in Manitoba or elsewhere; and/or
4. Serves as an inspirational example to the College community due to significant accomplishment or achievement.

More information on these prestigious awards is available on the Alumni microsite, including the online nomination form. The deadline for nominations is Friday, January 15.

If you have additional questions, please contact the Alumni Engagement office at 204-632-2359 or alumni@rrc.ca.

There are those who prefer to make the news, and those who prefer to be the news. Red River College graduate Stephanie Scherbain knows which side she’s on.

“I wanted to be a part of the news, and not write the news,” says Scherbain, a graduate of RRC’s Creative Communications program. “I felt like I could make a difference by being in an organization that had initiatives and had something for journalists to write about.”

Mission accomplished. After studying both journalism and public relations in her first year of CreComm, Scherbain chose to major in PR during the program’s second year. She graduated in 2008 with all of the tools she needed to fulfill her career goals – and fast.

She landed a marketing job at St. Vital Centre in 2009 before assuming her current position as marketing and communications coordinator for the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone (BIZ) in 2010. There she shines a spotlight on the bustling area of downtown Winnipeg, by maintaining the organization’s website, working with businesses to create events, organizing culinary tours, and even playing tour guide herself on walking tours of the historic district.

“We feel that the Exchange is in the midst of a renaissance,” she says.

Scherbain credits her practical and hands-on CreComm education for giving her all of the tools she requires to do her job, from technical and presentation skills to TV and radio industry insight.

“It gives you the ability to think from different perspectives,” she says. “If you want to be on the news, then you’ve got to have something newsworthy. But then you have to think from the TV perspective, the visual perspective. It allows you to adapt to the different industries to make it a bigger, better picture.” Read More →

2014 & 2015 Alumni Award recipients April Slater with son Fox (centre), Sterling Matthes (first right from centre), Brenna Blackman (second right from centre) and Tim Stevenson (missing).

RRC’s Alumni Association presented four recent graduates with Alumni Awards on Thursday, November 19, 2015 at a luncheon held to celebrate their accomplishments and achievements since leaving the College’s hallowed halls.

The Alumni Award, an annual award of $1000, is given out to two applicants per year who have graduated from a certificate, diploma or degree program within the last 24 months.

Our 2014 recipients are April Slater and Sterling Matthes. April graduated from Community Economic Development in 2013 and is very active in her community, sharing her passion for traditional dance, beading and singing. Sterling graduated from Business Admin – Accounting in 2014 and has continued his studies at the University of Winnipeg where he aspires to complete his 4-year BA in Accounting.

Our 2015 recipients are Brenna Blackman and Tim Stevenson. Brenna graduated from Digital Media Design in 2015 and is now enrolled in RRC’s one year Advanced 3D Computer Graphics Program. Tim graduated from Community Economic Development in 2013, works with Food Matters and is currently in New Zealand presenting at the Healing Our Spirit Worldwide conference.

Congratulations to all of our award recipients! We wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

For more information on available scholarships, bursaries and awards through Red River College, please visit our Awards and Financial Aid page.

Red River College is excited to announce it’s new Business Technology Management program (BTM), a two-year diploma that gives graduates the knowledge and skill sets to analyze, design, and manage projects and businesses in the field of information technology.

January 2016 marks the first intake of students, and the program will involve a four or eight-month co-op beginning in May 2017. Employers interested in hiring a co-op student or learning more about the BTM program and co-op requirements are invited to contact Dan Greenberg at 204-949-8382 or dgreenberg@rrc.ca.

If you are interested in either the Business Information Technology or Business Technology Management programs from a student perspective, please consider joining us for a joint information session on Thursday, November 12 from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. in Room P107 at the Roblin Centre.

He’d felt the strange woman’s approving gaze throughout the day as he filmed the centennial celebration at Nelson House, Man.

But Sean Parenteau, one of the first-ever graduates of Red River College’s Aboriginal Broadcast Training Initiative (ABTI), had no idea she’d give him the answer to a question he’d pondered since childhood.

“That thing you’re doing with your camera, that’s your gift in life,” the woman said, after tapping Parenteau on the shoulder. He thanked her and asked for her name. Instead, she hugged him, then walked away.

“I turned and looked at my camera,” says Parenteau, “and just started crying.”

Rewind the tape 31 years, to find five-year-old Parenteau in Duck Bay, Man. — a Métis community about 450 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg — in the throes of a mysterious ailment that caused him to have visions of blue whales and killer whales, both of which represent Mother Earth’s clans.

A local Elder named Nora helped cure him. When he was 11, he went to visit her at her cabin in the woods, hoping she could tell him what had happened. She told him he had a gift he was too young to comprehend, but in time he’d get it back.

The Elder died years later when Parenteau was 19; he never got the chance to talk with her again. Of that fateful woman from the Nelson House shoot, he now says, “I believe it was Nora the Elder that had passed on, coming back to give me my gift.” Read More →