EDUCATION
It’s never too early or too late to think about ways to upgrade your skills to win a promotion or a better job
If you’re in the mood to kick-start or reboot your career, check out what’s available this year at B.C. postsecondary institutions.
With the end of the postsecondary school year approaching, it’s time to start thinking about new programs for the summer and fall. This week, we’ve prepared a roundup of options for you to consider, whether you’re looking for something fun or you’re really serious about launching into a new career.
CHARTERED PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTANTS OF B.C.
For those looking to launch a new career, accounting 2 appears to be a fairly safe bet. According to the provincial government’s Workbc website, “financial auditors and accountants” rank first on the list of expected job openings for occupations usually requiring a bachelor’s, graduate, or first professional degree.
“It’s a major selling feature for students,” Lorena Christensen, director of business development with the Chartered Professional Accountants of
B.C., told the Straight by phone.
According to the province, there are expected to be 11,600 openings during the next nine years. CPA Canada’s most recent compensation survey puts the median salary for CPAS in B.C. at $100,000.
The CPABC oversees licensing of chartered professional accountants as well as their education. To achieve a CPA designation, students must complete a two-year professional-education program administered through the Chartered Professional Accountants Western School of Business, culminating in a three-day national exam.
“It’s graduate level, so you have to have completed a bachelor’s [degree] going into it,” Christensen said. “You take it part-time while you’re working.”
Students will only be admitted into the program if they’re employed in a position with relevance to the profession. According to Christensen, the CPABC will provide them with a mentor, sometimes within the student’s own organization, to help them through the process. To graduate, the student must have 30 months of accounting-related work experience.
“You have two core modules—what we call Core 1 and Core 2—that’s your financial reporting and your strategy and governance,” she said. “It’s a combination of online learning, self-study, and then classroom learning as well. You write an exam at the end of it before you’re allowed to move onto the next module.”
Each module lasts a semester. For the subsequent two modules, the student chooses two electives, which can be in such areas as assurance, performance management, tax, or finance. That’s followed by two capstone professional modules, including one that is entirely focused on helping the student pass the final exam.
“It takes, on average, about 25 hours a week to study for the CPA Professional Education Program,” Christensen said.
Meanwhile, another 10,700 accounting technicians and bookkeepers are expected to be required in B.C. by 2025, according to the Workbc website. These ranked fifth on the list of job openings usually requiring a diploma, certificate, or apprenticeship training. These positions pay a median hourly wage of $19.23.
Students seeking to secure these jobs can improve their chances by obtaining an advanced certificate in accounting and finance (ACAF) through a CPABC program lasting up to two years. Although this does not provide a CPA designation, it demonstrates that the person has graduated from a program created by CPA Canada.
Christensen said there’s no requirement for a bachelor’s degree to enter the ACAF program, which involves about 15 hours a week of study.
She also emphasized that not everyone who becomes a CPA is employed by a large accounting firm. Most CPAS work in the public or nonprofit sector, whereas others have joined high-tech firms.
“I have a CPA as well,” Christensen said. “I’ve never had a traditional accounting role, yet I use
CAPILANO UNIVERSITY DIGITAL VISUAL EFFECTS
Vancouver is in the forefront of 2
digital visual effects and animation, no small thanks to dozens of studios do this work. According to the Vancouver Economic Commission, the digital entertainment and interactive industry is responsible for more than 40,000 jobs and adds billions to the city’s gross domestic product.
But according to Adam Sale, coordinator of Capilano University’s digital-effects program, the release of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift has the potential to turn virtual reality and augmented reality into an even greater economic powerhouse.
“They’re going to overtake the film industry and the games industry,” Sale predicted in a phone interview with the Straight. “Their tentacles are already reaching into the tertiary [areas] like medical, architectural, military, and psychological.
“Every single aspect of our lives is going to be fundamentally changed by VR and AR,” Sale continued. “And all of the things that we’re doing in visual effects, film, and 3-D transition perfectly into those mediums.”
He said that’s why Capilano University is investing “quite heavily” in these technologies to ensure that digital-visual-effects and animation students are going to be prepared for this brave new world.
The school’s North Vancouver campus offers a two-year diploma in digital visual effects in the Nat and Flora Bosa Centre for Film and Animation. It includes three sound stages, a bar set, a house set, and a Hollywood backlot. There is also a 15-metre, 270-degree green screen.
“We’ve also got a full motion-capture stage and virtual-reality facilities, so we are pretty much an out-ofthe-box film studio,” Sale said. “All of our experiences tend to happen on campus except when we go out and do film shoots. We encourage students to scout out interesting locations, get the necessary permits for them, and actually shoot on location, because that’s a real skill in itself.”
Digital visual effects involves creating meticulously detailed images that look real enough to be inserted into live-action footage. Sale said that this means the lighting, shadows, and resolution of characters have to match what’s created digitally. There’s a smaller green screen on the south campus to ensure students can hone their skills shooting with the proper shading before going out into the industry.
“Visual effects has so many different career paths that there’s not really a mould for the ideal student,” Sale noted. “High school is our minimal requirement for graduation with, of course, the necessary grades.”
There’s also a requirement to provide a letter of intent and a portfolio, which could be a Tumblr blog, Instagram posts, or anything else that might demonstrate a prospective student’s skills.
“We have people who are computer scientists who apply, who show us programs they write,” Sale added. “There are sculptors, painters, writers, and people that actually have experience in the industry coming back.
“It really tailors itself well to people who have an interest in the art of film- making and effects,” he noted. “There is a lot of different paths for them to choose their career, which may be more technical or less technical.”
Capilano University’s digital-visualeffects program accepts 25 students per year, with classes starting every September. In their second year, these students do a 72-hour practicum to gain industry experience.
“We usually have 6 o’clock classes in second year and the industry people come in and really focus the students’ skills that they learn in the foundation of their first year,” Sale said. “Our instructors work all over the industry.”
One fringe benefit of the program is that students receive their own computers. Sale said that this means they can take them home after graduating with all of their work intact.
CAPILANO UNIVERSITY ANIMATION
Whereas the Capilano University 2 digital-visual-effects program accepts applicants from a wide range of backgrounds (see above), 2-D and 3-D animation are more suited to those who know how to draw.
The coordinator of the animation programs, Craig Simmons, told the Straight by phone that in his area, the education is “very much artistically focused”.
“It’s the art of animation design,” he said. “So they study everything from the beginnings of life drawings and what a figure looks like to character design and modelling through to fully rigged animated characters and environments.”
Animation and visual-effects students often end up working in the same companies, Simmons added, and on occasion they will shift from one program to the other.
“Students who like to draw all day usually go into 2-D animation because that’s what they’re going to be doing [after graduating],” Simmons said. “Students who are more interested in games and television— creating full CG stuff—they go into 3-D. And the students who want to work in live-action film go into the visual-effects program.”
Students in all three programs spend much of their time at Capilano University’s Nat and Flora Bosa Centre for Film and Animation. According to Simmons, having them under one roof creates synergies, and many end up collaborating on projects.
“We get really great artists and we get really great technical people,” he said. “We put them together and they feed off each other. They care about creating characters and environments that come to life. Our students end up in the entertainment industry, creating the next generation of video games, television shows, and feature films.”
One former student, Ben Anderson, was the animation director on Life of Pi, which won the 2013 Oscar for best achievement in visual effects. Anderson, now the animation supervisor at Method Studios, is one of several industry experts on the faculty.
Simmons said that Capilano University instructors in animation and digital visual effects collectively have more than 200 years of experience in these fields.
He noted that Capilano University only accepts a maximum of 25 students into each of the three programs every September, which guarantees small class sizes. At the end of the second year, they put on a grad show in downtown Vancouver.
“It acts as a trade show,” Simmons said. “They get their own booths.