Wayne has served as Acting Dean since October 2016. He joined Mohawk College in 2010 as the Associate Dean, Construction and Building Systems. Over those seven years, Wayne was successful at growing the scope of programs offered in his program area including the development of two new programs: Horticulture Technician (apprenticeship) and Mechanical Techniques (Post-Secondary). He also worked closely with the Technical Safety Standards Association for Mohawk to receive accreditation for two newly developed Ontario College Certificate Programs: Power Engineering 4th and 3rd Class, and he was instrumental in securing $8.8 milion in Apprenticeship Enhancement Grants for the college.

Prior to joining Mohawk, Wayne had a successful 30-plus year career with Hydro One where he worked with external stakeholders, including customers, the corporate community and government representatives. He was active with several committees, including most notably, serving as the corporate lead for Hydro One Networks through the review and revision of the 2009 Electrical Utility Safety Rules.

Mohawk looks forward to Wayne's continued leadership in his new role as Dean. Wayne transitioned into his new role earlier this month.

Up to 48 high school graduates will be enrolled in the 28-week program at Mohawk College’s Stoney Creek campus starting in January 2017. Students will train for jobs in advanced manufacturing / computer numeric code (CNC) and mobile industrial / hydraulics. Registration is $350 with a $200 refund on successful completion of the program.

The ESTATE program is being delivered by IEC in partnership with Mohawk College, Mohawk College Enterprise, Express Employment Professionals, the City of Hamilton, the Government of Ontario and several local companies.

Ryder Canada

The donation will go toward a major redevelopment project that will benefit Mohawk’s current and future students, enhance accessibility to college education, and provide benefits to faculty, staff, and the broader community. In honour of the donation, Mohawk named a classroom at the Stoney Creek campus after the company at the announcement that was held on Tuesday.

At the announcement, Paul Ayotte, Director of Operations for Ryder Canada called the donation an investment in the company's future as the money will enhance the educational experience for current and future generations of truck technicians.

"Our greatest asset is our front-line employees," said Mr. Ayotte. "Our goal is to put all of our energy into employing, developing and coaching young people who want to be the best at what they do."

"Ryder is pleased to partner with Mohawk as they supply skilled employees to the community," said Michael Cole, Senior Director of Human Resources with Ryder Canada. "Mohawk is mobilizing our shared vision, to realize the goals of students, employers and the community through the expertise of their faculty and investment in their facilities."

Speaking about Mohawk's role in the community, Mr. Cole said the college plays an essential role in educating highly skilled, well prepared and motivated employees, making it the job-creating engine of our community.

Mohawk is the final stages of building a new 12,000 square foot building at the Stoney Creek campus. Located just opposite the Gerald Marshall Centre for Transportation, the $3 million facility will include a large shop where students and apprentices from across the campus will work together on large scale community projects. The centre will also include classrooms and programmable control labs.

“Ryder’s generous investment will help us expand our skilled trades campus,” said Mohawk College President Ron McKerlie. “We’re excited to open a new building, where students and apprentices from different programs and trades will develop their skills by working together on major projects.”

Mohawk is one of the largest trainers of apprentices in Ontario with more than 4,000 students and apprentices studying at the Stoney Creek campus each year. 

It’s a small two-story house that wouldn’t look out of place on any residential street. But its modest exterior hides a secret: the house is built with the most advanced materials, connected to renewable generation, outfitted with energy efficient heating and cooling technology, utilizing energy storage and wired top to bottom with sensors that monitor insulation efficiency.

The house is a living lab, facilitating opportunities for research, innovation and teaching that will benefit industry, academics and teachers. It’s a modern home that allows visitors to visualize every aspect of energy and power research that is taking place in the space.

You can’t find it using Google Maps- the almost-completed eco-friendly house is located at Mohawk’s Stoney Creek Campus, housed within a soaring three story lab space that is dedicated to everything sustainable. The house is part of the Sustainable Resource Centre, a centre dedicated to helping us reduce our environmental impact and focused on the pillars of clean energy, reuse of resources and waste minimization.

Efficient Energy

As more homes adopt energy storage, renewable energy and start selling back to the grid, Researchers with the Mohawk College iDeaWORKS Energy Research Centre - which has labs located at both Mohawk’s Fennell and Stoney Creek campuses- wanted to learn more about how it wouldimpact the grid, especially on the power distribution equipment and transformers. Their research interests found a home in the new eco-house.

New energy efficient appliances, like our dishwashers and washing machines, are generating more harmonic frequencies than their previous iterations. These harmonic frequencies are undesirable, as they impact power quality and can shorten the lives of transformers.

Energy researchers based at Mohawk College recently presented a paper at the 2015 IEEE conference on the topic, showing how harmonics generated by solar, energy-saving home appliances and electric vehicle chargers pose a potential threat to the distribution network systems. If they are allowed to continue unabated it could cause fuse failures and premature failure of pole-mount transformers.

Mike Dang, a researcher with the Energy Centre, and a retired employee of Hydro One, calls the transformer failures that are coming from the energy efficient appliances “a costly and dangerous failure”.

“Let’s say the utility company bought a transformer to hopefully last 50 years- now it might only last five years,” says Dang. “The cost could keep adding up to the point where in five to ten years’ time, the problem would be unmanageable. Plus, you can’t afford to lose power in the winter- to replace a transformer, homes would be without power for two to five hours.”

Peter Sztur, the Bachelor of Technology in Energy Engineering student who works with the iDeaWORKS Energy team sums up the issue with harmonics and the push on using energy efficient appliances.

“When you are looking at the consumer perspective, it is great to save money, be sustainable and use energy, but at what cost to our utilities companies?”

Hands-On House

“It will be a very good research and development house.” says Ivan Sverko.

Sverko is a Conventional and Renewable Energies Professor at Mohawk’s Stoney Creek campus.Like the researchers in energy and power, Sverko is also using the house to solve problems and test new technologies in the area of renewable energy. He is just one of the many Mohawk faculty that helped in the planning and implementation of the lab and he’ll continue to use the lab to conduct renewable energy projects and integrate the lab into his teaching on renewable and sustainable energy systems.

Sverko, his colleagues and students are using heat testing to see how effective the house is on the whole. The house itself was built using energy efficient materials and has been outfitted with the latest in heating and cooling technology, including geothermal and radiant floor heating.

It’s also linked to solar panels and wind turbines located on the roof of the Stoney Creek campus.

“Once we outfit the house with the temperature sensors, we will determine out the amount of heating needed to heat the house, and figure out how efficient the house is at keeping things warm without needing to have a heat source that needs to be used as often,” explains Sverko.

“If that is the case, then the house will be a success.”

The sustainable house, although still not quite finished, is already a home for knowledge, innovation and teaching:

“We are solving problems, we are reinventing the wheel,” says Sverko.

“Students can see it instead of studying it. The house is hands-on and something they can discover for themselves.”

This article was originally published in the 2015 volume of Quanta, Mohawk College’s annual celebration of research and innovation.

Author Andrea Johnson is Promotions and Industry Liaison Officer for iDeaWORKS and the editor of Quanta.

In case you missed it: Episode 21

Got a story idea? Pitch it to us. Email sean.coffey@mohawkcollege.ca or jay.robb@mohawkcollege.ca in Communications.

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