Students at Fort MacMurray High Schools have completed a new power engineering program, which is very beneficial for students who want to work in the nearby oilsands. 3 local high schools offer the program to students. The off campus coordinator for Father Patrick Mercredi High School Lynda Cachia commented “It’s incredibly impressive. You’re carrying a full high school load, you’re carrying a full college load, and then they graduate and have to challenge the Alberta Boilermakers Safety Association exam, and they’ve had to work at a company as a young person for three summers in an adult world. It takes a special kind of student … to have that kind of confidence and maturity. Both of these students did all of their course work while they were high school students. There was a block of time for three years in a row for them to work on this self-directed program. These students are working as adults in high school, getting all of their technical courses out of the way, so when they’re stepping out of high school and graduated, they’re ready to launch into their career.” Cachia continued with “The one direct downside of the program is student are not able to take options classes because that’s used up by their power engineering, so I guess someone could argue they couldn’t take something that would broaden their general interests while they’re in high school. The upside is we’ve got a lot of students who’ve chosen to do power engineering and then not chosen to continue it, but they kept motivated while they were in high school. They really paid attention to their math and science courses, because that’s so directly involved in their power engineering.”