Grads look to stay local

About 50 recent graduates at Kelowna's Centre for Arts and Technology showed off their talents at the Innovation Centre Friday night, during the school's Vision Festival.

The event is a “graduation show” for students graduating from a variety of programs, including film, photography, graphic design, animation and network security.

“This is a bit of a celebration,” said Megan Reid, community relations manager with CATO.

Reid said as Kelowna's technology industry grows, graduates have more opportunity to stay in Kelowna, rather than finding work in a larger city.

“Animation is obviously a big one, there's tons of animation studios here,” Reid said. “A good chunk of our grads are already employed locally.”

Rhea Callis recently graduated from the graphic design and web development program at CATO. While she doesn't have a full-time job in her industry yet, but is fielding several freelance opportunities, she says she's hoping to stay in Kelowna.

Logan Mosinsky meanwhile, just graduated from the network security program, a program Reid says has a 97 per cent job placement rate following graduation.

While Mosinsky says he's looking forward to relaxing for the next week after a hard push at the end of his schooling, he says there's lots of opportunity for him in Kelowna.

“We've seen how much construction's going around town, the thing about IT that's nice is that it's not limited to one industry, everybody needs IT guys,” he said.