St. Clair College is giving its first Community Partnership Award to Bruce Krauter, the chief of the Essex-Windsor Emergency Medical Service.
The college cites his "indispensable actions during the 2020-21 academic year."
Both students and staff in the paramedic program faced a trying year and a half, but thanks to Krauter, it developed a new in-house practicum for senior-year students.
"Utilizing its own ambulance vehicles and creating its own radio system, the new hands-on program saw students dispatched throughout the school's campuses to respond to illness and accident scenarios using fellow students and other volunteers as patients in need of assistance," read a release from St. Clair.
"The fact that the college could replicate this system in as detailed a fashion as it did, that the school had it up and running as quickly as it did, and that the essential preceptor involvement was retained, were all very much due to Chief Krauter's participation and support," said College President Patti France.
When the provincial government suggested the students would need more work-based experience, Krauter took a lead role advocating on their behalf to the Ministries of Health and Universities and Colleges.
The college was ultimately able to graduate those students in June.
