Jeff Ruigrok

Jeff Ruigrok has been a professor with the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology since 2012. For him, teaching (Mechanical Techniques/Technician) Plumbing at Magna School of Skilled Trades to the next generation of trades professionals has been a privilege without bounds and part of a goal realized.

Jeff is a veteran of Ontario’s construction industry. He has over 30 years experience in the plumbing, heating and water quality industries.  As operator of his own business, Jeff has accumulated 25 years of organizational and business management proficiency.

Jeff’s passion for teaching grew during a mid-career hiatus. Throughout this semi-retirement period he raised three children and actively supported a broad range of community organizations. This community involvement soon turned to the local co-operative education program. Working alongside co-op students helped him understand the challenges youth face and the strengths they embodied. In 2008 he tested the proverbial teaching waters in the apprenticeship programs at Conestoga College. Soon after, he brought these experiences to the bachelor of education program, offered to him by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto).

Jeff has worked with many educators across Ontario. This helped him develop his own philosophy of education – that inclusive values are different by nature. By means of this philosophy, Jeff has developed a pedagogical approach that could be termed “physically active service learning.” He believes that emotional and physically literate knowledge objectives create accessible buy-in opportunities for a broad range of students and that by developing a safe technical learning environment with such broad strokes, tradecraft curriculum will benefit an inclusive range of personal values and learning style differences.