Joseph Cilia, a lecturer at MCAST, was presented with the City & Guilds Medal for Excellence, in recognition of his efforts and commitments to his students at the College's Institute of Building and Construction Engineering. The award was presented by City & Guilds and MCAST officials at the MCAST Main Campus, in Paola.

Each year from a pool of almost two million potential candidates from across the globe, City & Guilds select less than 100 Medals for Excellence Award recipients, with the prestigious accolades awarded to those who have displayed exceptional standards and whose ability and achievement has made them stand out from the crowd.

With 40 years' experience in his field, Mr Cilia started his career working as a workshop foreman after graduating from the Technical Institute in 1972. In 1986 he joined the Education Division as an instructor where he prepared students for the City and Guilds 822 syllabus in welding and a few years later followed the International Welding Specialist Diploma at the Japan Welding and Engineering Society.

In 2001 he joined MCAST as a deployed lecturer and started lecturing Welding and Fabrication at the Institute of Building and Construction Engineering at Naxxar. He obtained the Technology Education Certificate from the University of Malta and the City and Guilds Licentiateship L5 Diploma from City and Guilds in 2004.

During his career at MCAST Mr Cilia delivered several programmes, including among others, to Seifert international, TUG Malta and the Restoration Directorate. He is currently lecturing on the Level 5 MG2I Welding Units courses on a voluntary basis. He is also a City and Guild internal verifier at the Institute of Building and Construction Engineering at MCAST.

The Medal for Excellence award was presented to Mr Cilia by Thomas Mallon, City & Guilds regional manager (Europe), Stephen Cachia, MCAST principal and CEO, Ronald Curmi, registrar, John Vella, Institute of Building and Construction Engineering director and Godwin Caruana, deputy director Institute of Building and Construction Engineering.