Friday, April 21, 2000

The University's student job-matching machine

In 1980, six professors from the University of Ottawa's Department of Mathematics recognized their students would benefit from applying the skills learned in the classroom to the workplace and set out to find term-job placements for them with such employers as IBM Canada Ltd. and Bell Canada.

Twenty years later, the University's Co-operative Education Programs have become Ontario's second-largest university co-op program second only to the University of Waterloo's, which has been running since 1957. Only five years ago, the University of Ottawa's co-op program had some 600 students enrolled from 14 different academic programs. Today, the co-op office finds four-month work placements for nearly 2,000 students (out of 25,000 full-time students on campus) enrolled in 29 different academic programs (including three new additions -- biochemistry, biology and biopharmaceuticals -- which will begin matching students with employers in early 2001.

Five of the University's 10 faculties (Science, Engineering, Administration, Arts and Social Sciences) offer the co-op option. Admission is based on academic performance (a grade point average of 8) and, once accepted, students can apply for a work placement generally at the end of their second year of undergraduate honours-degree studies from a list of employers who hire, mentor and pay recruits.

"The program is designed to complement our students' studies so when they go out and begin a full-time job, they already have the years of experience usually lacking when university students graduate and head out into the workforce," explains Carmen Poulin-Brazeau, director of Co-operative Education Programs. "Some employers will only hire students who have graduated from co-op programs, recognizing that the students have had supervised training in their respective areas."

Poulin-Brazeau says that the majority of graduating co-op students find permanent positions in the workforce -- often where they completed a work-term assignment. Meanwhile, students are encouraged to shop around for work terms best suited to their academic qualifications, Poulin-Brazeau adds.

"One of our goals is to allow students to not only test what they've learned but also to give them an opportunity to determine their likes and dislikes. For example, students in chemical engineering might think they want to work in the oil industry and once they spend a term working in that sector they discover they don't like it. So for the second term, they might choose to work for an environmental company."

Co-op students also get to travel. Often, their work terms are based in Toronto, southern Ontario or Montreal. Sometimes, students find themselves working as far away as Europe. Most students in mechanical and chemical engineering are matched with employers outside the Ottawa area in such major industrial hubs as Sarnia or Calgary. And they get to network, making professional contacts before they leave the University.

"If they put their name out there and show a variety of employers how good they are, they're much in demand by the time they graduate."

Students are not the only people networking. The University of Ottawa co-op office works at building long-term relationships with students and employers. This includes events such as the annual Christmas hockey game where co-op staff and students battle against high-tech employers. The event creates a relaxed atmosphere, but also allows the employers to get a feel for the University environment.

Most of the University of Ottawa co-op students in civil engineering that Phil Desmarais has hired on work terms at the Region of Ottawa-Carleton have landed jobs in their discipline following graduation. In fact, so did he. Before he received his bachelor of applied science in civil engineering from the University of Ottawa in 1987, Desmarais, now 35 and working for the region's Transportation Projects Branch as a municipal design engineer, completed two of four co-op work terms with the regional government. Based on his own dual perspective, Desmarais has witnessed the dual benefits of the University's co-op program.

From the students' point of view, they get to see what an actual work environment is like. Working in an office gives you some ideas where and how to develop your skills, especially those interpersonal skills that are really important in the workplace," he explains. "From the employers' point of view, they get very skilled individuals that pick up stuff very quickly, which provides a lot of opportunities to play around with different management and educational styles to see what works best.

"What they're teaching at the University is how to think. When you walk into the workplace they're interested in you applying your skills to the task at hand." Among some of the major local companies hiring the University of Ottawa's co-op students for work terms and full-time positions following graduation is Nortel Networks Corp. where University of Ottawa graduate and co-op program alumnus Nick Burn works. While Nortel wasn't one of the companies he worked for, Burn, a chemical engineer who did his bachelor of applied science studies at the University, credits the co-op program with giving him valuable experience prior to entering the job world.

"I got exposed to what mature engineers were doing in the workplace as well as to the dynamics of working with people, projects and problem solving," says Burn, a quality engineer with Nortel's Microelectronics Group and a part-time professor in the University of Ottawa's Department of Chemical Engineering. "Co-op students are generally paid well, so I was able to get through university debt-free."

The bottom line is that the University of Ottawa's job-matching machine produces better-quality students, explains Poulin-Brazeau, and co-op students' academic performance improves as they progress through the program.

"Professors tell us and we notice that when students come back after their first four months of work, they have gained a lot of confidence in themselves. They want to come back and really learn – often lobbying their professors to teach courses they feel are more relevant to the workplace," Poulin-Brazeau explains. "They've seen what's out there, they've seen what they need to succeed."

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