University of Waterloo
School of Economics
MA, Co-op Program Work Term Report Guidelines
You are expected to outline your work term placement(s) and associated responsibilities. In addition, you are asked to discuss the extent to which your coursework was relevant to your position. In particular, you should discuss why (or why not) an economist was the best choice for the work you needed to do.
The work term report includes:
- Description of position and responsibilities
- Discussion of how your academic training was used on the job
- Discussion of the value of economics in solving the problems you faced on the job and tasks you had to do
Note: Work term reports become the property of the University of Waterloo. Your employer cannot withhold your report because the content is classified.
The report should be:
- 1500 words long (approximately)
- Double-spaced, single-sided, with pages numbered
- Email a .pdf copy of your work term report to the Associate Director, Gradaute, Tom Parker (tmparker@uwaterloo.ca) and also cc the Graduate Coordinator, Amanda Taves (amanda.taves@uwaterloo.ca)
- DUE DATE: Will be emailed each year
Opening Pages
Title Page
Should include: the title of the report, your name, ID number, the name of the organization at which the work term was spent, and the date.
Letter of Submission
Should take the form of a standard business letter, addressed to the Graduate Officer, School of Economics. The letter should contain the following information: report title, acknowledgments of assistance, and a statement that the report was prepared by you and has not received previous academic credit at this or another institution.
Main Section
The main section consists of a description of your position and responsibilities, the ways in which your academic training helped prepare you for the job and a discussion of the extent to which an economist was best suited to handle your responsibilities.
Description of Position and Responsibilities
Your work term(s) was/were at which organization(s)? What was your title and position(s), and what were your responsibilities? What were some of your significant challenges and accomplishments?
The Value of Economics
In what aspect of your job did you use anything you learned in the classroom? Try to describe in detail the situation and how your academic training was relevant. If you were engaged in policy analysis, were there economic theories you used? If you had to use econometrics, try to describe exactly what regressions you ran. Also discuss why your employer would have wanted specifically an economist for the job. For example, if you did data analysis, think about why somebody trained in statistical methods from another discipline might not do as good a job.
References & Bibliography
When a source is cited without comment, the reference may be inserted in the text using an abbreviated form, including the surname of the author, the date of publication, and the page reference, all within parentheses, e.g. (Cassen, 1976, p. 817). Comments on references should be put in footnotes, again using the abbreviated form of the reference. The full reference should be given in a bibliography at the end of the report.
Tables
Tables cannot stand on their own; they have to be explained in the text. Every table must be numbered and have a heading. The source of information in the table should be cited immediately below the table.
Footnotes
The main use of footnotes is to give the source of quotations, statistics, or the ideas of other people. It is important that you acknowledge your sources. Footnotes may also be used, occasionally, to qualify or develop a point, which if done in the text would unbalance the material or interrupt the flow of the narrative. Footnotes should be placed at the bottom of the page to which they refer, not at the end of the report.