WE Accelerate presents unique source of talent for industry collaborators

By: Matthew King (he/him)

The WE Accelerate program gives community and industry partners early access to talent from the University of Waterloo while helping to develop the future of work.

The Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate program was born out of the need to support unemployed co-op students — a need amplified by COVID-19 — by providing an alternative option for their co-op work term. As industries shifted during the pandemic, it also highlighted the importance of being flexible and staying current with in-demand skills. The University of Waterloo analyzed more than 74,000 job postings to see what skills employers were looking for the most in students from all faculties and all levels.

Based on this skills data, Waterloo approached Co-operative and Experiential Education's long-time community and industry partners to help to develop a program that would target skills that were most in demand. Microsoft, Manulife, Deloitte, D2L, Vidyard and Velocity each worked with the curriculum development experts at WIL Programs to co-create a skills stream.

The WE Accelerate streams during the pilot in Spring 2021 included:

• Microsoft Azure Artificial Intelligence (Microsoft)
• Modern Web Application Design (Manulife)
• Human-centered Design (Deloitte)
• Innovation (Velocity)
• Brightspace Training (D2L)
• Digital Bootcamp (Vidyard)

Although each of the WE Accelerate streams varies slightly, they all focus on future readiness. The project experience component delivers interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities to students through their project teams.

“It’s thrilling to see this innovation in work-integrated learning take root. It's been an incredible experience helping students gain their work-ready experience through WE Accelerate at the University of Waterloo,” says Elka Walsh, national education and skills lead for Microsoft Canada. "We are so excited to have the chance to meet the new group of students joining the program to develop their digital skills as well as hone their innovation and ‘learn-it-all’ skills."

Beyond helping students, WE Accelerate presents another way for employers to expand their relationship with the University and with co-op.

“Manulife has this amazing partnership with the University of Waterloo as part of our co-op program so being asked to be a part of the WE Accelerate program for us, it just simply was a no-brainer,” says Naveed Zahid, assistant vice president, engineering transformation at Manulife.

It gave us the ability to give students that head start in their career by offering them the ability to learn these very valuable technology skills. A lot of our students know what academics is, and they know what work is, but WE Accelerate, is a mesh between that gray area between work and school.

 

- NAVEED ZAHID, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, ENGINEERING TRANSFORMATION AT MANULIFE

The opportunity also brings our students' skills to companies that previously may not have found it feasible to hire a co-op student.

“At first, it sounded a little daunting. You get like five students at once for one month. And we're like, how are we going to survive?” says Martin Ochwat, chief marketing officer for Dundas Life. “But yeah, it really piqued our interest, being a small startup, we really need all the resources and help we can get to grow the business.”

The WE Accelerate project and curriculum teams are currently working with industry partners on the development of course improvements and potential new streams to offer students now that the program will be a permanent offering for first-work term students.