Co-op and Experiential Education

Monica Hoang had no idea earlier this year that she’d be spending the last few months of her PhD working on the design of a COVID-19 testing kit.

The School of Pharmacy student moved back to her hometown when the University of Waterloo decided to go online for the spring term and planned to do her PhD defence digitally.

Then an old friend in the pharmacy program messaged her to say his colleagues were looking for somebody with a genetics background to join their team. The next day, Hoang was at a meeting in Waterloo’s Velocity startup incubator in downtown Kitchener.

Cheri Chevalier
Alumnus, Faculty of Arts (BA ’95)
> Global Director, Emerging Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics at Microsoft

When Cheri Chevalier interviewed at Microsoft Canada as a fourth-year Waterloo St. Jerome's University co-op student, she was surprised by the ambitious task assigned to her.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced the world to reconsider the way we live — right down to the structures that house us.

With more information surfacing on the transmission of the virus every day, professionals in architecture and design are re-imagining what a post-COVID society might look like.

It’s also prompting organizations to take a closer look at the layout of their quarters.

A new collaboration between the School of Architecture and Cambridge’s Self-Help Food Bank is one of these latest initiatives magnified by COVID-19.

This isn’t how the Faculty of Math’s class of 2020 envisioned their graduating year. Instead of walking across the convocation stage to receive their diploma in front of family and friends, students will participate in a virtual ceremony. Then, in the months ahead, these same graduates will seek work in one of the toughest job markets in recent memory.

But there is cause for hope and optimism.

In response to COVID-19, many organizations have had to pivot their businesses to an online model. But the technical and digital skills needed to do this work can be hard to find. The University of Waterloo has partnered with industry experts to fill this gap by equipping students with the digital skills employers are looking for to help transform businesses and workplaces.

We have entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution with technology spearheading and transforming the workforce and the future of business. It’s happening all around us. Blockbuster went bankrupt with the introduction of streaming services like Netflix. Taxis have repositioned their business models due to app-driven ride-share programs like Uber. Roles of financial advising and investing are becoming obsolete with algorithmically programmed robo-investors.

A group of computer science students are applying big data practices to predicting the cease of COVID cases in Canada. Their findings? October 15, 2020.

Faced with this unprecedented situation of pivoting to online learning, many of Waterloo’s instructors wanted to get their students involved in research around COVID-19.

One such instructor is computer science professor Ali Abedi, who teaches two big data courses: Data Intensive Distributed Computing (CS451) and Data Intensive Distributed Analytics (CS431).

They say the friends you make in university will be friendships that will last a lifetime — and the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) isn’t letting anything (not even COVID-19) come between that.

Integrated within the Accounting and Financial Management (AFM), Math/CPA and Biotech/CPA programs is an experiential learning initiative called “2YEx” (the two-year experience). The goal of 2YEx is to inspire engaged learners that support each other while honing their collaboration and teamwork skills.

Judene Pretti, Director of the Waterloo Centre for the Advancement of Co-operative Education and Jennifer Woodside, Director of the Centre for Career Action answer our questions about the new world of work.

Should people be trying to find jobs right now?

University of Waterloo researchers are developing personalized 3D-printed mask components for front line health-care providers as well as patients who regularly visit medical facilities for treatments such as dialysis and chemotherapy.

Members of the  Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Laboratory have produced a number of prototypes based on approved design guidelines from Health Canada and the National Institutes for Health.