This newsletter is all about our industry relationships and our student internships - and what a story we have to tell.
Of course, the University of Waterloo has always been a leader in creating significant partnerships with industry – indeed, co-op programming is now the largest of its kind in the world. Here at the Stratford Campus, we seek to extend this model specifically to areas such as Digital Marketing and User Experience (UX) with our internship program for Global Business and Digital Arts (GBDA) students.
As all of our students know, from the beginning of our program, we have had industry come directly into our classrooms with their most challenging customer experience scenarios. Our students draw upon their classroom learning to suggest fresh, innovative solutions to the problems they are presented with.
Having received valuable insight from these challenge activities, our industry partners enthusiastically encouraged us in the establishment of our GBDA internship program for third-year students. Launched for the first time in Spring 2015, we placed more than 60 students into impactful roles in companies across North America and beyond.
And what a difference they have made.
For example, student interns at one of the world's largest management consulting companies were found to be so competent in the digital media space that they were actually sent out to work directly with clients. What a remarkable experience for both our students and the company. All the partner company could say was, "Give me five more just like them next year!"
Another student at a major insurance company was deployed at their innovation lab, a space established to look at how technology could be used to transform the insurance industry. Before the end of the work term, management re-oriented the lab from its original mandate to concentrate on UX - all due to insights our student had shared.
We believe our GBDA internship program is one of the most important features of our undergraduate degree. Not only do students get a real-world work experience but our industry partners gain valuable insights and also provide us with essential input on where we need to take the program in future - a real win-win.
Ginny Dybenko
Executive Director
University of Waterloo Stratford Campus
