by Margaret Jetelina
Photograpy by Greg Ehlers

After receiving yet another letter strongly encouraging her to please declare her major, Jane Nunnikhoven finally gave in and wrote down psychology, hesitantly.

“I didn’t really have a very good reason,” admits Nunnikhoven. “But I was getting on in my degree and had taken quite a few psychology courses.” The fact that she had no clear post-graduation goals was a likely factor in her “major” indecision. But even with her decision down on paper, Nunnikhoven was still not all that convinced that psychology was the right major.

Enter SFU’s co-operative education program, which provides students with paid, full-time career-oriented opportunities. Nunnikhoven joined the co-op program to explore what path her career could take after graduation.

More than 2,000 SFU students and some 1,000 employers are regularly involved in the co-op program, which is one of the largest and most diversified of its kind in Canada, with programs in a variety of disciplines, including the arts, business, communications, computing science, science, and engineering science (where it is mandatory).

“It ended up being a really awesome opportunity that changed a lot for me.” Jane Nunnikhoven

It was the first such program established in British Columbia (in 1975), and many employers now use it as part of a long-term recruiting strategy, testing out future employees, so to speak. Others simply enjoy the fresh ideas and energy students bring to their organizations.

“The number and type of employers vary according to discipline,” says Nancy Johnston, director of co-operative education at SFU. “There’s everything from small home-based businesses in Burnaby to multinational firms in Hong Kong.”

It’s a good deal for everyone: “There’s a fair body of research literature that indicates co-op students are more focused and confident and get better grades,” says Johnston. “Many students get in a rut with school; through co-op they may get re-motivated and even switch their majors.”

Exploring Your Options

That was the case for Nunnikhoven. Co-op not only opened the door to the summer-job opportunities she had been hoping for, she also got much more than she ever imagined – she finally figured out what path her career should take after graduation. As it happens, her new-found career focus had nothing to do with psychology.
Her first co-op placement was as a communications assistant with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority in North Vancouver. At first she hadn’t been particularly interested in the position, but the interview had gone so well she chose the PR position.

And she chose wisely. “It ended up being a really awesome opportunity that changed a lot for me,” she says. “It provided an opportunity to explore my options and helped me figure out what my major should be.” She quickly switched her major from psychology to communications.

“I like encouraging students to explore their options through the co-op program,” says Johnston. “You can use it to test out four or five different applications of your degree. There’s no better time to have the freedom to do it.” She adds that, at worst, some people go through four co-op terms and find out four things they don’t want to do after graduation. And, at best, they find out exactly what they want.

Nunnikhoven found out her passion lay in communicating – writing and designing staff newsletters, brochures, web site content, press releases – the typical stuff of PR pros. With a mix of creative projects, she realized she not only liked what she was doing, she was thriving on it. “I tend to get bored if I’m doing the same thing all the time,” she admits.

Boredom certainly wasn’t a factor here; Nunnikhoven ended up staying with the health authority for three consecutive semesters, during which she developed a vast portfolio of work, including a communications strategy for the organization’s internal United Way campaign. “Donations had been steadily going down because there had been no ownership to the campaign,” she says. So she took on the task to promote the campaign internally with small events such as pancake breakfasts.

Donations increased from $8,500 to $16,000. And Nunnikhoven’s achievement and PR savvy started to get noticed. She was named co-op student of the year by the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education, a national association for co-op educators and employers. She then won the title of best student member of the B.C. chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), which she had been encouraged to join by her boss at the health authority.

Nunnikhoven later intermixed her newly focused studies with two other communications co-op placements – one with SFU’s co-op program itself working to promote the program to students and employers, and her latest with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency in Ottawa.

Nunnikhoven will leave SFU not only with her degree in communications, but also with real-world experience and a PDA full of contacts, maybe one that will lead to a job. Indeed, Johnston points out that “70 to 90 percent of co-op grads work for a co-op employer or a contact they made.”

Real-World Experience

Of course, not everyone’s co-op experience will necessarily play out like Nunnikhoven’s. “Co-op reflects the real world and all kinds of people. Sometimes you don’t get the right fit,” Johnston says. And some might not even get a job at all.

“Co-op is also a mirror to the economy. Right now, the economy is very soft, particularly in the IT area,” Johnston continues. And with smaller supply, there is, of course, larger demand. “When the economy is down, student interest in co-op is at its peak,” Johnston says. Perhaps students realize that they may need more than their parchments to land a job when competing with those who have managed to circumvent the work-experience cycle. They’ll need “practical experience to hang on the theory they’re learning in school,” Johnston says.

Computing science co-op student Bistra Dilkina couldn’t agree more. “I thought my education would not be complete without putting my knowledge and skills in perspective,” she says. “I wanted to be part of a research and development team where people work on seeing the connections between computing science and the real world.”

“I thought my education would not be complete without putting my knowledge and skills in perspective.” Bistra Dilkina

And the co-op program granted Dilkina that wish. She was hired as a co-op student at SFU’s Intelligent Systems Lab, headed by director Bill Havens. For two co-op terms, she assisted with Haven’s artificial intelligence project involving the development of a scheduling library, which is a programming system for difficult scheduling problems.

Unlike Nunnikhoven, Dilkina had known what she wanted for her future before entering co-op – she wanted to continue on in her academic career toward a Ph.D. in computing science with an eye to staying on in academic research. And like Nunnikhoven, the Bulgarian native flourished in the practical environment. Havens even nominated her for the outstanding female research undergraduate award by the international Computing Research Association, whose awards recognize students with outstanding research potential. She won.

For her contribution to the lab, Dilkina also won this year’s B.C. Sugar achievement award, valued at $5,000, which honours someone from SFU who has brought distinction to the university by achieving national or international prominence.

When Havens created a spin-off company from the lab called Constraint Works, Dilkina stayed on for a third co-op term. The company faced a challenging project – building a prototype scheduling application for the National Football League. “They have a 32-team league with many different rules and constraints and hence a very hard scheduling problem,” she says.

Although Havens has asked her to stay and work for the company after she graduates, Dilkina still intends to follow her original plans of going to grad school. But she’ll keep her options open. After all, the possibilities for Dilkina and Nunnikhoven seem ... well ... endless.

The same thing goes for the co-op program itself. Despite the recent economic slowdown, Johnston is excited about the next few years. “The international program has grown by leaps and bounds,” she says. “And the faculty of education just came on board, the first time all faculties have been involved.” She’s also looking forward to the launch of their new online learning community next year and is hoping the 2010 Olympics will bring with it opportunities for co-op students.

Overall, what’s Johnston’s outlook for co-op at SFU? Like the no-rush philosophy behind the program itself, she says: “We’re hoping for slow, steady growth.” aq

For more information about the Co-operative Education Program, visit their web site at: http://www.sfu.ca/coop/

print this story
top of page