Reaching new heights through co-op
The spirit of co-operation is everywhere at Concordia. From students sharing ideas for their group projects to professors collaborating on interdisciplinary research, the Concordia community is made up of people who know first-hand that we achieve better results, and learn more about ourselves, by working together.
Nowhere is this more evident than within Concordia’s Institute for Co-operative Education, which links career-minded students with potential employers. It enables undergrads to truly work towards their degrees by pursuing job placements in their chosen field.
For four students from the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, the co-op program has been the chance to test their wings. Terri-Anne Cambridge, Anthony Rubino, Stephen Jacobs and Sandeep Sandhu have all been hard at work since the summer with placements at the Montreal offices of CAE, a global leader in modeling, simulation and training for civil aviation and defence.
The four, all in their final year of a bachelor’s degree, enrolled at Concordia for different reasons. For Anthony Rubino, a timely visit to the university’s open house made up his mind. “The students had a much friendlier feel than at the other Montreal-based engineering schools, and that was what sold me,” he says.
Steven Jacobs came to Concordia after years of working as a technician. “I knew that the only way I could get the job that I really wanted was with an engineering degree … and that learning French would also help open doors,” he says. “Montreal was the logical place to do both, and I wound up choosing Concordia because it just felt right.”
For Terri-Anne Cambridge, Concordia is a family affair: “I’m the youngest of all my siblings to go to Concordia,” she says with a smile.
But for Sandeep Sandhu, the co-op program was the deciding factor. “I simply wanted to attend an English-speaking university in Montreal,” he explains. “I initially chose McGill, but when I went to Concordia’s open house, the co-op program was mentioned and I was convinced.”
Co-op also wound up convincing Sandhu’s three CAE colleagues. Although Jacobs came to Concordia “not caring about co-op,” the difficulties of the job market soon gave him a harsh reality check. “I tried to find a job myself, but then we went through the economic downturn and I had a meeting with Fred Francis (program coordinator for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering),” Sandhu recalls. “He talked about how it’s good to have all those resources working together for you.”
Already in his second year at Concordia, Jacobs wound up joining the Industrial Experience program. The program is designed for undergraduate and course-based master’s students enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science who are interested in pursuing summer work experience relevant to their studies.
Cambridge and Rubino didn’t need any external prodding to realize that co-op was where they belonged. “After my positive experience at the open house, the co-op program was really what attracted me to Concordia over the other engineering schools in town,” says Rubino.
Regarding herself as a “typical student,” Cambridge saw integrating co-op with her studies as a straightforward and logical step. “I figure what’s a bit of extra work? It’s more like you’re learning, and doing work and having fun. In the end, it does pay off.”
The co-op experience at CAE has paid off for each of the students by helping to shape their future in a positive way. Working in real jobs, on real projects, with colleagues who often have decades of experience has given them a competitive edge over their peers.
“For a lot of us, starting up with co-op was really intimidating: it felt like companies would never hire us – we’re inexperienced undergraduates!” Cambridge says. “But once you get your first job and you learn a lot of things, your resumé starts to look way more complete and you realize that you have that competitive edge.”
Studies in the classroom, of course, are what helped pave the way for what can be complex tasks in the workplace. Rubino is a deployment systems specialist. Jacobs and Sandhu are both customer service engineers. Cambridge works on a sonar simulator in CAE’s engineering department. They all put the skills they learned at Concordia to good use as they help a global company develop cutting-edge flight simulators and related technologies.
Everyone’s eyes light up when they talk about their work. “I am based in the deployment department, where we prepare the simulators to ship out to the clients,” explains Rubino. “We’re the final frontier before the clients get their hands on the simulator.”
For Jacobs and Sandhu, customer service provides exciting challenges, too. “As a customer service engineer, I get to handle every simulator that CAE sends to a customer,” says Jacobs. “So if they have an issue with it, or they want something changed, or they don’t understand why something behaves the way it does, we have to provide those fixes. Every day it’s a little different.”
Sandhu echoes his colleague’s enthusiasm. Specializing in in-flight performance, he regularly conducts the qualification tests necessary to provide aircraft simulators with their yearly certifications. “Every week we get a different issue,” he says. “We have objectives that we have to meet every single day. It’s a constant flow, mostly dealing directly with airports, manufacturers, and the people who purchase the sims.”
Cambridge finds her job on the software side of things equally fascinating as she works with a European company using a state-of-the-art sonar simulator. “Every so often there’s a team member who goes to a company to integrate CAE’s software with its machines. If there’s an issue, the company reports back to us to fix it. We’re still in the development phase, so we’re still developing features and fixing bugs. It’s very interesting; it’s very cool.”
Positive reports abound from their supervisors – CAE employees who have been with the company for years and have worked with many student interns. Richard Gauthier is a CAE manager who has worked with Concordia’s co-op students on many occasions. He notes that he is “very satisfied with the service and the work that these students accomplish.”
His colleague, Jean-François Aubin, a group leader who works with both Sandhu and Jacobs, echoes that sentiment: “We’re very, very happy that we’re able to train co-op students. When they graduate, they have already spent up to three semesters with us. If we decide to take them on board as employees, they’re ready for the job.”
Related Links:
• Institute for Co-Operative Education
• Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science