In Past Year, UC s Co-op Class Earned a Collective $43 Million

Today, Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) Chancellor John Carey toured the University of Cincinnati campus and participated in a campus session on cooperative education (co-op) and academic internships.

UC is the global birthplace of

cooperative education

, houses the largest mandatory co-op program in the nation, and the university’s co-op program is ranked in the nation’s Top Tier by U.S. News & World Report. (Co-op is the practice wherein students alternate semesters of study with semesters of professionally paid work directly related to their majors in ever-advancing sequences.)

In 2012, the OBR provided a state-wide $11 million

investment

grant to target co-op work and internship placements strategically in key industry clusters – biohealth; finance, insurance and IT; advanced energy; consumer products, brand development and creative services; food processing and agriculture; and advanced manufacturing, polymers, automotive and aerospace. Key to the grant is that it encourages participation by employers new to co-op and internships, those who haven’t participated in co-op or internships since 2008, or encourages existing partner employers to add to their existing co-op and internship positions. UC and its Southern Ohio partner schools received $1.8 million of that grant, the largest single award among all the grants issued.

2012-2013 EARNINGS BY STUDENTS

During the July 12 visit to UC in which Chancellor Carey outlined co-op and internships as part of the Ohio Workforce Strategy and UC President Santa J. Ono discussed co-op and internships as a strategic asset, Associate Provost Kettil Cedercreutz, head of the Division of Professional Practice and Experiential Learning (

ProPEL

), reported on the most-recent year’s earnings by UC co-op students.

• From June 2012 through the end of spring semester 2013, UC co-op students earned a collective $43 million in 4,606 co-op work placements. In that same period, UC students worked a total of 245 internships.

• The average earnings per co-op student during that time period came to $11,137.

• In that same time period, UC students co-opped with a total of 1,197 employers, with well over half of those placements with Ohio firms like General Electric Aviation, Duke Energy, The Kroger Co., Great American Insurance Group, Libby Perszyk Kathman (LPK), and Intelligrated, a leading North American-based automated material handling solutions provider.
  

• The placement rate for UC students eligible to co-op stood at 97.8 percent, up from 97.3 percent the year before.

• And 93 percent of UC co-op students were considered to be performing at an excellent or good level by their immediate supervisors.

• In that same time period, 91 percent of UC co-op students consider their co-op position (work placement) as excellent or good.

During his visit to campus, Chancellor Carey had the opportunity to hear from students, employers and others benefiting from UC’s co-op and internship program, including

• UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) student Emily Scaggs, a graphic communication design and Spanish double major, who has co-opped with Wilker Design & Marketing; Barefoot Proximity advertising agency; and Kinetic Vision product development, all in Cincinnati.

• UC College of Engineering & Applied Science (CEAS) student Brock Pleiman, an aerospace engineering senior, has co-opped at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

• UC Carl H. Lindner College of Business (LCOB) student Sarah Rahrooh, a double major in finance and economics, who has interned at ThinkVine, a marketing mix optimization software company, Cincinnati.

• Christine Ahr, human resources director, Cincinnati Thermal Spray, Inc., on how co-op benefits CTS’ talent pipeline.

• Denyse Ferguson, senior vice president of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber and executive director of the Cincinnati USA Partnership, the chamber's economic development arm, on how co-op benefits regional competitiveness and opportunities for economic growth.