Welcome to “Beyond the Classroom”, a monthly series where we give you a behind-the-scenes look at a day in the life of Cincinnati co-op students across a variety of majors and industries.

When it comes to hiring young talent, internships and co-ops are two popular programs that offer students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience before they graduate.

Meet Liz Tremblay, a computer science major in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Liz has worked in software engineering at retail data science, insights and media company 84.51, and is now a user-experience (UX) design co-op at IBM in Chicago.

While cooperative education has a range of proven benefits for college students, hiring a co-op student also provides advantages for employers and businesses.

For college students who want to cut costs and limit student debt, enrolling in a university with cooperative education programs could be an opportunity that reduces student loan borrowing while offering real-world learning experiences.

As the 1906 founder of cooperative education — an educational model where students alternate traditional academic semesters with semesters spent working paid jobs in their field of study — University of Cincinnati continues to house the world’s third-largest co-op program. Each year, students earn a collective $65 million annually while working for over 1,300 employers locally and globally.