COMMUNITY AND CAMPUS: Cast Your Vote for the Coolest UC Co-op!

Since last summer, University of Cincinnati cooperative-education students have been entering their cool jobs (and pictures from their cool jobs) into UC’s “100 Cool Co-ops” Web site. And now it’s time to pick a winner!

From Jan 9-20, the Greater Cincinnati community and the UC community – and anyone else who wants to participate – can visit the “100 Cool Co-ops” site at http://www.uc.edu/coolco%2Dops/1cc_voting.asp

Visitors to the site will be able to look over the entries and vote for the job they thought was the coolest – whether it’s because the job had the coolest people, projects, perks or was in a cool place.

The votes will be tallied, and the coolest co-ops will be announced online by

Feb. 28

on the “100 Cool Co-ops” Web site. Winning students will receive prizes worth at least $100 – such as Graeter’s gift certificates, Kenwood Towne Centre gift cards, MP3 players, golf accessories and more. Winners will also be honored at campus-wide events, including half-time ceremonies at upcoming basketball games.

UC’s

co-op

– which annually places about 4,000 students in professional, paid jobs around the globe – is considered a premiere program, ranked in the

Top Ten

of such programs year after year by

U.S. News & World Report

. In the past year, UC co-op students have gained experience (and had a great time) while:

• Testing experimental jet engines
• Creating products for Nike
• Helping to launch a satellite
• Designing sporting goods in France 
• Working with one of the country’s most prestigious heart surgeons
• Studying building responses to earthquakes
• Designing a 200,000-acre Toyota site
• Devising new food options for the military
• Creating movie-related Web sites for Warner Brothers
• Watching the Tour de France while on co-op in Europe
• Creating graphics for the February 2006 Super Bowl
• Sitting in on the auction of Marlon Brando’s estate

Professional experience – and the chance to live and work in 35 states and 16 foreign countries – are not the only rewards of co-op. Students’ grades tend to go up once they begin co-opping at the end of their sophomore year, because academic requirements are closely linked to professional, real-world experience at UC.

In addition, UC co-op students earn a collective $30 million each year. That breaks down to average monthly earnings of between $1,700 to $2,500 per student. And nationally, students with co-op experience tend to have an easier time finding a job upon graduating. According to the National Commission for Cooperative Education, 60 percent of co-op students nationally go to work for their co-op employers upon graduation, and 95 percent of co-op students have a job upon graduation. 

Most people don't know it, but UC invented co-op. In 1906, co-op had its global founding at UC, and 2006 marks the centennial year of the educational practice that's since spread to 43 countries around the world.