Internships

Alumni of U of T's museum studies program on the importance of internships

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 04:00:00 +0000

Alumni of U of T's museum studies program on the importance of internships

noreen.rasbach Thu, 09/26/2019 - 00:00

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Alumna Louise Skidmore's work at the Imperial War Museums has taken her to Afghanistan. She continues to use contacts she met in her internship (photo by Richard Ash/IWM)

Suzanne Bowness

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Art Museum

Faculty of Information

Global

Internships

Museum Studies

As the head of contemporary conflict at the Imperial War Museums in London, England, Louise Skidmore has a job description that sounds more like a daring foreign correspondent than a curator toiling away in the backrooms of a museum. Her work has taken her to Afghanistan to collect artifacts and stories from the height of wartime.

Although she had already worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario and gained professional museum experience before completing her museum studies degree at the University of Toronto, Skidmore’s four-month internship at the International Center of Photography in New York City remains a program highlight for her. It’s also a contact she continues to use in her work – for example, when she recently put her curators in touch with her old bosses for a project on photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya in 2011.

Skidmore’s time in New York was made possible in part by the Vivian and David Campbell Family Foundation Summer Training Fellowship, established in 1998. She is one of dozens of museum studies students to benefit from the Campbell fellowships and the similar Rebanks Family Fellowship, which subsidizes internships at smaller-sized museums, galleries and historic sites. The success of these awards convinced the museum studies program’s 50^th-anniversary committee to make increasing support of paid internships one of their goals for this year’s celebrations.

“While museum studies internships offer students important opportunities to test out what they learn in the classroom, most of them are unpaid, which adds to the financial challenge many students already face,” said the program’s director, Associate Professor Cara Krmpotich. “This is why we wanted to put paid internships at the centre of our 50^th-anniversary fundraising efforts. With the Campbell and Rebanks fellowships, the results are very clear.”

As the Faculty of Information, home to museum studies since 2006, has reconnected with the program’s 800-plus alumni over the past year, many of them raised the importance of their internships. Megan Richardson, the director of the Virtual Museum of Canada, a federally funded investment program managed by the Canadian Museum of History, gained entry to the Ottawa museum world through her museum studies internship at the National Gallery of Canada in 1989 after her first year in the program.

Based on that experience, she focused her final year’s major research paper on ways to create new interpretive materials for children to use at the gallery. “When I finished my degree, they hired me to develop a series of self-guides for teenagers. It was directly related to what I had researched,” she says. “I was basically hired to put my money where my mouth was.”

Class of 2019 alumna Erica Chi credits her internship with landing her a full-time job as an art administrator at the TD Bank Corporate Art Collection, one of Canada’s largest company collections, known for its Gallery of Inuit Art in the bank’s south tower in downtown Toronto as well as its works by artists like Lawren Harris and Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Chi had interned at U of T’s Art Museum, where her work focused on its “Art on Campus” initiative, arranging art loans to different university departments and buildings. At TD, she works under a senior curator on a variety of tasks, including art moves across the enterprise and co-operating with partner organizations on exhibits.

Unlike a public gallery where five to 10 per cent of the art is on display with the majority in storage, Chi says a corporate collection intentionally inverts that ratio. “Having art in your work environment or in client-facing areas, it becomes a conversation point and can help build relationships. It both enhances the setting and your experience of going to work,” she says.

In fact it was the late David Campbell’s love of art that led to his donation to the museum studies program in the first place. As collectors and philanthropists, he and his wife Vivian Campbell were particularly interested in the training of future generations of museum and art gallery curators, educators and administrators.

David Campbell participated in a series of casual lunches with students to learn more about them and to answer questions about the role of private collectors. A relationship developed that eventually led to the creation of the fellowships, which now fund five students per year.

As alumni like Skidmore make clear, the Campbells’ generous donation ended up doing just what its benefactors intended.

With a file from Ann Brocklehurst

Interested in AI and augmented reality? ModiFace creates 50 internships for U of T engineering undergrads

ullahnor — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 16:03:39 +0000

Interested in AI and augmented reality? ModiFace creates 50 internships for U of T engineering undergrads

ullahnor Tue, 04/11/2017 - 12:03

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ModiFace technology lets users virtually manipulate their appearance, trying on makeup products and hair styles in 3D and real time. The company is hiring 50 interns (photo courtesy of ModiFace)

Marit Mitchell

Author legacy

Marit Mitchell

Topic

Breaking Research

Artificial Intelligence

Augmented Reality

Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science

Students

Undergraduate Students

Internships

Subheadline

Company founded by U of T engineering associate professor gives $4 million to support undergraduate, graduate internships and research at Canada’s top-ranked engineering school

Augmented reality startup ModiFace is investing $4 million to create new undergraduate and graduate student internships, and support leading research at U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

The company, founded by Associate Professor Parham Aarabi of the department of electrical & computer engineering, uses augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) to build advanced facial visualization software for the beauty and medical industries. ModiFace technology powers over 100 AR applications by Fortune 500 brands including Sephora, L’Oreal, Allergan, Vichy and Clairol, among others.

“The future of ModiFace is highly dependent on our access to the best AR engineers in the world,” says Aarabi. “For AR, it takes about a year for a new graduate to get up to speed with the latest concepts in artificial intelligence, systems engineering and computer vision. As a result, we want to invest in students early while they’re still in school to start giving them the best training in these fast-moving fields.”

As part of U of T Engineering’s Professional Experience Year (PEY) internship program, ModiFace is hiring 50 undergraduate students into 12- to 16-month paid positions that allow students to gain extensive professional skills before graduation. Applications are now open, and the first cohort will start in May 2017.

The company is also launching ModiFace research internships, modelled after successful research programs by top tech companies in the U.S., which will allow graduate students to complete an enriched research internship during their master’s or PhD studies. A total of 10 graduate students will be undertaking these internships in the next two years. Simultaneously, ModiFace is establishing a research grant program to support industry-partnered research in fields from artificial intelligence and deep learning, to computer vision and graphics.

“ModiFace perfectly illustrates why U of T is the top university for research-based startups in North America,” says Cristina Amon, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “This investment in enriched experiential learning opportunities for our students further reinforces the strong relationship between the excellence of our innovative engineering programs and the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem around us.”

“ModiFace’s internship programs will help Ontario’s engineering students get the skills and training they need to succeed in the growing field of augmented reality,” said Reza Moridi, Ontario minister of research, innovation and science. “The initiative dovetails with our government’s innovation strategy, including the recent launch of Ontario’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which will help Ontario continue to attract top talent and strengthen our province’s innovation and knowledge-based economy.”

The announcement builds on the recent creation of the Vector Institute, a multidisciplinary research and commercialization hub that aims to solidify Toronto’s place as a global AI destination.

U of T undergrads find friendship, mentorship during New York internship

lavende4 — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 14:30:42 +0000

U of T undergrads find friendship, mentorship during New York internship

lavende4 Wed, 08/24/2016 - 10:30

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Katerina Mizrokhi (left) and Melissa Vincent: best friends and research partners (photo courtesy of Katerina Mizrokhi and Melissa Vincent)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Undergraduate Education

Martin Prosperity Institute

Innis College

Faculty of Arts & Science

It’s not often you meet your best friend on an internship.

Katerina Mizrokhi and Melissa Vincent act as though they’ve known each other all of their lives – nuzzled close together, beaming uncontrollably and even finishing each other’s sentences. But the fourth-year University of Toronto urban studies students only met half a year ago.

We chatted at the Kensington Market café where they first got together, days after they returned from a five-week research project in New York City.

Their time in New York was part of a summer internship, developed by U of T’s urban studies program in partnership with the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) and New York University (NYU). It was funded by the Faculty of Arts & Science, Dean's International Initiative Fund (DIIF) and Innis College.

An opportunity to conduct research abroad is rare for undergraduate students, but Mizrokhi and Vincent didn’t take it for granted, exceeding everyone’s expectations.

“They really brought it big time on this project,” says Vass Bednar, MPI’s associate director. “It’s hard for young people to be able to go to a different city and find a place to live in a limited amount of time – and complete a high quality research project in a short period of time.”

Mizrokhi and Vincent’s research focused on the ways culture and community interacted with each other.

“We were looking at the role art institutions play in both initiating and reflecting neighbourhood change by doing a case study of three different art institutions in three different boroughs,” says Vincent.

They looked at the MoMa Ps1 in Queens, Long Island City, the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn and the Frick Collection in Manhattan.

Mizrokhi and Vincent have an advantage when conducting ethnographic research, says Bednar, in that they have the ability to blend in. “If you think about their immersive approach to their research – at the face of it they’re two young, millennial women – they could be tourists or people visiting in town walking around these museums while taking note of the surveillance, the race, ethnicity and status in various museums.”

The students looked at the ways art institutions can lead to or repel gentrification in the neighbourhoods where they’re based.

“What we found with the Brooklyn Museum is it can act as a place of resistance to [gentrification] – providing that venue for conflicting narratives and the intention to resist and simultaneously reflect narratives of local residents that may not have a platform to do so.”

Vincent says the Brooklyn Museum is a model for what cultural institutions around the world could do to interact with the community that surrounds them.

“It stops being a space to just consume art, and becomes an area for radical community mobilization and action,” she says.

Both Mizrokhi and Vincent say that Toronto’s galleries and museums haven’t been able to serve that purpose to the same extent.

“Toronto as a city relative to its residents is a little bit more self-conscious than New York with its identity and how it wants to articulate that,” says Mizrokhi.

“I think there is a little bit of hesitation in Toronto especially when you’re in art spaces and social spaces and especially in cool hip environments,” says Vincent.

This hesitation also translates to museum programming, adds Mizrokhi.

“They’re so comfortable in the idea that they are going to have a skeleton format and the content will be determined by other places – other places that are innovative, coming up with new concepts and ideas and we are just going to have them visit for a while,” she says.

While in New York City, Mizrokhi and Vincent were supervised by NYU School of Professional Studies clinical assistant professor Steven Pedigo at the Schack Institute of Real Estate, who they praised for guiding but not dictating their research.

“Our supervisor was super flexible and was really great at just letting us take the reins on our own project,” says Mizrokhi.

“It’s was a really open but really supportive and really collaborative space for us to be in,” Vincent adds.

Read Mizrokhi and Vincent's report here

Summer in the City of Light: U of T students interning in Paris

lavende4 — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 19:49:34 +0000

Summer in the City of Light: U of T students interning in Paris lavende4 Tue, 06/28/2016 - 15:49

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UNESCO world headquarters in Paris during UNESCO's 70th anniversary in 2015 (Eliot Blondet/Getty Images)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Information

Other Canadians in Paris may spend their time in Paris taking selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower or visiting the Louvre, but University of Toronto students Alicia Dotiwalla and Jennifer Yang are in the City of Light to work for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, not to sightsee.

The Faculty of Information masters’ students are the first participants in the Faculty’s UNESCO Internship Program. But even though Dotiwalla and Yang are working long hours at UNESCO’s headquarters on the Place de Fontenoy, they do take time out to experience the city’s many attractions.

“I try to immerse myself into French culture whenever possible – and to polish my French speaking skills!” Dotiwalla says.

“I’ve been trying to go to the different museums and enjoy the food,” says Yang (below). “You can’t really go wrong with food in Paris.”

Since Yang’s eight-month internship with UNESCO’s knowledge sharing and open access unit lasts until December 2016, she has several more months to sample French cuisine.

She’s helping UNESCO roll out its online collaborative platform UNESTEAMS. It’s not the first intranet project she’s tackled. In one of her courses last year, she and her colleagues designed an intranet for U of T’s John M. Kelly Library, which the library now uses.

“My role in UNESCO is to facilitate and promote knowledge collaboration and knowledge sharing between different departments and other international organizations,” Yang says. “We are promoting new tools so that people easily communicate with different people around the world, regardless of their time zone and location.”

When her internship ends in December, Yang will return to U of T for one more semester before she graduates. Her ultimate goal is to become a data management lawyer. But, she notes, the unexpected often happens. “Just four months ago I didn’t expect that I would be in Paris working for UNESCO. I usually have a detailed plan, but now that plan has had to be changed. So maybe it’s time that I wait and see what the future may bring. I’m just trying to enjoy every moment that I’m here.”

Dotiwalla (below) is excited by her four-month internship with UNESCO’s archives, library and records management division. “The archives are the organization’s institutional memory,” she says. “The vast collection documents influential work in education, science, culture and heritage. Researchers from around the world travel to Paris to access these primary sources. As such, assisting with archival work makes these records more accessible to current and future researchers and scholars.”

This isn’t Dotiwalla’s first time in France, having visited Paris before and taken a French language course in Lyon. “Being immersed in French culture and conversing with native speakers of the language was as beneficial as any in-class learning,” she says. “I consider myself very fortunate to be among those individuals who have turned personal and academic passions into rewarding job experiences.”

Wendy Duff, the interim dean at the Faculty of Information, says Yang and Dotiwalla “are on the ground floor helping UNESCO build international partnerships by urging nations to share and preserve memories, history, peace, and respect for human rights.”

The internships came about after UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova, spoke at U of T in 2014, Duff says. Bokova and then Dean Seamus Ross “discovered how many values we share, and it became obvious there was a great fit for our Information and Cultural Heritage students.” The unpaid internship program, which is worth course credits for the two students, is the first in Canada, and only the second in North America, she says.

Funding has been secured for the first two years of the program, thanks to a donation from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation with matching dollars from the University’s Provost. While the first two internships are in Paris, France, at UNESCO headquarters, future placements could be at any UNESCO satellite site in the world.

Trump, zombies and dictators: impressions from a Burmese internship

lavende4 — Wed, 18 May 2016 15:10:54 +0000

Trump, zombies and dictators: impressions from a Burmese internship lavende4 Wed, 05/18/2016 - 11:10

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A park in Burma's capital city, Naypyidaw (Photo by lirneasia via flickr)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Arts & Science

Asian Institute

Undergraduate Education

Global

International

Internships

“The world has perished in the zombie apocalypse except for Donald Trump and 10 Burmese dictators. Together they conspire to build an extravagant South East Asian paradise with lavish hotels and 20 lane highways for just the 11 of them: the end result is Burma’s capital, Naypyidaw.”

So begins University of Toronto student Naveeda Hussain’s blog post on her recent experiences in Burma, where she served as a political intern at the Canadian embassy and witnessed firsthand the aftermath of that country’s return to civilian rule after years of military dictatorship. In her post on the student blog of the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Hussain describes not only her impressions of the purpose-built Burmese capital (“the eeriest, most deserted place I have ever been”) but her thoughts on Burma’s difficult road ahead as it transitions to democracy (“After 50 years of repression, how does a country institute a system that it essentially has never known?”)

Upon her return from Burma (also known as Myanmar), Hussain, a student in the Peace, Conflict and Justice program at the Trudeau Centre in the Faculty of Arts and Science, discussed her experiences with U of T News reporter Terry Lavender.

How did the internship at the Canadian embassy in Burma come about?

My family is from India but my grandparents grew up in Burma so I have some ties to the country. I grew up eating Burmese food, for one thing! One day at the Robarts Library I ran into a friend of mine who was in the Masters of Global Affairs program at the Munk School. I mentioned I had just finished a long research paper about Burma and he told me about a posting on the MGA website about an internship at the Canadian embassy there. It was the day after the deadline, but he urged me to go for it, so I stayed up until 6 a.m. filling out the application and I got the position.

Did you have to prepare for the internship?

No. It was a very laid-back kind of process. The ambassador emailed me a few weeks before I was to arrive in the country to tell me the first few things I would be working on, but there was no extensive reading material or anything. I already had a pretty solid background on the history of the country.

Naveeda Hussain (left) takes notes as Canadian ambassador Mark McDowell meets with Burmese Lower House Speaker U Win Myint (right)

What was the mood of the Burmese people?

After so long under the military dictatorship, people were cautiously optimistic, but they were also wary because of what had happened in the past [when the military refused to relinquish power after elections in 1990]. So, because of that, they didn’t want to get their hopes up, only to have that optimism shattered.

How about you? Are you hopeful for Burma’s future?

Yes. There’s a lot to be hopeful about, but at the same time, Burma faces huge challenges. For example, 25 percent of the seats in parliament are reserved for the military so a big challenge is going to be developing the trust of the military. How are they going to get to the point where the military feels comfortable enough to step away from the public sphere?

You have one more year to go in the Peace, Conflict and Justice program. What do you plan to do after you finish your degree?

Being in Burma over the last four months I’ve really come to value work experience a lot more. So before jumping into further studies I want to expand on that and gain some more work experience. After that, I think either a Master’s in public policy and administration or law school or both. My thesis research in Burma was about federalism and the peace process so policy and the constitution are kind of intertwined, as far as I’m concerned.

Read more about Naveeda Hussain’s insights on Burma at http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/ai/student-blog/a-post-apocalyptic-capital-watching-a-democracy-take-its-first-steps/

Canada's largest paid internship program: what students and employers say about U of T engineering's PEY

sgupta — Tue, 05 May 2015 13:20:23 +0000

Canada's largest paid internship program: what students and employers say about U of T engineering's PEY sgupta Tue, 05/05/2015 - 09:20

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Cassandra Rosen is one of hundreds of U of T engineering students taking part in the PEY paid internship program each year (photo by Roberta Baker)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Features

Undergraduate Students

Students

Internships

Engineering

Subheadline

Total amount earned by PEY students during 2014-2015: $40 million

An invaluable new perspective came to engineering student Cassandra Rosen when she was deep in the heart of a nuclear power plant: “There’s something about getting to walk through it, seeing each part in action and how they relate to each other, that’s way more powerful than reading about it in a book.”

From May 2013 to May 2014, Rosen worked at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, operated by Ontario Power Generation. One of her responsibilities included making sure that the emergency coolant injection system was working as expected, which involved monitoring tests and developing a response strategy if something went wrong.

“Having to defend your ideas in front of senior executives can be intimidating,” she said. “You really have to learn confidence in what you’re doing.”

While she loved the practical aspect of her job, Rosen says it was the multidisciplinary background she brought to the role through her major in energy systems engineering that added value for her employers. “Energy systems is a bit of mechanical engineering, a bit of civil and a bit of electrical,” she said. “That’s exactly what this job required.”

Each year, hundreds of students enrol in U of T Engineering’s Professional Experience Year (PEY). While many universities offer co-op placements or four-month summer internships, PEY is different: it’s a full-time job lasting one year or more. It is the largest paid internship program of its kind in Canada. In 2014-15, more than 720 students participated in PEY – the largest cohort in the program’s 35-year history.

Employers include well-known international firms such as Apple, Tesla Motors and IBM, as well as nimble start-ups in medical technology, social media and other emerging fields. Despite their differences, all of these companies benefit enormously from the energy and fresh perspectives of PEY participants. Their positive experience keeps them coming back, and many hiring managers maintain their ties with PEY as they move between companies; in some cases, those same hiring managers were once PEY students themselves.

Some PEY students choose to work abroad. In 2014-15, more than 60 PEY students secured paid international placements in the U.S., China, Bermuda, Germany and Peru, among others***.

“The breadth of opportunities available through PEY are a big part of what makes our undergraduate experience so unique,” says Thomas Coyle, vice-dean, undergraduate studies at U of T Engineering. “It gives students a new perspective and prepares them to be innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow.”

As for Rosen, upon graduation she will begin a master of science in systems engineering at MIT – a program that combines practical knowledge of engineering with a focus on public policy. She hopes one day to help governments make smarter decisions around electricity systems.

“Having worked in a nuclear plant is something that will always stay with me; it’s a unique perspective I couldn’t have gained any other way.”

What other students are saying about PEY:

“PEY was an amazing experience,” says Dimpho Radebe (pictured at left in a photo by Neil Ta) who spent the 2013-14 year as a process analyst for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).

“It not only helped me launch my professional career with confidence, it also enabled me to improve my communication and networking skills.”

At CIBC, Radebe applied her technical knowledge to analyse existing processes within the bank, such as how transactions are managed. She identified areas for improvement, coordinated testing of a new system and performed statistical analysis to see how the changes improved overall performance.

In addition to the technical work, Radebe also discovered a passion for understanding people and a desire to further develop her leadership skills. Upon her return, Radebe became the president of the U of T chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. She also hopes one day to start a not-for-profit organization focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education for elementary and high school students.

“What surprised me the most was how I could use these skills in other aspects of my life,” she said. “I would highly recommend that students participate in PEY.”

In addition to work in industry or commerce, many PEY placements offer students the chance to advance scientific research in emerging fields. For Priya Anandakumaran, (pictured left in a photo by Roberta Baker) it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Before PEY, I was sitting in a classroom reading scientific papers about various concepts in biomedical engineering,” she says. “Six months later, I was doing the same kind of experiments that I was reading about, at the very institutions where many of these concepts were first discovered.”

Anandakumaran spent her PEY year working with U of T alumnus and Harvard-MIT Professor Jeffrey Karp in his advanced biomaterials and stem cell-based therapeutics laboratory at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology.

Her research focused on exploring the therapeutic properties of stem cells, which could help grow new tissues to treat heart disease, bone defects and other conditions.

Outside the lab, Anandakumaran enjoyed the opportunity to explore a new city.

“Boston is a beautiful city that has discovered a fine balance between nature, rich history and modern architecture,” she says. “Boston’s spirit and livelihood is also very contagious – after three months I was slowly turning into a Red Sox fan!”

Anandakumaran now works with Professor Molly Shoichet, conducting research in stem cells and tissue engineering. She credits her time in the Karp Lab with influencing her career path. “Working in the Karp Lab was an unforgettable experience. It was the first time I envisioned myself doing research long-term,” she says. “Most importantly it made me really excited for my future in biomedical engineering.”

“The PEY program interested me because it offered me a real-life experience of what I have learned in school for the past three years,” says Gordon Dri. For Dri, who is enrolled in the engineering business minor, that means applying engineering techniques like data analysis to make corporate operations more efficient.

Dri is currently interning at Cadillac Fairview Corporation, Ltd., which owns, manages and operates commercial real estate across Canada. Working in the Operations department, he tracks various building metrics: everything from the average temperature and energy usage to the number of service calls.

He then synthesizes this data into reports that are used to make decisions around property management. For example, an increase in energy usage might indicate that certain equipment should be replaced, while a low number of service calls might be a selling point for potential tenants. Dri aims to continue this type of work after graduation.

“My future career plans are to work in analytics, leveraging big data to propel companies forward,” he says. “In any industry or discipline, there are always problems to be solved. This is what engineering teaches you.”

Adjusting to the rhythm of working life left a big impression on Christopher Sun.

“In university, students are in charge of their own projects and timelines, or work in much smaller groups,” he says. “In industry, I was part of a much larger and more intricate team. The methodologies used to keep track of progress were new and surprising to me.”

As a quality assurance analyst, Sun was in charge of testing website features and ensuring that they were functioning properly. Sun’s employer, Indigo Books and Music, used “daily scrum” meetings that connected his team with other working groups from across the company, including those focused on product development and branding. The goal was to track all the projects being worked on and the estimates for completion, allowing for greater synergy.

“During those scrums, it was nice to see how other people relied on your work,” says Sun.

Today, Sun is a master's student in the lab of Professor Timothy Chan where he works on modeling and optimizing health care systems, including those that manage service delivery and work flow. His PEY experience as part of a large team still influences his thinking.

“In quality assurance, if you miss anything, it ends up being deployed out to the public and there can be serious repercussions for both the customers and the company,” he says. “Health care is like that, too. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

By leveraging his first-hand experience in industry, Sun aims to find efficiencies that will improve the quality of the health care system for everyone.

What employers are saying about PEY:

“An intern that is available for up to 16 months is very attractive to us. In most cases, it can take up to three months for a new hire to be fully trained and to feel productive. Having them on the team for longer allows them to get more out of the experience and to add more value to the team and to the business.”

- Natalie Murray, technical recruiter, Demonware, Inc.

“I first learned about the PEY program as an Engineering Science student many years ago. PEY students contribute like full-time engineers and are treated that way. We also get to “try before you buy” a number of outstanding engineers. We are very pleased that so many have returned to join us full-time after graduation.”

- Terry Borer, manager, Altera Corporation

“Our organization has benefitted dramatically from our PEY experience. We’ve been lucky enough to get students with a fresh eye on our business model who contribute new ideas from day one. With every new skillset acquired, we’ve received insight into at least one new technology or approach. We’ve also found that the students that we’ve hired bring an energy and enthusiasm that is unparalleled in the job market today. It’s something you just can’t find in external internships or even new external hires.”

- Adil Sardar, lead developer, WaveDNA, creator of Liquid Loops software

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Active employers: those that have posted positions through PEY in the last two years
** Approximate
*** To participate in an international placement, students must be eligible to work in those countries

Tyler Irving is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto.

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Matching top students with opportunities in Canada's top library system

sgupta — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:38:53 +0000

Matching top students with opportunities in Canada's top library system sgupta Wed, 01/28/2015 - 06:38

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Carolyn Pecoskie (left) is working closely with professional librarian Maria Buda (right) at the Faculty of Dentistry library (photo by Kathleen O'Brien)

Kathleen O'Brien

Author legacy

Kathleen O'Brien

Subheadline

TALint program aims to transform the student librarian experience

It’s an opportunity for mentorship and the chance to experience the real-world challenges of a contemporary librarian, from data management to communications: working in Canada's top-ranked library system.

To enhance the student experience and prepare high-performing students for leadership roles in the library field, the Faculty of Information (iSchool) and University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) have launched the Toronto Academic Libraries Internship program, or TALint. (Read about how U of T's library sytem is ranked one of the top three library stems in North America.)

“While many part-time positions in libraries augment students’ educational and professional development, often they do not provide structured learning about libraries beyond the role,” says Professor Wendy Duff. “Through UTL and the TALint program, U of T is transforming education for our interns as they now have the opportunity to not only increase the quality of their learning, but strengthen the profession.

“We are creating future leaders who will meet the complexities inherent in the libraries, archives and records management fields.”

Under the TALint program, 19 first-year and second-year Master of Information students are now well into working with professional librarians in such areas as the university archives, Media Commons, engineering library, and outreach and student engagement. For the 2015-16 academic year, TALint positions are open to full-time, incoming MI students.

Enhancing the Student Experience

A TALint student in her first year of studies at the iSchool, Carolyn Pecoskie is working closely with professional librarian, Maria Buda, at the Faculty of Dentistry library.

Pecoskie is running a literature search and interviewing lab directors to investigate data sharing, archiving and management in health science laboratories at Dentistry. She will analyze the results in a report.

“So much of what I have been learning in my classes has been reinforced or expanded upon by what I have seen or done at Dentistry,” Pecoskie says. “It’s been very valuable to gain the practical experience alongside my more theoretical coursework.”

Another tangible benefit is gaining not just reference desk experience ‒ like most student library positions ‒ but having one goal. “This project is focused on data management, an increasingly relevant topic for librarians. It is something I would not see unless I was trying it in reality.”

Buda predicts data management will become a priority for academic institutions, and with the TALint student’s help, the library will be prepared. “Smaller libraries struggle to keep up with the demanding goals. We rely on a part-time staff member to tackle special projects, which the TALint program allowed this year,” she says.

The TALint intern gets almost double the hours of a typical student library position, and as a result, Buda says, students get more exposure.

“Spending more time at the library is beneficial for them to learn our policies, service and collections quicker, thus getting a much more comprehensive understanding of the operation of a small academic library, as well as the professional development activities of academic librarians,” Buda says.

Recently, Pecoskie took advantage of another perk where TALint students job shadow librarians throughout the U of T libraries system.

“I have already met and spoke to many librarians doing a wide variety of jobs within UTL, which has been invaluable. Gaining some insight into the operations of such a reputed library system is such a privilege,” Pecoskie says. “I came into the iSchool thinking that I wanted to be a librarian, but not sure where I would work. Now the experience I am gaining would be applicable for work in a health library setting, but also in any organization that plans to expand their services into the realm of data.”

How the TALint Program Works

Students gain exposure to and hands-on experience in many aspects of the information field in their courses, but this program goes further. By design, the program allows students to obtain specialized training in libraries, directly matching their specific courses or area of studies.

Incoming MI students who will study full-time and hold a minimum A- grade average compete for the internships each spring. They get paid for 15 hours per week and can hold the position for up to 20 months. In addition, interns have access to 10 to 14 hours of professional development opportunities, such as specialized technical and leadership training.

The goal is to provide outstanding students with: (1) hands-on learning opportunities from library and records tasks; (2) seminars, tours and other learning opportunities that complement their courses of study; (3) soft skills necessary to the development of leaders in the profession; and (4) overall enrichment of the education experience via mentoring and exposure to real workplace issues and situations.

“By working with UTL on this initiative, we are helping to train students for a career and field that is needed in today’s society,” says iSchool Dean Seamus Ross. “These leaders will be equipped to meet the emerging challenges of the Information profession.”

Putting Theory into Practice

Bridgette Kelly, another first-year TALint student, says working at the OISE Library is allowing her to see first hand how to address the information needs of library users in the U of T community and beyond. “It requires us to develop a skill set that is very much rooted in the ‘in-demand’ competencies of the profession that we’re learning about in class,” she says.

Already Kelly has drawn upon skills in communications, project management, content expertise, knowledge of digital environments and information systems. And Kelly says the job has taught her about the context of practice, adding it is one thing to hear about skills associated with being an information professional, and quite another to be involved in a real life workplace situation.

“I’m learning more about where my skills fit best in the profession and which courses might serve me well at the iSchool in order to meet my career goals. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of fun.”

Julie Hannaford, deputy chief librarian for the humanities and social sciences, says UTL supports the program continuing to grow and develop in the coming years. “We see the TALint program as a terrific opportunity to mentor and work with our future information professionals. We are excited by all the possibilities.”

Kathleen O'Brien is a writer with the iSchool at the University of Toronto.

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