Forrest Dukes

The University of Akron recently received nearly $1 million for a campus-wide plan to help the students before and after graduating.

“The commitment we are making to significantly expand co-ops and internships delivers on our strategic goals to focus on student success, increase graduation rates and the numbers of students who are employed in their career choice shortly after graduation,” said University of Akron President Luis M. Proenza in a recent article on the university website. “This is what we mean by The Akron Experience, and the additional state funding will help us build upon it.”

The Ohio Board of Regents has awarded The University of Akron $932,571 to create and fund at least 250 co-op and internship opportunities for degrees, including communication, applied math, nutrition, psychology and thirty other degrees offered here at UA, according to
the article.

This plan, which began January of 2013, is called Replicating a Proven Model to Provide Experiential Opportunities for Student Success, the article said. It is modeled after a system that UA’s College of Engineering has now. In the last 98 years, the College of Engineering has had a constant 90 percent student participation that are placed soon after graduation into different co-op and post-graduate jobs.

The article said that the cost for this plan is estimated to exceed $2 million. This includes the nearly $1 million the school received from the Ohio Board of Regents, while also gaining support and funding from companies like L’Oreal and FirstEnergy.

Expecting this growth, UA will hire additional staff as well as doing extra training for the staff they currently have at the Career Center located on the third floor of Simmons Hall.

For more information, visit uakron.edu/im/online-newsroom. and look in future isses of The Buchtelite.