Graduating with a provincial contract

For recent grad Darcie Scollard (English), the co-operative education program has made her future a lot less daunting—and helped her pocket a contract with the provincial government to carry her into post-grad life.

“As a humanities student, I was particularly worried about life after university,” Scollard says. “Since I became a co-op student, a lot of stress around finding a job after graduation has been lifted off my shoulders.”

After sampling a variety of courses in her first year, Scollarddecided to follow her passion for reading and writing and pursued a degree in English. She signed up for a professional writing class out of interest, thinking she might try to break into journalism.

“I loved the program, and it shifted my skill set more toward web content creation and user experience design,” she says.

Late in her third year, with graduation on the horizon, Scollard joined the co-op program to gain work experience relevant to her degree. Despite a late entry into the program, she was still able to complete five work terms with three different organizations.

“I knew that as a co-op student, I could gain practical work experience while still testing the waters in various industries and work environments, so I tried to do as many work terms as possible,” she says.

Trying out roles across a diverse spectrum of work settings, Scollard’s skillset grew. Her co-op journey began at the University of Calgary, where she worked on financial data for research projects. Then she completed two work terms with UVic Libraries, focusing on a large content migration project and communications support.

Scollard spent her final work terms at the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines as a technical writer and web coordinator. Responsible for a broad range of tasks, she worked on web development, logo design and event planning—and captured promotional video footage at a mine.

This August, visit a mine towas hired on contract by another provincial resource ministry—the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations—as a web publisher. She works with clients from the six natural resource ministries to migrate outdated website content into a new content management system. This involves writing, editing, and gaining approvals on content; creating new pages; and eventually, retiring the old sites.

“The website project is government-wide, so I get to interact with colleagues in many areas,” she says. “As a recent graduate, I am very excited to be gaining valuable experience in project management, government communications and information technology.”

Now feeling confident in her career aspirations, Scollard has laid a path for her future paved with relevant work experience—and she’s happy to recommend co-op to others.

“I think everyone should be a co-op student,” she says. “You really can’t put a price on experiential learning—and the value that working in your field before graduation will add to your academic and professional career.”