UNews - Career Bridge

Davis Auto Group partners with Career Bridge for new co-op program, pledges $125,000 in scholarship support

trevor.kenney — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:53:43 +0000

The most valuable employees are those who know a business from the ground up — so when the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and Davis Auto Group began constructing a new co-operative education experience for students, they took a talent strategy system approach. As the first cohort of students concludes its term at Davis, the approach appears to be a resounding success.

“We worked closely with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Career Bridge/Co-op Office in building out a forward-thinking 12-month co-op program designed to give students a well-rounded understanding of all facets of our automotive business,” says Lisa Reid (BMgt ’19, Davis Auto group human resources consultant, noting students get a chance to experience everything from sales and finance to materials management, accounting and more. “Students rotate into a new department every four months which allows them to see a unique cross-section of our business and see the big picture and learn that we are certainly more than just selling and fixing cars.”

Pictured (left to right) are Chris Broad (General Manager), Mike Davis (Dealer Principal), Lisa Reid (Human Resources), Andon Van Dyk and Ethan Van Dyk.

Stacey Gaudette-Sharp (BA '03, MA '06), assistant dean for Career Bridge, says the approach is meant to align with the holistic educational experience that ULethbridge designs for its students.

“We want our students to think about the theories they’re learning in the classroom, but also the skills they’re building in those courses, and how they are articulated and applied in the real world,” she says. “Only then can students start making decisions about who they are, what fills their cup, what they value, and how these values are represented in their work. Students should leverage every opportunity to try stuff out — to figure out what makes them curious and passionate.”

Davis Auto Group Gift and Awards

The relationship between ULethbridge and the Davis Auto Group goes beyond the co-op opportunities and includes a trio of scholarship awards established by the Davis family with a $125,000 donation. The gift is matched by the Board of Governors matching program, thereby doubling the impact of the scholarship support. These awards include the following:

• Davis Auto Group Student Employee Award — Ranked on academic achievement, any entering or continuing undergraduate student employed with any company of the Davis Auto Group is eligible.

• Davis Auto Group Community Service Award — Recognizing students who have made significant contributions to their community through either campus and/or general community involvement, any entering or continuing undergraduate student is eligible.

• Davis Auto Group Employee Family Award — Ranked on academic achievement, this award is for any entering or continuing undergraduate students who are children, grandchildren or dependents of current or retired employees of Davis Auto Group of Companies.

A trio of students made up the first Davis Auto Group cohort, and after a year of working their way through the company, their co-op has been extended another four months through the summer. Tim, Mike and Luke Davis, who are all active in the Lethbridge business, were excited to launch the program and the potential it held for both Davis Auto Group and ULethbridge students.

“We were hopeful we could provide some value to the students who chose to work with our company during their school term, and from what we’ve seen in the first year, we’re really encouraged by the start,” says Mike Davis. “It’s exciting to see some real promise in our first group of ULethbridge students and we can really see them as long-term members of our team.”

For the students, the learning curve has been steep and rewarding.

“What surprised me the most about the auto industry and dealerships is how many different departments and people behind the scenes it takes to successfully run a dealership and auto group. I experienced every single role/department, whether it was on the sales floor, parts, service lane or accounting,” says Andon Van Dyk, who is heading into his fourth year as an accounting major. “Doing co-op, I am actually able to make the connection from the classroom to the workforce, where as before, it was all just theory.”

Third-year management student DJ Tonin says his confidence grew as the experience progressed and he unearthed previously unknown skills.

“I discovered how much I enjoy learning about the different parts of a dealership and how they work together. It’s helped me realize that I’m adaptable, open to new experiences, and capable of picking up new skills quickly,” says Tonin. “As a student, I’ve grown by developing a stronger work ethic, better time management and more confidence in professional settings. This experience pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and apply what I’ve learned in school to real-world situations.”

National data has shown that students who participate in work-integrated learning or co-op experiences realize an uptick in their GPAs when they return to class, having seen the context of their studies beyond the classroom.

“One of the most rewarding parts of my role is seeing the transformation that takes place in students throughout their work term,” says Sheridan Macaulay, an instructor with Career Bridge. “When I first visited them on-site, they were understandably shy and still finding their footing. Now, I see confident, capable individuals who have grown not only in technical skills but also in communication, leadership and self-awareness. They’ve learned how to ask thoughtful questions, mentor others and work effectively within a team. Davis Auto Group has been an incredible employer partner in this journey. They genuinely care about their people, and our students have seen how strong, values-based leadership builds a supportive workplace culture where everyone can thrive.”

Reid says the Davis Auto Group is excited about continuing to work with Career Bridge in further shaping co-op opportunities.

“The partnerships between industry and post-secondary institutions are invaluable as they benefit both employers and students,” she says. “We understand that students may not end up choosing the automotive industry after graduation, however a program such as this allows them to gain exposure and create a foundation of understanding business operations and building skillsets they can take with them wherever they choose to start their careers.”

Students can apply for Davis Auto Group Awards up until June 16, 2025, by visiting ULethbridge’s scholarship application page.

DJ Tonin

“The greatest takeaway from my experience is how important teamwork and communication are in keeping a dealership running smoothly. No matter the department, success comes from people working together and supporting each other toward a common goal.”

Ethan Van Dyk

“While classroom time and school are important, there is no better way of learning than hands-on in the real world. I absolutely recommend other students take the co-op route as I think it is the best way to gain experience as well as make connections — and who doesn't like to make money while doing all that?”

Andon Van Dyk

“My greatest takeaway from this experience is the connections and friends I made while working here — those are invaluable. I would 100 per cent recommend students pursue their own WIL experience. Even if it doesn't particularly align with your major, you're still gaining valuable experience that employers are looking for.”

Career outcomes the focus as ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge launches Experiential and Career Education Plan

trevor.kenney — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:01:31 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s commitment to supporting students as they explore career pathways through experiential and work-integrated learning opportunities is at the heart of the new Experiential and Career Education Plan — Kakó Stamistotsit.

The plan, which will be launched Wednesday, April 9, 11 a.m., in the Markin Hall Atrium, is the result of a year-long comprehensive planning process for career education and experiential learning, with a specialized focus on work-integrated learning (WIL).

Experiential and work-integrated learning opportunities at the heart of new plan.

“One of the key activities in this process was to get a sense of our WIL programs and career education initiatives and how they were perceived and utilized by students, faculty and the broader external community,” says Mark Slomp, executive director, Student Services. “We found some real positives, such as a 95 per cent employment rate within one year for our graduates, with 41 per cent of them having participated in a work placement during their time as ULethbridge students.”

Slomp says there were also areas they needed to improve, including reaching the significant proportion of students (69 per cent) who when surveyed responded they were unaware of Career Bridge services, as well as finding ways to better facilitate faculty involvement and better communicate opportunities to community partners.

“Our faculty have demonstrated a strong interest in integrating WIL opportunities into their courses and we need to find ways to lower barriers to achieve that. As well, our community partners are enthusiastic supporters of applied learning opportunities and it’s important we are able to provide clearer pathways for those collaborations,” says Stacey Gaudette-Sharp, assistant dean, Career Bridge.

The plan is rooted in the Blackfoot direction of Kakó Stamistotsit, which means “Go ahead — Experience it” and reflects the moment when an individual seeks guidance from a trusted loved one, Elder or advisor before embarking on something new. The acronym Kakó reflects the strategic pillars of Knowledge, Actionable Inclusion, Advancing Indigenization, Key Partnerships, and Optimized Outcomes, creating a culturally resonant framework that aligns with institutional values and priorities.

“The Experiential & Career Education Plan is deeply aligned with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Strategic Plan, which was just recently launched,” says Michelle Helstein, provost and vice-president (academic). “This ensures that career development and experiential learning continue to play a central role in shaping student success, institutional priorities and community impact.”

Students continue to build work experience despite pandemic restrictions

trevor.kenney — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:27:43 +0000

As the world of business adapts to meet the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, so too are ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students who continue to engage in work-integrated learning activities as they prepare to transition from academic to professional careers.

Ty Makarowski, a fifth-year neuroscience major, has participated in independent and applied studies and is currently working as a co-op student.

Career Bridge: Centre for Work-Integrated Learning and Career Development documented a total of 65,937 work-integrated learning placement hours logged by U of L students during the Fall 2020 semester. Pandemic or not, students were still able to work with a multitude of businesses locally, provincially and nationally through a variety of co-op and applied study positions.

“In many ways it was challenging but our employer partners were extremely flexible and innovative,” says the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Mark Slomp, executive director of Student Services. “Students want to engage in work-integrated learning, even if the majority of the work is in a remote setting. In fact, it added another layer of learning to many of their experiences and showed how essential the ability to adapt to changing circumstances is in today’s world.”

Career Bridge focuses on increasing opportunities for all students, including developing personal and professional competencies as well as providing tools and resources to support and track curricular and co-curricular accomplishments via an experiential transcript. The MyExperience Transcript (MET) complements the academic transcript and is designed to reflect a student’s curricular and co-curricular experiential learning opportunities.

In Fall 2020, 180 virtual events and workshops were offered, managed or hosted in the MyExperience calendar with 2,722 unique student registrations. Students want to begin their transition to a professional career as early as possible and are eager to utilize the platform.

“I started my post-secondary career mostly focused on just completing my courses, but I’ve learned that employers are looking for students who have participated in rich experiential learning outside the classroom as well,” says Nicholas Canning, a fourth-year student studying human resource management and industrial labour relations in the Dhillon School of Business. “MyExperience has helped me gain this kind of experience, track my participation and reflect on the skills I’ve developed and the ways in which I have grown personally and professionally.”

Ty Makarowski, a fifth-year neuroscience major, has participated in independent and applied studies and is currently working as a co-op student, activities he can now add to his MET. He says by adding an experiential record to his academic transcript, he can show future employers the breadth of his university experience and better articulate the wide range of skills he brings to the labour market.

“The independent study opportunities allowed me to gain first-hand skills in a laboratory setting, and I’m currently in the process of co-authoring a scientific paper for publication,” he says. “My applied study gave me the opportunity to work alongside a neuropsychologist and assist with report writing and patient assessments.”

Makarowski adds the MET will give him a certified record of this activity and a leg up when he transitions to a professional career.

“The MyExperience Transcript offers me the ability to document not only my experiences outside the classroom, but also highlight some of the soft skills and technical skills I have gained throughout my undergraduate program,” he says. “I genuinely feel as though having a verified account of my experiences sets me apart from students who do not have any additional experience outside their core requirements.”

Students jump-start their careers through co-op work terms

caroline.zentner — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 18:02:40 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge has been offering co-op work terms for 30 years, but never before in a pandemic. As a way to combine on-the-job experience with academic studies, co-op work terms give students — more than 300 of them last year — the opportunity to learn valuable skills they’ll need in their future careers while they complete their degrees.

This fall, students who are undertaking co-op work terms are working in the midst of the COVID pandemic. While the pandemic has brought certain restrictions to workplaces, it has also brought unique working conditions and new opportunities for students.

Amber Koberinski started her co-op position with the U of L’s Teaching Centre in July. With the shift to mostly online learning for the Fall 2020 semester, the Teaching Centre wanted to ensure things went as smoothly as possible for faculty members as they adapted to new technology platforms to deliver course content. Koberinski is one of nine students who’ve been helping faculty and instructors work with applications like Zoom, Moodle and Crowdmark.

After spending the first week learning about the technology, she began making presentations to faculty members, hosting breakout rooms during the centre’s boot-camp sessions and helping instructors one-on-one.

“I’ve learned how to be a better presenter and I’ve had to step up and go out of my comfort zone,” she says. “I’m usually the person in the back of the classroom, just taking my notes. But with this position, I’ve had to open up and step forward. If we’re doing a project, I’m the one doing all the emailing and getting ahold of faculty or setting up Zoom sessions. I’m better prepared to take on those aspects of the job, where I wouldn’t have been before.”

Koberinski has completed all the requirements for a bachelor of arts (humanities) but wanted to get some work experience before graduating. She didn’t see many opportunities in her future, especially with the pandemic. Now, she sees her future in teaching and is considering graduate school.

“This whole pandemic shutdown has encouraged me to look beyond the horizon,” she says. “Working with the Teaching Centre has opened my eyes to a lot of different things and I have a much more positive outlook than I did in March. Finding new ways to connect and collaborate has been very uplifting. I’m very lucky I had this opportunity.”

Koberinski and the other co-op students at the Teaching Centre have also devised a research project looking into how the move to mostly online teaching and learning because of the pandemic has affected students. With the help of Board of Governors Teaching Chairs, Drs. Olu Awosoga and Ute Kothe, the students have submitted a grant proposal and plan to present their final results to the various faculties.

Peter Fehr, a second-year student majoring in finance, is currently doing a four-month co-op term at Precon Manufacturing, a company that provides concrete structures for underground utilities. His position as a business strategy intern is part of a MITACS-sponsored program to find out how companies in Canada have done during COVID.

“So far, I’ve been focusing on researching and analyzing Precon’s response to the pandemic and how COVID has affected the company’s ability to continue their operations with the protocols and changes they’ve implemented,” says Fehr. “Part of my position is to come up with recommendations as to how Precon can improve on things, such as helping employees with their well-being. Social distancing, especially in manufacturers, is really hard to implement because everyone works in close vicinity. I’ve been looking into more ways the company can improve on safety measures by recommending new or improved protocols.”

In addition to planning the project, Fehr has reached out to staff, both those working on the production line and those working remotely, to gather information for his project. He’s had the opportunity to present his findings and make recommendations to administration.

“The research I’ve done and the findings I presented have given me the opportunity to implement my recommendations in the company with the help of the administration team,” says Fehr. “Based on my research and findings so far, the company has already adopted one of my recommendations. It’s really cool to see your work actually being implemented and proving to be helpful to other employees.”

Fehr says he’s gained experience through the co-op program that he wouldn’t have gotten if he’d obtained a job on his own. The requirements of a co-op term include creating monthly reports and setting goals, along with performing the day-to-day requirements of his job.

“I have learned to be much more self-motivated and learned to think more critically,” says Fehr. “Right now, I’m one of seven employees working in the admin office, when there are usually more than 20. My position is very self-directed. I’ve learned many important business skills through my experience thus far, including presentation and communication skills. As a result, I have also gained more confidence due to the overall work environment, which has required me to interview employees and take that data to help make decisions in the company.”

Mike DeBiasio, a fourth-year student majoring in marketing, started a four-month co-op work term with Asyma Solutions in September. The Lethbridge-based company provides business management systems and his role is to work with the company’s sales and marketing team to help them implement a fresh approach to their marketing strategies and platforms.

“I’ve been running all the social media content for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter,” says DeBiasio. “I’ve been generating content, finding different content to post and tracking analytics, such as how many views we get and how many leads are generated from those views. We’ve been getting really good numbers. It’s fun tracking all the analytics, seeing what people like and don’t like and why people respond to some posts more than others. It’s nice to see the work paying off.”

DeBiasio has also been working on creating a virtual booth for an upcoming conference, a value proposition for the sales team to use for new leads and a radio advertisement. While he had some experience with social media when he started the position, DeBiasio first had to learn about all the software products Asyma Solutions offers.

“That was definitely one of the challenges coming into the job,” he says. “I asked a lot of questions, but my boss is super great with me and I did some research on my own. The biggest things I’ve learned are having confidence in myself and how to be professional, whether in emails or at meetings.”

The co-op term has also given him the chance to take what he’s learned in the classroom and apply it in a real work setting. He’s seen that successful marketing can be done many different ways, depending on the type of business, the kind of customer and knowing the target audience. His experience at Asyma Solutions has been so positive that he hopes to extend his co-op another four months. And he wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a co-op work term to other students.

“It helps you get your foot in the door after you graduate and it’s very valuable experience,” he says.

UNews - Career Bridge

Davis Auto Group partners with Career Bridge for new co-op program, pledges $125,000 in scholarship support

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Career outcomes the focus as ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge launches Experiential and Career Education Plan

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Career outcomes the focus as ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge launches Experiential and Career Education Plan