Cooperative education has defined the Northeastern education for nearly a century. Over the years, so many of you have relayed to us how co-op changed your lives. It helped pay for college. It gave you a head start in your career.
Today, co-op is still changing the lives of our students. Now, by building on co-op’s strengths, this powerful model of experiential learning is being translated into other opportunities—in student research, service learning, and global experiences. And so this issue of Northeastern University Alumni Magazine examines not just the university’s continuing commitment to co-op, but our current goal—to create a transformative academic and experiential-learning program that has no borders.
The breaking down of borders begins in the classroom. In the following pages, you will read how traditional delineations between academia and practice are being crossed on both sides of the classroom door. Inside the classroom, faculty members find innovative ways to weave their students’ experiences on co-op and in research, service, and study abroad right into the curriculum. Outside the classroom, students draw upon all aspects of their academics when they’re on the job, in the lab, and out in communities worldwide.
Experiential learning’s geographical borders are likewise disintegrating. Our students now have access to more than two thousand co-op employers in thirty-eight states and fifty-two cities worldwide. It’s entirely reasonable for a business student to land a job running a marketing campaign in French for a major company in Paris. Or for a budding fashion retailer to conduct research on Egypt’s textile industry. Or for a team of engineering students to build a water-supply system in Honduras. Such international experiences (and those described in "The Known World," page 48) aren’t just travel adventures; they’re indispensable ingredients to a global education.
Central to our expanded model of experiential education is the idea of service learning. In an increasingly global society, Northeastern’s long commitment to civic engagement in Boston is stronger than ever, reaching now far beyond city lines to communities spanning the globe. Service learning—locally and globally—is about more than just service, though. It’s a dynamic built upon partnerships and an ongoing exchange of ideas and expertise between our students and people from around the world. It acknowledges and leverages the fact that we are many cultures with a shared destiny to fulfill.
Your commitment in words and in deed to co-op’s ongoing success has helped keep Northeastern on the forefront of innovation. As we work to expand the co-op program to include other forms of experiential learning, I hope you will lend your support to our students and spread the message about the transformative power of experience.
Sincerely,
Joseph Aoun
President, Northeastern University