Rachel Meehan: Special Advisor on Leadership and Experiential Learning

In February 2019, Laurentian University announced a 300,000 dollar donation from RBC Future Launch. RBC Future Launch is a program that has committed 500 million dollars over the next ten years to support students and ensure that they are ready for the work place upon graduation. They want to provide students with skills that they aren’t necessarily learning in a classroom setting such as leadership skills, public speaking, teamwork, communication, or anything along those lines. These are all skills that students will need in order to be successful in the workplace, and skills that employers have said that students are lacking upon graduation.

With the donation that came in, this is where Rachels position as the Special Advisor on Leadership and Experiential Learning was created. During her time within this position, there are many different roles and tasks that she will be taking on, along with the commitments that have been made with RBC.

One of the commitments Laurentian has with RBC is to purchase and eventually launch an online software. The idea behind this software is that it will be an online job board for students to access. This will be a central place for all Laurentian students to be able to look at jobs coming in from industries, jobs that are happening on campus etc. Right now when students are trying to access this kind of information, they might have to go to a Facebook Page, LinkedIn etc., and nothing is centralized or super effective. By centralizing all of this information, the idea is that students will be able to see all of the jobs that are available to them, and more importantly jobs that are open to Laurentian students exclusively. Employers will approach Laurentian because they want our grads specifically, so that information will be easily available for students.

This software will also help co-op students immensely. There are five areas within the university that have designated co-op streams (the faculty of management, engineering, computer science, architecture, and biology and chemistry). Within this software there will be a module open to co-op students, where they will be able to access and see co-op opportunities that are available to them. This will also be beneficial for faculty and staff members who are working with placing students in co-ops to be able to track students progress.

Another commitment between Laurentian and RBC is that Laurentian is going to run a series of professional development workshops called Backpack to Briefcase. Backpack to Briefcase takes place every two weeks, and consists of a series of learning opportunities for students to further adapt skills they will need for the workplace. Some of these skills would be leadership skills, adaptability, or how to communicate your experience to employers. For an hour every second Thursday in the Cliff Fielding Building, both students and Alumni are welcomed to join and help develop essential skills that are beneficial in the workplace.

In addition to launching the software, an Experiential Learning Advisory Committee is also going to be formed, which will be made up of internal and external steak holders. The external steak holders would be people who work in industry who often hire Laurentian students and/or grads, and the internal steak holders would be key players in terms of internships, co-ops, or anything that falls under the experiential learning umbrella. Students are also invited to participate in this as well. These invitations to sit on the advisory committee are getting ready to be sent out, however, as a result of these uncertain times, the process is being slowed down.

One of Rachels main roles within this commitment is to build partnerships with industry so they can hire our students for placements, internships etc. There is a goal made to build 30 new partnerships a year. The term “new” is being looked at from a perspective of either never having any sort of relationship with this employer, or introducing other programs to start working with existing partnerships. For example, Vale, which is a major engineering firm in Sudbury, works really close with the Engineering Department at Laurentian. However, Rachel wants to open up other opportunities, and see if they would consider hiring Laurentian’s accounting students, health and safety students, nursing students etc., because there are many different areas of work that Vale might have a need for. There was a goal created for Rachel to build 60 partnerships over the next two years, however 13 months into her role, she has already built almost 100 partnerships. This demonstrates some of the amazing work Rachel is doing, which is extremely helpful and impactful for so many students at Laurentian.

Then starting in January of this year, the Provincial Government has changed Laurentian's funding model. The government has said that the university will be measured on 10 different key performance indicators. The university is told what 8 or 9 of them are, and 1 or 2 of them they get to choose. 6 of them are related to career employment, graduation rates, getting jobs upon graduation etc., so a lot of the work Rachel is doing ties into these outcomes that are required of the university.

We wanted to share some of the awesome opportunities that Laurentian is doing in order to help students, and prepare them for a successful future beyond their time at university. We would like to thank Rachel Meehan for taking the time to speak with us, and sharing some of the amazing work she is doing with Laurentian.