How partnerships between universities and industry benefit students

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[Imagery of brain with moving wheels and spokes]

Text on screen: [University and business partnerships- Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada logo]

Text on screen: [Benefits to students]

Ray Ivany, president, Acadia University:

Whenever we mount a research project, one of the priorities for Acadia is to maximize the student involvement in those projects.

So again, we have faculty involved in a wide-range of research projects related to development of the economy here in the Annapolis Valley.

Every one of those projects would have one or more opportunities embedded in them for students to either do field work, to be involved in laboratory analysis, it could be development of a business case.

Martha Crago, vice-president Research, Dalhousie University Partnership with Irving Shipbuilding:

It helps to give the students experience with a kind of research problematic that they may not have had had they not been there.

And they arere supervised by their own professor. So they have excellent supervision, they tackle a problem of a sort that they might not have encountered and there’s an economic spin off for it.

Elizabeth Cannon, president, University of Calgary:

Students love working with industry because they bring a focus, they bring relevance.

So by having students arross the table from industry leaders, they learn first hand what some of these key challenges and issues are, they learn how industry works.

Ray Ivany, president, Acadia University:

In everyone of those instances, we feel that we are giving students at the undergraduate level an opportunity to put in practice what they’ve studied and to develop very sophisticated research skills.

That’s one of the signature pieces of our undergraduate education is that students get directly involved in research.

While Ray Ivany is speaking:

[Group of students do field work in a marsh.]

[Two employees check the quality of the grapes in a vineyard.]

[Female student looking in a hand-held camera lens.]

[Group of students do research at low tide.]

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Text on screen: [Putting ideas to work for Canadians.]