About • Academics • Admissions • Student Life • Campus Resources • News & Events
Do students generally take co-op jobs in their majors? What do they do if they don’t know what their major will be?
What sorts of co-op jobs do students in liberal arts or self-designed majors take?
What kinds of jobs are offered in the Antioch program?
Does the Co-op Community Program prepare students for careers after college?
How are co-op experiences integrated with classroom learning?
Once back from a job, what happens?
Will I be able to do a co-op that is not part of a Co-op Community?
In a Co-op Community, what services can I expect to access?
What costs are involved in Co-op?
What is the placement process like?
What if I don’t like the job I took?
Do students generally take co-op jobs in their majors? What do they do if they don’t know what their major will be?
In Antioch’s curriculum, students and advisors develop majors from an assessment and interpretation of student work in the Core Program Learning Communities and in Co-op Communities. Co-op at Antioch performs a general education role. It, along with specialized study that a student finds important, advisors and mentors, help the student conceptualize a major. The meaning and the purposes served by a student’s course of study are more the organizing factors than would be true in a program emphasizing fidelity to conformity to what others say is required. Co-op obviously plays a critical role in meaning making and in acquiring a sense of purpose. Therefore, co-op is about the formation of intentions and competencies to engage in purposeful actions in college and beyond.
Antioch asks students to think about what they want to learn, test, know better, and investigate in choosing a co-op. How it will look on a resume or its obvious connection of association is far less important. For example, a student intending to go to law school may wish to work in a law office for the associated relevance assumed by that assignment. However, with the help of advisors, a student may well recognize that s/he should improve on oral presentation and improvisational speech to be ready for moot court in law school. With that objective, being a tour guide, doing surveys or focus groups in marketing or providing information and referrals in a government agency is well suited to developing that skill and has the added advantage of introducing students to other careers, organizations and futures than those framed by legal work alone would provide.
What sorts of co-op jobs do students in liberal arts or self-designed majors take?
Remember, co-op at Antioch is primarily general education. Understanding interconnections between influences, ideas, workers, organizations, and sectors of the economy are more our intention than anything else. Most undergraduate fields of study are made neat, sorted and distinct from other fields. Antioch long ago recognized that this is not how it is in the world. Problems are multifaceted, messy, insufficiently clear and vexing. They require agility, innovation, experience and broad education to be adequately addressed. Antioch’s emphasis on Learning Communities for academic life and on co-op for learning in and through the world brings to the campus the realities of the world beyond it. An Antioch education is engaged, thoughtful, purposeful and agile, not an ivory tower or institution plagued with the “relevance” question.
What kinds of jobs are offered in the Antioch program?
Work is central in our co-op program and all work has educative value. That’s a starting point. Co-op jobs enable students to enter the roles and worlds that belong to others. For a period of time, these roles and worlds become ours. We are “them” for a time. How do workers view their options? What forms of proof are persuasive? On what points of agreement about politics, religion, authority, economics, etc. does a worker have in this organization or field? Who am I when I’m in this role or circumstance? What lenses of analysis can be used to penetrate this world and to transcend or reinterpret it? These are the experiential learning tools Antioch wishes to introduce, sharpen and bring into the classroom. Obviously, the questions or forms of experiential learning that we seek to develop can be viewed as more central than the kind of work involved.
Students learn to enter various communities of practice, whether these are fields of academic pursuit, forms of socio-economic class, forms of work, professions, etc. How to enter these communities of practice and learn from them and through performing in them is our curriculum. The kinds of work students perform does matter. We do not intend to erase or ignore this, but it really is secondary to developing the means to learn experientially.
That means that students hold jobs that they and important others view as relevant. Students work as social service aides, research assistants, gallery assistants, educators, organic farm workers, sales persons, health assistants, special event planners, computer systems users, etc. The work available through our employer-partners is real and useful. Far too many internships are built on a charitable platform where a student will be shown around or given something to do that may be useful or not. On one such internship a student lamented, “I feel invisible” because she was not really a part of the organization’s mission or purposes. She was being given an association that might even look good on a resume, but Antioch is not interested in that kind of window-dressing. We perform real work that needs to be done.
Does the Co-op Community Program prepare students for careers after college?
We certainly think it does because what we offer is reflective of what we’ve been offering for over 80 years. Alternation between work and study and the emphasis on reflective learning, a form of juxtaposition and engagement, make possible powerful learning. There is real work that needs to be done. There are ventures into various adult roles in the world. The record of career performance and versatility that Antioch graduates have demonstrated since the 1920’s will continue for students entering Antioch in the new millennium. We have developed a great confidence in our approach to education because its effectiveness has been obvious not only in the immediate sense of educational potency but in its long term effectives as reported in studies of Antioch graduates over the decades.
We do not mean to gloss over this important question with our assurances alone. Study after study demonstrates that students with co-op experience, preferably more than one, fare better as employees when hired. Employers know this. They participate in co-op programs for selfish reasons. In the short-term, they get work done that is important to them. In the long run, they influence who will remain in their field of work. Most of the jobs that exist today didn’t exist 15 years ago. They are different in substance and skill. Training for immediate utility after graduation has its merits, but an education that prepares students to work constructively in changing environments, who learn in and through work, who interrogate experience for learning and who see connections between disparate systems are the people who will have careers suited for the decades ahead. Studies done at Berkeley demonstrated that many times students with narrow training for immediate utility are more often hired in their fields after graduation. However, this distinction soon melts away and students with broader educations and with an understanding of change and interconnections of fields and problems are the ones who gain the more challenging and higher skilled jobs within a five-year period after graduation. An education that prepares a student for a lifetime is a better investment and a more effective education than one that focuses narrowly on immediate next steps.
How are co-op experiences integrated with classroom learning?
One Antioch professor said, “they go on their first co-op and they come back two years older…” It’s largely true. Sophistication and maturity derive from living independently, meeting the challenges of adult life at work and in civic life, reflecting on the meaning of experiences and how to harness them to make choices and plan, being viewed as an adult contributor in organizations that lie beyond the world we had arranged for us by parents and hometowns. So, as a more sophisticated learner and an experienced contributor, students simply have more to offer other students and course instructors as learners and teachers.
Students also gain specialized knowledge and see or make connections that the rigor of academic training, by its nature, sometimes limits in course instructors. One professor left the room when a scientific instrument vendor was making a sales pitch for a sophisticated piece of equipment leaving the sales person in the room with a handful of science students. Unnerved, he asked the professor what that was all about. The professor said matter of factly, “they have worked on this kind of equipment on their co-ops, I haven’t. They’ll make a good recommendation.” In a class on Eastern religions, a student’s experience in an ashram was more specialized and personal than was available from lectures or readings. In a theater performance class, the depth of character given to a role was influenced by a student’s experience on co-op. A student having completed a job involving international adoption contributed uniquely in a class on global economies. You get the idea. The world offers one form of instruction. Our students are in it. We get instruction from its best sources. We have a well-trained and interesting faculty, but they are only half of the equation. The world is the other half and our students have been learning through engaging with it. That’s an educational dialogue that’s hard to beat.
Once back from a job, what happens?
Actually, plenty happens while on the job. Students meet periodically with other students in the same Co-op Community under the leadership of the Co-op Community Coordinators or Faculty and other relevant people. Learning on the job, from life in a neighborhood, learning about the place where other students live and work, and investigating each other’s experiences are all part of the educational program in Co-op Communities. Much formal sense making and debriefing occurs in the Co-op Community itself. Upon return to campus students will have a crediting session with their Co-op advisor who remains a student’s advisor throughout her/his enrollment. These evaluations are for determining credit and are expansive learning opportunities that emphasize personal development over time. The Learning Community format by its design and intention takes stock of what co-op experiences students have had and how they may be investigated for contributions to the Learning Community’s rubric of study.
Crediting a co-op with the Co-op advisor involves submission of a paper that follows the syllabus designed for the student’s standing in the program (first co-op, second, or third) and the assessment goals framed by the College and in the student’s educational objectives. Making sense out of the co-op experience considering whatever education and experience came before it and what future educational steps (co-op or academic) is suggests.
Will I be able to do a co-op that is not part of a Co-op Community?
Three co-ops are required to be completed through the Co-op Community framework. A variety of jobs are offered in each Co-op Community, each with different educational intentions that originate from the work that needs to be done and the location. For example, the Northern New Mexico Co-op Community is concerned about the complex relationship between population growth and high desert ecosystems. The Metro District of Columbia Co-op Community has a high proximity to Federal agencies and international politics and diplomacy. There is variety in our plan and other Co-op Communities are being planned for introduction next year.
There are four semesters when the Antioch calendar makes co-oping available. Second year students work in the Fall term (Late August through mid December) and again in the Summer term (early May through mid August). Third year students work in the Spring term (early January through late April).
Additionally, students can choose to co-op or study during the Summer of Choice (the summer before the student’s fourth year). This term of choice has been created so students have the opportunity to further individualize their educations. Students choosing to co-op will work with co-op employers not located in the co-op communities or will independently find jobs not offered through the co-op program.
In a Co-op Community, what services can I expect to access?
Connections to alumni and friends of the College as tutors/mentors/experienced-hands that are nearby - Assistance in job placement (done earlier on campus and in cooperation with Co-op faculty leaders) - Help locating housing -Adjustment assistance (connecting to utilities, interest groups, social ties, etc.) - An academic program aimed at deepening and making more sophisticated a students understanding of “place”
Periodically, students get together to share stories, debrief, get support, find help in solving problems at work or in living situations. A program of “professional development” is included that focuses on various matters aimed at improving student work performance such as working effectively with supervisors, getting some technical assistance for completing work projects, learning how to work within organizational policies and procedures, improving required writing skills, etc. These topics, developed by the Co-op Community Coordinators with a system of alumni support, can be tailored to individual or small groups of students with similar needs/concerns.
What costs are involved in Co-op?
Co-op jobs pay wages, salaries or meet basic support needs such as housing with a stipend. These are real jobs and pay is reflective of what economic value our society gives to various forms of work. Right or wrong, some work is paid better than other work and the Co-op program at Antioch accepts these distinctions. There is a program offering transitional no-interest loans to students to assist them in meeting some of the up-front costs of co-op and because first paychecks sometimes are delayed for a week or two. Also, several scholarships exist that assist students with their co-ops. The Co-op Community Coordinators and their alumni network intend to help students locate and understand local costs so that they can make the most efficient use of the compensation paid by their co-op jobs.
What is the placement process like?
Each Co-op Community has a Co-op Community Coordinator and a Co-op faculty coordinator associated with it. Jointly, they work to place students seeking participation in the Co-op Community they are responsible for. A placement period during the on-campus term prior to going on Co-op will occur on the Antioch campus. The Co-op faculty and the Co-op Community Coordinators will make recommendations, based upon student interest and on-campus interviews, to employers. Durinmg the fall and spring terms the co-op faculty and co-op community coordinators host a job fair. Students schedule their interviews during a specified time period following the job fiar. Access to a cooperating employer is only through the Co-op faculty coordinator or the Co-op Community Coordinator for that Co-op Community. Placement is by recommendation from one or more of these professionals. In some cases, continued placement activity will follow that placement period to complete phone interviews, tie up loose ends with employers, make work dates clear, etc. Early planning with advisors and prepared follow-through during placement week are the keys to effective placement.
The placement process requires that a student have a completed resume, approved by her/his advisor and is on file with the Center for Cooperative Education. Coaching on writing cover letters and interviewing will be offered by the Co-op faculty and/or in the Core Learning Communities. Students are advised to update their resumes each term.
A list of recommended and required due dates and deadlines will be posted by the Center for Cooperative Education. Following those will greatly improve the likelihood of placement success.
What if I don’t like the job I took?
Pat Linn, a former Professor of Co-op, has done pioneering work in studying Antioch graduates by looking with them at the continuing value and influence their co-op jobs had on their lives and careers. One of her findings is that the most difficult co-op job that alumni had where the ones they learned the most from. This is because difficulty requires deeper thinking and reconsideration. Figuring out how to make the best of a situation that is a bit rough requires closer self and circumstantial examination, changed or negotiated modifications in performance, handling difficult observations, etc. Life is messy and seldom smooth. Your life so far has given you some tools to deal with adversity. The First Year Learning Community program will have helped you develop some coping and adjustment skills. We will help you call on those skills and help with new ones in making a placement work.
Co-op Community Coordinators are close at hand and the network of alumni and friends participating with us in the Co-op Community program are there to help navigate difficulty and decide with you and your employer on a course of action to salvage and improve a difficult set of circumstances. Similarly, they and the Co-op faculty coordinator will decide with you whether leaving the job situation is best. Early requests for help and reflection give the greatest assurance that situations can be improved before they get to the point of separation.