Terri-Jane Yuzda













Loonie Walk Pitchers Overflow
for Calgary Urban Project Society





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BY ALAN MARTIN
University of Calgary
Student Contributor

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During lunch hour at the University of Calgary, students normally count up their spare change to see if they have enough for a meal. On Nov. 19, however, spare change was tossed into beer jugs, which engineering students carried around campus.

Why? To support charity.

It was the annual Engineering Students’ Society Loonie Walk. Starting at noon and lasting for about an hour, about 40 people shook beer jugs as the walked through campus, asking students to give up their hard-earned loonies and other spare change for a good cause. This year, as it was last year, the loonie walk supported Calgary Urban Project Society.

Tally Up
U of C engineering students check out the coin, after their annual Loonie Walk on Nov. 19.

CUPS supports the poverty stricken residents of Calgary, providing services such as counselling programs for people seeking employment or individuals in crisis situations. CUPS also provides health, transportation and housing services for people in need.

The grand total raised this year was $1,169.69.

Event organizer Derek Kormish said he was pleased with the results. “I think the event went very smoothly. It’s a very good charity event for students who are always very busy with school work, but can spare an hour for a well respected Calgary charity,” he said. The Engineering Students’ Society and the engineering student population often raise money for charities. The upcoming ENGG week will be the next big event that raises money for charity – while also letting the engineering students have a great time.

Internship Program
Reaches New Heights

Tucked away inside the engineering building is the Engineering Internship Office. The office may be easy to miss, but most, if not all, engineering students at the U of C know about it.

That’s because it provides a very useful service – it helps students get work experience. Every year the internship office helps engineering students between their third and four years of study find internship work terms. These can be anywhere from four to 16 months long – students taking shorter terms will take more than one to come as close to a 16-month total as possible.

Unlike most co-op programs, the U of C Internship Program puts all the working months together, instead of breaking them into smaller chunks. This means students spend less time training for jobs, and more time actually working and learning. And it also looks good to employers, since students who spend a month or two learning the job will be around longer than another two months – sometimes as much as 14 months.

This year, the internship program placed its highest ever number of students. By September, 253 students had found internship jobs in 2003. The previous highest number of students placed was 228 in 2001.
More than 88 per cent of the students who applied for internship received placements, including all 67 mechanical engineering students who applied, all 12 oil and gas students and all 32 civil engineering students.
Some students received placements overseas. Twenty-one students were placed in Switzerland this year, and several others worked in other countries.
Every year more students apply for internship, and every year more students get jobs. These students are better engineers when they graduate from university and enter the workforce, thanks to their work experience.

The internship slogan describes this quite well: Superior Graduates Through Engineering Internship.


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