Friends of Engineering awards first CoOp/IIP Student of the Year award
Last year, Dan Nenadov, a Biosystems Engineering student, spent seven and a half months in Nunavut as part of a co-op education program through the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba. His Arctic work experience in Cambridge Bay as a project officer on infrastructure projects left Nenadov passionate about the North and bringing much-needed engineers to the region.
Nenadov says that he realized early on that it made sense to get involved in the Faculty of Engineering’s co-op program. After he got involved, he realized further that the program is much more than just pairing a student with a job. As he notes, “It’s a great way for students to have a bit of control over where they are getting a job, and for employers to have a bit of control over the students they are getting. It makes the whole system more valuable, because everyone’s a stakeholder.”
His success in and championing of the Co-op/Industrial Internship Program (IIP) at the Faculty of Engineering led Nenadov to be the first recipient of the “Friends of Engineering Co-op/IIP Student of the Year” award. The award, which includes a framed certificate and a $2,000 cash prize, was instituted last year by the Friends of Engineering (Manitoba) Inc., a unique group of Manitoba industry influencers who share the U of M Faculty of Engineering’s commitment to excellence in engineering education.
Nenadov, who graduated this spring, was also the first engineering student to receive the University of Manitoba Co-operative Education Student Champion Award for 2013.