Co-op highlights from 2014

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This year news@Northeastern brought you many exciting stories about students’ co-op experiences and their global achievements. Here’s a look back at what made students say #iheartcoop.

Rachael Tompa, E/S’14, wants to be an astronaut, and her co-ops—including one at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory—provided the perfect venue to explore her interest in aerospace. “The coolest part of my work at NASA was knowing that things I was working on eventually would be on the International Space Station,” said Tompa, who entered a doctoral program in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford following graduation.

Northeastern students travel to all corners of the globe to work on co-op—in fact, students have pursued experiential learning opportunities in 128 countries since 2006-07. In 2014, we brought you stories like that of Stanislas Phanord, SSH’14, whose co-ops in Switzerland and Senegal helped put him on a path to a career in diplomacy. Biochemistry major Eileen Sheehan, S’16, traveled to—and blogged from—Antarctica, where she studied some of the world’s most unique fish species. Emma McGrath, AMD’17, and Angel Feliciano, AMD’15, immersed themselves in major national news stories while on co-op at NBC News’ Special Reports in New York City. Julia Ebert, S’15, pursed her passion for understanding the human brain in Northeastern’s Action Lab.

Some co-ops nurtured students’ entrepreneurial spirit. Jackson Golden, SSH’15, hit a home run in India, where he co-founded Grand Slam Baseball, a nonprofit umbrella organization aimed at increasing participation and promoting upward mobility among players at all levels. Carlos Villalobos, DMSB’15, co-founded Bökeh, a wireless enabled camera lens that connects to the iPhone, after finding inspiration while on co-op in San Francisco at Adobe Systems.

But the co-op program also reached new heights at the State of the University in November, when President Joseph E. Aoun named his first ever co-ops, the Global Officers: Matt Bilotti, DMSB’15, and Caitlin Morelli, SSH’16, who will explore the world for six months to identify new opportunities for students and ways for Northeastern to further its worldwide impact.

Here is a video featuring 2014 graduates explaining what made co-op so impactful during their time at Northeastern, followed by tweets from the Northeastern community about why they say #iheartcoop:

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