June 17, 2021
Seneca News
Seneca receives funding for work-integrated learning
Initiative supports peer-to-peer experiential knowledge sharing
Thirty-nine students from Seneca’s School of Public Safety & Behavioural Studies got some extra money and a unique work-integrated learning experience this spring.
The school received about $50,000 to provide financial support for 16 students from the first graduating class of the Honours Bachelor of Crime & Intelligence Analysis degree program and 23 students in the Honours Bachelor of Behavioural Psychology degree and Behavioural Sciences diploma programs.
Each student earned $1,300 and participated in a work-integrated project funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative and Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning (CEWIL) Canada.
Students and faculty from the School of Marketing & Media provided technical assistance for the projects.
“We were fortunate to take part in this initiative,” said Gary Galbraith, Chair, School of Public Safety & Behavioural Studies. “CEWIL’s funding helped our students create multimedia projects that transferred knowledge from their work experiences to a wider audience of students.”
One of the funded projects focused on the future of community safety. It included two interdisciplinary workshops that brought together students and public safety and law enforcement professionals. Participating students also created a podcast on developing a mentorship program among financial crime analysts.
Kristal Moore, a Crime & Intelligence Analysis graduate, says her work-integrated learning experience at Seneca was the highlight of her program.
While the pandemic almost jeopardized her plans, Ms. Moore secured a position as an analyst with a public law enforcement agency.
“I was able to use what I learned at Seneca and share new skills with other analysts,” she said. “The CEWIL-funded project also allowed me to share the experiences I gained during work-integrated learning with future students.”
Ms. Moore will be putting the money she received towards paying for her master’s degree in public safety at Wilfrid Laurier University, beginning in the fall.
For behavioural psychology and behavioural sciences students, projects focused on enhancing virtual work-integrated learning experiences for behavioural analysts.
Using different web design tools and online applications such as Adobe Spark and Adobe Premiere Rush, students created six media products to enhance virtual experiential learning in Seneca’s programs.
“The project allowed us to truly reflect on what we learned,” said Precious Caro, a Behavioural Psychology graduate who worked with children diagnosed with autism as part of her work-integrated learning opportunity. “Each of us had differing experiences, and we combined them to convey a greater breadth of information to other students who are either going into their work term or in their first and second years of the program.”
Ms. Caro says the greatest benefit of CEWIL’s support was that it allowed her and her classmates to work on the projects using different media tools.
“The funding was just a bonus,” she said.
