As students prepare for life beyond the classroom, gaining hands-on experience alongside academic learning offers a powerful edge in launching a meaningful career. At Toronto’s York University, learning from professors and textbooks is just part of a transformative academic journey toward a successful, fulfilling career enhanced by opportunities outside the classroom.
This was the case for Victoria’s Adam Donaldson who chose to travel across the country to study at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. The York alumnus graduated in 2022 with his Juris Doctor degree and now works as an associate at Stockwoods LLP.
“I always felt like York and Osgoode gave me the opportunity to live my dream. Not only that, but the opportunity to learn at one of Canada’s premier law schools meant the world to me. I will always be grateful for that,” says Donaldson.
His participation in Osgoode’s mediation clinic and mooting opportunities, which allow students to be a part of mock trials and debates, sparked his interest in litigation and advocacy and helped him develop the necessary skills.
“Mooting, I think is the closest you can get to taking a case to trial. It was probably the highlight of my time at law school. I would take practising for a moot and debating points of law with people over reading a textbook any day,” says Donaldson, who received the Dean’s Gold Key Award and the Upper Year Excellence Award for Academic Achievement and now works on a variety of disputes whether civil, administrative or criminal as a lawyer. “I did a lot of mooting all the way through Osgoode, and it really just set up my career in litigation.”
What he learned through the mediation clinic at Osgoode, he still uses in practice today. “We were trained as the mediators to help parties to resolve their disputes. Now, in practice, I'm one of those parties. What the mediation clinic afforded us is a really great opportunity to sit in that spot as mediators and really help to facilitate a resolution,” says Donaldson, named one of York University’s 2024 Top 30 Alumni Under 30. “It was also nice to see how other people approached disputes and how they sought to resolve them and bring the parties together. It really broadens your horizon in terms of how this tool can be used.”
In addition to hands-on learning, such as what Donaldson participated in during law school, many of York’s faculties have established co-op and work-integrated learning opportunities, and the university is creating even more.
“At York University, we believe that real-world experience is essential to a student's academic and professional journey,” says executive director of Experiential Learning Melanie Belore. “Through co-operative education and other forms of experiential learning, our students gain the confidence, skills and industry connections that make them career-ready and future-focused from day one.”
For Christine Chow of Burnaby, currently studying mechanical engineering at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering, her co-op work experiences taught her about different perspectives and ways to approach complex problems. Co-op allowed her to go beyond textbooks and put her school-acquired knowledge – on how to adapt and approach new problems – into practice.
Chow had a 16-month co-op work term at KPM Power in Toronto where she gained practical skills involving industrial equipment, process engineering and technical writing, followed by a winter co-op work term at BC Hydro in Vancouver, working in cybersecurity and compliance.
“Before accepting the position at BC Hydro, I was unsure of the process as it was a position outside of Ontario,” Chow says. “Fortunately, the team at the York University's co-op program was really helpful. I'm glad they were because I gained a lot of incredible experience and had the chance to go back home to Vancouver as a working professional.”
Chow then landed a position at Stantec in Toronto – a global leader in sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting – which Chow says only happened because of her previous co-op experiences. At Stantec she had the opportunity to hone her skills further by working on piping implementation and design with its integrated design team for North America’s oil and gas industry.
Her experience within three different industries allowed her to attain broad real-world experiences, which Chow says opened avenues she hadn’t previously considered, including engineering recruiting and consulting.
“I love to talk to people, and that is something I learned through co-operative education,” she says, adding her work experiences taught her much needed soft skills, such as how to do an interview and how to network. “I was timid and didn’t know how to do a real interview and I had no idea how to introduce or present myself, and now I’m a lot more comfortable with that.”
What would Chow tell future students? “Put yourself out there and learn to interact with other people and build positive relationships, because you don’t know where they could lead you.”
Graduating with the best of both worlds, students like Chow, who is on track to graduate next year, can enter the workforce more ready than ever to help solve the world’s future challenges and create positive change.
York has three main Greater Toronto Area campuses with experiential education available at all of them – Keele, Glendon, Markham – from engineering, science, business to digital technologies, entrepreneurship and innovation and more.
To learn more about York University and its programs, visit yorku.ca.
