For This Engineering Major, Co-Op Delivered “Phenomenal Experience”
With support from the Career, Design & Development office, Noah Gilbert’s ’24 co-op transformed his undergraduate career. He's grateful for the experience and can't recommend it enough to his peers.
- School of Engineering
Widener’s co-op and internship program is a transformative experience. Just ask Noah Gilbert ’24.
The civil engineering major jumped on the opportunity to gain paid industry experience as an undergrad and still graduate in four years.
“It opened up opportunities and doors for me that I would never been able to open up by myself,” said Noah.
Coordinated through the Office of Career Design & Development, co-ops and internships enable engineering students like Noah, as well as business and computer science majors, to bridge the gap between college student and industry-leading professional ahead of graduation.
It’s exactly what a lot of people want out of their college experiences, to be able to start to grow those connections and grow in their professional lives and that was something that the Career, Design and Development office and the co-op program really helped me to do and I think everyone would benefit from it." —Noah Gilbert '24
In the fall semester of his junior year, Noah landed a co-op placement with Aecom, a multi-national infrastructure consulting firm, where he contributed to a large-scale construction project along Interstate 95 through Philadelphia.
Noah explained that in his role he, “designed from scratch a sidewalk curb ramp. That was my favorite project because they let me start from the beginning and really go through all of the steps of the process on how this sort of thing is implemented.”
Constructing the ramp, located at the corner of Richmond and Cambria streets in Northeast Philadelphia, gave Noah a tremendous amount of experience on how to work with industry-level systems, implement multifaceted sets of plans, and coordinate with different teams in the firm.
“I was able to get a little bit of experience in a lot of different areas,” said Noah. “I was able to bounce around and help out different teams with different projects. I was able to really branch out and try and get to work on as much as stuff as I could in the short time that I had in the co-op.”
The co-op program immerses students in professional environments tailored to match their majors and careers goals. As a result, students can expect to gain diverse hands-on experiences and start to navigate the field of work that they may, or may not, want to pursue.
“I was hoping to get an introduction to the business world of engineering because that’s something I hadn’t explored in any of my classes or jobs that I had been in before,” said Noah. “Also, I wanted to get a head start in understanding the different industries that I could branch out into.”
Whether students are interested in the co-op program or just need help building a resume, the Career, Design & Development office is available to students, and even alumni, as a one-stop-shop for career preparation.
“I’m so grateful with how much they helped me to understand how my resume should look, how I should go about pursuing a position. Not only did they educate me on what I should be doing but they reached out to a variety of companies and sent out my resume, which was definitely a huge help in opening up opportunities for me.”
According to Noah, all Widener students should partner with the Career, Design & Development office and leverage the incredible career-building benefits that they offer.
“More people should look into taking advantage of the co-op experience because it was really amazing for me,” said Noah.
