Carleton’s first co-op employer of the year award unveiled

Erika Mayer of Lunchbox Consulting, Inc. took home Carleton’s first co-op Employer of the Year award March 22, according to marketing and communications officer Pia Chin.

Co-op students could nominate their employer based on a number of criteria that included whether the employer provided a mentoring relationship during the work term, how they surpassed expectations and how they contributed to the student’s cooperative education, Chin said.

The co-op education office decided to launch the employer awards this year as a way of recognizing the “three-way partnership between university, the student and the employer” in the co-op program, she said.

Fourth-year architecture student Aliza Sovani worked at Lunchbox, a sustainable building and consulting firm, from September to December 2010 and said she nominated Mayer because of the range of opportunities she was given as a co-op student.

“[Mayer] gave me a lot of variety in terms of the work I did, which was the main reason,” Sovani said. “It was a really dynamic position, so I didn’t have the same tasks to do every single day.”

She said she worked on four Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects while she worked for Mayer, two of which were based in Ottawa with the other two in Toronto.

Mayer was a really good mentor in terms of giving her the ground rules but also having trust in her employees and student-employees, Sovani said, adding she also had the chance to network with a number of professionals within the design industry.

Her experience working with Sovani was equally rewarding, Mayer said.
“I think co-op students bring great energy and new ideas to a firm, especially to a smaller firm like mine,” Mayer said. “[Sovani] got a chance to really see all aspects of the work that we do, so I think she really was able to kind of contribute and bring that energy to all aspects of the business.”

She has brought another co-op student into the firm this semester after having had such a great experience with Sovani, Mayer said.

Being involved with the co-op program is an “opportunity to give back to other architecture students and kind of expose them to an industry that isn’t the traditional design firm,” she said.