When Reagan Chisholm graduates from Cambrian College this spring, he'll have a head start in the real world.
For the past few weeks, the third-year graphic design student has been honing his skills working at Fuel Multimedia as part of a partnership between the Sudbury college and local design studios.
Cambrian has been pairing students directly with clients as freelancers through their Voucher for E-Business and Technology Adoption program since 2013. The program is funded through Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).
It matches students with eligible businesses who want to scale up their development, adoption, and implementation of online tools.
So far local businesses from a microbrewery, a wellness store, a chiropractor, and a ski club have benefited.
This year though, they started including local design studios in the process so students would have more guidance and learn how to work in a studio setting.
“It's an opportunity for students to actually get some real world experience, presenting to clients,” said Sean Grant, a graphic design professor at the college. “We've been trying different models to optimize it and make it the best as possible.”
Chisholm had the opportunity to work both with a client directly under the freelance model, and under the new studio model at Fuel.
He said there are benefits to both models.
The freelance model allowed him to work intensively with one client, but at Fuel, he works with their entire portfolio.
He's worked with a women's health project, an electric motor company, and on the newly opened Kivi Park.
“It highlights the variety of clients out there... it gives you so much experience and confidence, you learn things you can't learn in school,” said Reagan. “It's a different atmosphere freelancing.”
Jeff MacIntyre, marketing manager at Fuel, helps Chisholm learn the tricks of the trade.
“You really can't mimic what the real world is,” said MacIntyre. “Fact is always stranger than fiction, there are limitations you can't imagine.”
Fuel gets something in return too. MacIntyre himself has no formal education in the field, and said the trends and ideas students like Chisholm introduce to the studio are crucial.
“It's good for us because there are things happening in the educational realm that the students inject into the business,” said MacIntyre.
The funded position also eliminates some of the financial burdens of training new employees.
“Anytime you're training somebody for a new office culture, from education to the real world, it's a huge expense,” said MacIntyre.
The grant from OCE is $2000, of which $1750 goes to the student for their work and $250 to their college instructors.
The student's clients pay $500 to access the service. Between 2013 and this spring, 28 students have taken part in the program.
Six of those were in the new, studio- based model that the college will be using going forward.
Chisholm feels lucky to have tackled both the freelancing and studio-based stream.
“To do both aspects before even leaving school was a tremendous benefit.”
