Welcome

Since the Engineering Cooperative Education Program commenced at our Campus in the year 1976, we have tried to give our students the best experience they can have. To do this, it is necessary to have the best companies available.

One of my goals as director is to attract new companies for our students. This gives our students more choices for their COOP Practices and also helps them obtain a better job experience.

I invite you to join our COOP Program. I am sure that this is going to be a great experience for our students and for your company.

Ellen Ríos de Acarón
Engineeering Coop Program Director
ellen.rios@upr.edu

Benefits

Employers have the opportunity to train students, and to consider them for permanent employment after graduation.

  1. Cooperative education is a proven, cost-effective method to meet both immediate and long-range human resource needs.
  2. Cooperative education students can perform well on some professional-level assignments, thus freeing career employees for more advanced responsibilities.
  3. COOP arrangements are ideal for technology transfer. Students bring fresh ideas and technologies from the classroom and employers have an opportunity to contribute to the enrichment of UPRM students by providing and educational and rewarding work environment.
  4. Better prepared and well trained engineers are the product of ties formed between industry and institution.
  5. COOP fosters on-going, productive relations between the campus and employer communities. Often cooperative education employers are asked to serve on Advisory Boards which exist in most academic departments. The end result is that cooperative education employers often can have a direct influence on the curriculum and on the policies and practices of the work portion of the curriculum

How to join

Contact the COOP office at (787) 265-3823 and ask to speak with the COOP Program Director to discuss your interest in participating in the program. A phone call is all it takes to get started.
When you are ready to establish a program or if you have additional questions, feel free to contact the COOP office.

The sooner we understand your needs, the sooner and easier it will be for us to accommodate them.

Guidelines

Employers have the following responsibilities:

  1. The COOP program is a partnership between the school, the employer, and the student.
  2. Job assignments must be related to the students major field of study. Diversification is encouraged to afford the student a range of training and experience. The technical level should increase as the student demonstrates competency and progresses through the program.
  3. We ask that you do not encourage or allow the students to switch from the coop program to summer, permanent, or part-time employment.Requesting that the student work part-time while on a full-time academic rotation, or accept permanent employment while still an undergraduate puts the student in academic jeopardy and is not in the spirit of the program. We realize there may be some exceptions to this guideline, and urge that you keep the COOP office informed of any change to the original co-op schedule.
  4. We ask that you do not approach us with a request to refer either only female or only male students for COOP positions with your organizations. We are committed to placing our COOP students without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicaps or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam Era.
  5. Employers are expected to allow the COOP Coordinator and/or the Director to visit the work site and review the program.
  6. Employers may receive requests for “at work” photographs of COOP students. The photographs are for various publicity activities.

Recruting

The COOP Office assists its employers with their recruiting all throughout the year. Annually, the Mayagüez Campus holds a job fair around the first week of October.
In addition to the job fair, you can do the following:

  • Create a brief job description of the position(s) that you have available for COOP students. It is also recommended that you include your company’s website. Our office will forward the resumes of students interested in interviewing with your company. Our office will arrange an interview schedule for you.
  • Some employers who can’t attend the interviews on our campus choose to conduct phone interviews while others prefer the students come to their own facility and interview at the job site.
  • After the interview process, you may make an offer to any appropriate candidate(s). You make the decision whom to hire and what salary to offer. Our office can provide you current co-op salary information as a reference.
  • The relationship and communication between you and the COOP coordinator is critical to the successful facilitation of the student selection process.
  • At the end of the work term, we ask the employer to complete an evaluation of the student’s performance and return it via mail to our office