The Student Associate Programme targets New Era College full-time students extending opportunity for real work experience by being attached to departments or offices. The programme aims to assist students form employability traits such as workplace and behavioural skills including interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, cultural, communication, and problem-solving skills. Student Associates are compensated for their time and are required to apply for an available Associate post and are interviewed and assessed, replicating a real work environment.
To be eligible for participation in the program, students need to meet certain qualification criteria. Here are the key criteria for students to be part of the program:
1. Academic standing: Students must have a CGPA of 3.0 and above
2. Availability and Commitment: Students must be available to work for at least 5 hours per week
My excursion as an ICT associate is by far amazing. It gives an intuition of what happens in the real working world and how to balance life professionally. Continuous support, encouragement and guidance will help enrich my professional milestone.
Working as a student associate has given me significant insight into the field of Communications.
I have worked on several projects and activities with the department and gained experience in establishing communication strategies, media outreach, and editing and revising communication materials and texts.
This position has enhanced my time management, social skills, and written and vocal communication skills, as meeting deadlines.
I joined the New Era College STEM department as a STEM associate because I believed this would help me in securing a future career in STEM. I have come to appreciate some concepts better after using the STEM kits as they gave a practical application to some of the theories we learned in class.
The highlight of my experience as a STEM associate has been tinkering with the different kits and seeing what new innovation I could come up with.
I would encourage any New Era College to take advantage of this part-time position, not only for the small allowance they will get but also to see the possibilities that exist with STEM.
The future depends on STEM as the 4th industrial revolution will mean our society relies more on technology in their day to day lives.
I chose to apply to become a STEM associate as I believed that the opportunity would give me a platform to be able to try and create the many innovative ideas that I have been thinking of involving electronics. With access to some high level equipment such as a 3D printer, I have been able to work on ideas for my final year project.
The knowledge that I gained as a STEM associate will even help me beyond the
College walls as I not only learned about STEM concepts, I gained real life experience from working in a technical lab and with other STEM engineers.
This taught me other soft skills such as collaboration, critical thinking for problem solving and even presentation skills through having to teach other students about the STEM kits.
