College president tells employers Loyalist is adapting

By Kayla Haggett

BELLEVILLE – Loyalist College’s president told a crowd of local business owners how the school is changing in order to prepare students for the changing workforce on Wednesday.

“Loyalist is changing. We are a destination college, and the diversity on our campus reflects that,” said college president Ann Marie Vaughan. “We need to attract and retain students and we know that employment is a very important aspect of student retention and success.”

She was the guest speaker at the Belleville Chamber of Commerce breakfast held at the Travelodge where she spoke about students, alumni and how they can support local businesses.

One way the college can do this is by arranging on-campus visits, classroom sessions and networking opportunities, said Vaughan, in order to to connect employers with skilled future employees in part-time jobs or placements.

Vaughan said it’s important the students get the opportunity to tell their own stories.

Three Loyalist graduates spoke about their experiences finding work both as a student at Loyalist and as alumni.

One of these students was Madhulika Potukuchi, a 2017 graduate of Loyalist’s biotechnology technician program.

Potukuchi said she worked for the college as a student, both in the Student Access Lab and the Supercritical CO2 Extraction Laboratory, an applied research laboratory the school opened in 2005. Loyalist hired her back in September to work both as lab tech support and a lab instructor for the biotechnology program, as well as in the International Student Centre.

She said her experiences at Loyalist helped prepare her for the workforce.

“Whether it was working part-time on campus or whether it was in-classroom experiences, I definitely feel that it helped me improve my work ethics and also improve my interpersonal skills,” said Potukuchi.

Richard Joseph, who graduated from Loyalist’s international trade and logistic management program in 2016, said that what made the difference to him was having classroom sessions with local employers.

“You had sessions where you would come and tell us about your company, what you do, and then what happened was we would interact in person,” said Joseph.

He said he recommends that local employers take the opportunity to volunteer for these sessions and meet the students face-to-face.

Both Potukuchi and Joseph are from southern India and are examples of the number of increasing international students that have come to Loyalist College. Vaughan said that there are 350 international students on campus this year.

Eligible international students are able to work in the community without a work permit. Vaughan explained that in this case, eligible refers to having a student visa and being enrolled in an acceptable post-secondary program.

Another way the college connects students with local employers is via its online job portal, where employers can register to post job listings available to current Loyalist students as well as alumni.

Vaughan said the portal gets a lot of use, with 2,950 current students and 4,000 alumni active on the portal right now. Since January 1 there have been upwards of 2,100 job listings posted.

“I have 28 years in this field and I have never seen such an example of an institution totally focused on student success as I have seen at Loyalist College,” said Vaughan. “It’s absolutely totally phenomenal.”