Abstract:

Kettering University has been a wholly cooperative educational institution since its inception as the Flint Institute of Technology in 1923. In 1926, General Motors took over its financial support, renamed it General Motors Institute and started utilizing the facility to develop its own engineers and managers. A fifth-year thesis requirement was added in 1945, the year it became a degree granting college. The name of the institution has changed twice since then, but the commitment to cooperative education has not. To date, every student is required to both have at least five terms of co-op experience, alternating every three months between campus and work assignment, as well as produce a thesis on a work-term project in order to graduate. When the university was part of General Motors Corporation, the only co-op employer was General Motors. Since it became a private institution, in 1982, it has added over 600 additional co-op employers. Kettering University has a detailed and well established protocol and requirements for both students and their employers to follow. The results of our students' pre-graduation industrial experience cannot be over-stated. I will discuss our well-tuned and long-lived cooperative education model including its advantages and challenges in today's world.

Keywords:

industry, cooperative learning, experiential learning, undergraduate thesis.