Planting the CEED of innovation
It’s been a busy month for the Co-operative Education for Enterprise Development (CEED) program, with presentations and new ideas being shared.
An ever-growing partnership
The CEED student program is a research collaboration with the University of Western Australia and Curtin University that brings students, academics and industry together.
The program involves final year, Masters or PhD students from any faculty or discipline seeking industry experience to work on ‘real life’ challenges. Students complete 8 weeks of full-time site experience with their mentor, followed by 1 day per week for the rest of the academic year.
Regulation and Research Specialist at Water Corporation, Ben Stone shared that we’ve been partnering with CEED for over 15 years, building strong relationships and empowering our people find better solutions for our business.
“I’ve had the pleasure of coordinating the program for the last 5 years and it’s been fantastic to see it grow from strength to strength, with increased interest from the business,” Ben said.
“Over that time, we’ve had some incredibly smart students working on all sorts of issues the business has been facing and many of those projects have led to directly implementable solutions."
Where new ideas flourish
Research projects can often take many years to come to fruition. Although these larger projects are important for big investment decisions, the CEED program offers a more focused approach with one-year timeframes for smaller research questions that see practicable results.
We achieve these results by involving students directly in our business and giving them an opportunity to understand how we work and what our vision and values are, while also having leading academics provide project advice at their university.
“Gaining and sharing that knowledge is paramount in helping the water industry and our communities to thrive,” Ben shared.
“For the students, the knowledge sharing sessions we host helps them to practice their public speaking skills and receive valuable industry feedback on their work before presenting at the annual CEED Seminar.”
The next crop of water professionals
Together with the overall CEED program, this year we had the largest group of scholars yet - hosting 9 of the 42 students. Our students worked on various projects and we supported them as they presented their outcomes at several events this month.
After presenting to their mentors and colleagues, they were ready for the 35th Annual CEED Seminar hosted at UWA. This event showcases and celebrates the achievements of all students working across public, private and not-for-profit enterprises in the program.
Of the 9 students we hosted, Sonam Tshering from Curtin University and Trang Tran from UWA were nominated for the prestigious AWA Student Prize, while Engineering graduate Dhruvit Shah did an excellent job at presenting his undergraduate research project on air-gap membrane distillation modules.
“The students did such an incredible job of communicating their research findings,” Ben said.
“I’m always so impressed by the confidence and professionalism on display by the students as a result of their industry and academic mentoring.
“By partnering with CEED, Water Corporation is investing in the water professionals of the future”.
Students presenting at the 35th Annual CEED Seminar hosted at UWA.