The 7th Annual Education Fair provides new opportunities for University of Windsor Students

BY: Aussiemarie Vizcayno

Students at the University of Windsor met with representatives from across the globe at the Continuing Education Fair Oct. 23.

The Centre for Career Education along with the Faculty of Graduate Studies invited schools from around the world to showcase different post-graduate programs that are available for students to plan ahead for the future.

The career development coordinator for the Centre for Career Education, Yvonne Currie, said the event has been held for seven years.

“My understanding is that someone from our graduate studies was invited to attend a seminar similar to this at a different institution, then came back talking about what a great event  it was and how could we make it happen on campus,” said Currie. “So they worked in partnership with the Centre for Career of Education and now we’ve been doing this for seven years.”

This year, the event involved a great deal of planning and marketing in order to advertise. Currie said they are holding the fair in two different places at the CAW student centre to make room for all the exhibitors that were invited.

“The fair is happening in the commons area this year as well as the Ambassador Auditorium in order to be able to accommodate more participants,” said Currie.

The school has invited more exhibitors this year compared to events from the previous years.  Currie said the number of schools participating this year has definitely increased.

“This year we have 43 schools participating with us while it was only in the high-30s in the previous years,” she said. “If we had a little more room and a little more time I think we would have more institutions that could have ended up participating in this year’s event.”
Currie said they have regular exhibitors who continue to attend but they also hope a few new ones will attend in the future.

She said the goal is to provide opportunities for students to generally learn about programs from different participating schools that students are not aware of.

Brenda Schreiber, the graduate financial aid assistant at the university said this is a good opportunity for students to explore options.

“There are universities from all over the world participating in this event and that doesn’t happen very often,” Schreiber said. “This is a good opportunity for students to explore different options of what they might think of doing after they graduate.”

Schreiber said the idea of the event is to develop a well-rounded student in the future. “We want students to have good references, we want volunteer work ethics that is meaningful to the profession they would like to go into,” said Schreiber.

The event gives students a pathway to more possibilities and students take the opportunity to look into different programs that might be of interest to them after graduation.

Breanne LeBlanc, a fourth year Biology student at the University of Windsor attended the fair in order to obtain more information about the teacher’s college program that she is interested in taking. LaBlanc said having the fair is a great idea because finding information about a certain program can be difficult.

“So having people at this event here provides access to all information that a student needs,” said LeBlanc.

LeBlanc said niversity of Windsor students are lucky to have this advantage because students who are not enrolled at this school won’t get the same opportunity. “So this is this is a privilege that we are ahead of them.”

“I think more schools should be incorporated,” said LeBlanc. “I looked at the list and there are some schools that I wanted to be here that were not and I think it would be better for exploring options if the event provides a wider range of participating schools in the future.”