Mission

The Professional Practice Program (cooperative education) is designed to support the university’s mission, to provide the highest quality learning environment, by offering an enhanced education and furnishing the most comprehensive professional preparation available to students in the colleges it serves. The cooperative system of education, founded at the University of Cincinnati, enables students to expand their learning opportunities by an alternation of classroom study with paid, discipline and career-related work experiences. Through these experiences, critical appraisals by work supervisors, and individualized instruction by Professional Practice faculty, students are given a realistic test of career interests and aptitudes, gain an understanding about the realities of work, and learn many things about people, practices and technology that can best be learned in a real-time work environment. Multiple individual sessions with students, reviews of work reports, and various quality assurance mechanisms enable the Division to guide and evaluate student learning through co-op.

The cooperative education program was a pedagogical innovation of the University of Cincinnati in 1906, which continues today as an instructional method that encourages learning and supplements the overall education experience for students. It uses the world beyond the campus as a laboratory in which students can integrate classroom theory with practice, resulting in an enriched education.