By Bryan Zandberg
Ask Christiane McInnes about her most bizarre experience as an Arts Co-op and she’ll tell you it was her very first term.
An art history major working toward a minor in 19th century studies, McInnes lept at the chance to act as a British emigré from her favorite century for a theatre show called Storyeum.
For four months one summer in 2005, McInnes donned a costume consisting of “layers and layers” of cotton petticoats, corsets, skirts, gloves and hats, assume the requisite British accent, and traipse around Vancouver’s historic Gastown district, enticing tourists to come see the show.
“One thing I find most funny to think about in retrospect is how many family albums I’m in across the world, because my photograph was taken a million, million times,” McInnes says.
“But it was a lot of fun.”
As much as she enjoyed that summer, McInnes says her co-op experiences have helped toward what she wants to do after university.
She finished her fourth and final placement with Vancouver’s Atira Women’s Resource Society, an experience she says cemented her decision to choose professional fundraising as her career.
“I’m really loving it,” she says of her job as writer of grant proposals. Much of her responsibilities had to do with winning funding for Atira, a non-profit that offers support, advocacy, and housing for women and children who have been victims of violence.
“I like the thought that some of these grant proposals will be successful and my work will have supported Atira in some endeavour.”
Aside from Storyeum and Atira, McInnes also spent two back-to-back placements as a research assistant with Arts Academic Advising.
There, she helped develop a pilot program called Peer Academic Coaching, an initiative that identified struggling students on academic probation and paired them with senior students, all in the interest of getting them off probation and pursuing their own personal and academic goals. The program eventually developed into a program that matched senior students with all incoming international students to the Faculty of Arts.
There’s no doubt in McInnes’s mind, Co-op is well worth the time and energy.
“It’s the only kind of program you can do where you gain skills over four months, get a really great reference — hopefully — and then, by the time you’re finished your degree, you have 16 months of work experience under your belt.”
In addition to volunteering and coordinating The Vagina Monologues at UBC in 2005 and 2006, McInnes was also the president of the Arts Co-op Students’ Association in 2006-07.
She says she is a true believer in the power of going out there and getting your hands dirty to strike a balance with what you learn in class.
“Not only does it help you become more employable, it helps you figure out what you want to do and where you want to go — and you’re doing all this while studying and earning money.”
