The concept of “Value-Added Personel”

Helping students grow into Highly-Qualified Personnel (HQP) remains one of the key objectives for universities. The challenge facing all new graduates these days lies in what actually constitutes an HQP. In its study of March 2004, “The Economic Contribution of Canada’s R&D Intensive Enterprises 1994–2001”, Barber and Crelinsten state that, “The skill set of graduates is too narrow. The commerce-averse culture inhibits them from learning management, teamwork, marketing, customer relations and other commerce-related skills so necessary to excel in an R&D-intensive firm that competes globally”. They conclude in their summary that “the key issues facing R&D Leader firms in Canada today are the need for commerce-competent, highly-skilled graduates…”.¹ A recent Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) Report lists similar skills as those most in need of improvement, in the opinion of employers. While it is the job of universities and colleges to teach their students to be scientific and technical experts, they rarely cultivate the critical skills required for a smooth and rapid integration of the graduate as a productive and competitive member of the workplace.

As a non-profit company funded by the Government of Ontario to stimulate job creation, wealth generation and economic growth in the Province, the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) has been funding research in Ontario universities for almost 20 years. In doing so, it has supported graduate students in various scientific and engineering fields concentrating on photonics, environmental sciences, information technology, energy, manufacturing and materials. In a review of the programs offered by OCE, and based on an OCE student survey conducted in 2003, it was evident that although key programs were in place to enable students to interact with industry, students felt they required a set of soft skills that would better prepare them to work with industry. On the basis of stakeholder and student demand, OCE has therefore advanced a new program of study for graduate students who are intent in becoming more effective, to be Value-Added Personnel (VAP).

The ultimate goal of the VAP program is to enhance the innovative capacity of firms and organizations by building the networking, presentation, management and entrepreneurial skills of students so they will be employees who:

Surveys of students and employers:

With this goal in mind, we have surveyed OCE-sponsored graduate students and companies from our OCE database. The following key results of the students and employers surveys confirm the need for soft-skill training of Ontario graduates:

The “ Advanced Graduate Toolkit” (AGT)

Providing this additional skill set is the foundation for the Advanced Graduate Toolkit (AGT), the main component of the VAP program. In order to obtain the “Advanced Graduate Toolkit” certificate, a graduate student would have to undertake OCE activities targeted at several of these skills.

Requirement of the VAP program Pilot:

Our goal is to have 60 students on average in each program. Many of the AGT components below have yet to be designed and implemented, and OCE has set aside a $300,000/year budget to make this happen. The new components will be rolled out over a two-year period. The list of courses and the categories in which they are classified are the following:

We intend to offer the VAP program to the OCE-funded students only at first, and to extend it later on to any graduate student in Ontario (and beyond).

The feedback from our stakeholders – students and industry – has been very useful to us for setting the agenda of the Advanced Graduate Toolkit and the Value Added Personnel Program. In particular, we added courses in Ethics, Business Etiquette and Emotional Intelligence as a result of survey contributions. We are currently in the process of requesting proposals from curriculum developers and training suppliers to fill our ambitious line-up of courses. While we expect to launch this program officially in the Fall 2005.