Ted Avery

My number one concern with coming to UOIT was whether anyone was going to care if I had a degree from there after I graduated or not since it’s still pretty new. After attending this past year, I feel confident that I will do well with a degree from here based on a number of factors, and I want to share a few of them to hopefully increase the reputation of UOIT some more. Over the past year I have been subscribed to the UOIT news feed, which talks about various developments at the school as well as investments that other companies make in the school. Here are a few notable ones:

• GM of Canada Automotive Centre of Excellence launched at UOIT — This one is a pretty big deal. GM invested $120 million in UOIT to make a new automotive engineering centre. When such a big car company makes such a large investment in a school, you know they have faith in the school to prepare graduates. UOIT has a good relationship with GM in general.
• UOIT helps Bank of Montreal master IT management — IT security, the program I’m in, is most important to banks and credit card companies. It’s VERY important that this information is highly secured by IT security specialists. The fact that Bank of Montreal trained their IT professionals in our Master of IT Security program is a big deal, and it’s obvious our program provides the proper training needed for such a great responsibility. Also see Child-porn fighter to head cybercrime research centre
• A medical school for UOIT?
• UOIT assistant professor may be Ontario’s best lecturer
• UOIT professor awarded Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Advanced Energy Systems
• UOIT professor awarded prestigious Tier 2 Canada Research Chair
• $10,000 grant to develop telehealth monitoring system
• HSBC Bank Canada announces generous $125,000 gift for student awards

Those are just a few I know about, but the school is doing stuff all the time. Also, UOIT has one of the highest rates of professors with PhDs among Canadian universities. We have a lot of research going on with many industry partners My girlfriend Jen is in the nursing program and is friends with some graduates of the program, and she can tell you that hospitals are starting to specifically seek out UOIT nursing graduates. Our HIRED Career Services site constantly has employers coming to the school for our graduates, one such case being Bell who wanted to hire some of our IT and Engineering students. (Being in IT I tend to only know about the IT program’s recognition) Finally, my own classroom experiences have been great too. Not only have all the teachers been very knowledgeable on the topics they teach, but everything I’ve learned has been applicable. I remember when I was at Ryerson I had to take all sorts of pointless classes meaningless to my program, but at UOIT your elective can be any course from any program, so it is very easy to find something to apply to your studies. If you are studying something like engineering or science, you don’t waste your time taking sociology courses like you do at many other schools. All the teachings are very relevant. That’s all I have to say for now, there is plenty more that everyone else could add though. Ultimately it will be the responsibility of the graduates to ensure UOIT gets the reputation it deserves. If our students apply themselves, are mature, present themselves well to employers and perform well in the workforce, UOIT’s reputation will continue to grow.

EDIT: One of my friends is in the commerce program and has this to say:Also, I know that a few big accounting firms sponser the accounting association at UOIT. I think one is Delloit and Touche (not 100% sure thats the name) and they are a big accounting firm! Also, becomeing a CGA (Cerified General Accountant) is easy to achieve because with the accounting specialization you are provied with all the necessary courses to get this designation (that is after you take the exam!).