Engineering Co-op Student Brings
Fresh Perspectives to Health Canada

Health Canada is responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health and, in an era defined by a pandemic, their role has never been more critical. Their success is tightly connected to the skill of their workforce. Acting as a talent pipeline, Carleton’s co-op program funnels students with energy, ideas, knowledge and important news skills to contribute on the challenges of today and provide experienced candidates for future employment.

Jessica Mayenburg

Health Canada’s Consumer and Clinical Radiation Protection Bureau informs Canadians about the health risks of ionizing radiation and how they can be managed. With work anchored in physics, Carleton engineering student Jessica Mayenburg was a perfect fit, using her specific knowledge and expertise on biological research projects.

Co-op students like Mayenburg are available for work terms ranging from four to 16 months, giving your workplace the flexibility to choose the best fit for your needs. Gain the advantage of new, career-ready recruits with the competencies they need to succeed in the public service before their degrees are in hand. Get started now by emailing co-op@carleton.ca.

Co-op gave Mayenburg lab experience she wouldn’t otherwise have had, but it also helped open her eyes to the possibility of a career focused on research in the public service. It also gives the public service the chance to open a talent pathway, retaining recruits like Mayenburg after she graduates from Carleton.

“As an engineering student, I had always pictured myself being an engineer, but this experience really opened my eyes to research as a career path—to the possibility that engineers can work in biological research (for the public service.) I got to talk to a lot of people about what they do and how they got to where they are. I learned about their unique career paths and was really able to see myself getting to where they are,” Mayenburg says about her future career path.

Mayenburg speaks highly about the skills she learned while dealing with the unique challenges and considerations faced by public service researchers.

“At university, the experiments are already planned out for you, and you have a lab manual that has been used for years. But at the Radiation Protection Bureau, I was able to help plan how the experiments would actually work. We would have discussions about what we wanted to know, and how we could test for that. It was a really unique experience to participate at the planning stage, and very interesting to see how people with different academic backgrounds will approach the same problem differently.”