By Nicarlyle Hanchard / The Jambar
Graduate student Joshan Garjurel gains important knowledge toward his civil engineering studies through an internship with the Youngstown Water Department.
As a student Geographic Information System analyst, Garjurel reviews and digitizes maps of the city’s water infrastructure.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity and the chances of learning practical knowledge and I’m learning a lot [from] all the engineers here,” Garjurel said. “This program is very helpful for these students and should [be] implemented in the coming future.”
Garjurel gained the position through the Co-Op Internship Program, which provides students with relevant work experience by pairing them with businesses in various fields. It’s offered to Youngstown State University students through Ohio Means Internships.
The intention is to retain these students after graduation and add them to the Ohio workforce.
This is the second consecutive year YSU has partnered with the Youngstown Water Department for the program.
Nicholas D’Alesio, water quality manager at the Youngstown Water Department, said the program offers the department resources it would otherwise not have.
“There’s great resources there that we just uncovered as we move into Environmental Protection Agency compliance,” D’Alesio said. “When [Bralich] brought up the resources with the internship program, their knowledge was able to step in and keep us going.”
John Bralich, program director, director of the Center for Applied GIS at YSU and a faculty member in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, said the program is a relaunch of the Urban University Program — a collaboration of several Ohio urban universities.
Bralich said the program receives funding to address problems in the urban environment. YSU has been a part of this program for about 10 years, but experienced a few hiccups during, COVID-19 he said.
“Around 2014, 2015, there was an opportunity to get [under] a similar program now called the Co-Op Internship Program,” Bralich said. “We got that for a few years, so we had a lot of students come through the program and then COVID hit and we had a lot of reorganizing in the community.”
With the help of Mike Sherman, vice president for student affairs, institutional effectiveness and board professional, Bralich said YSU was able to rejoin the Co-Op Internship program.
He said there are about eight students actively in the program, but they are looking for more.
“There’s the position of student-GIS analyst and then we have a student assistant in the humanities, which is a broader position where we can put them in a number of different directions,” Bralich said. “The GIS analyst position is focused on mapping and data work.”
Bralich said interested students can find the positions listed on JobX, contact the Center for Applied GIS or speak with their professor for more information.
“We do word-of-mouth, we post on bulletin boards, we go through the faculty,” Bralich said. “Sometimes just reaching out to faculty and using the relationships you’ve built over the years to try to find people.”