The Ohio University and Centric Columbus partnership was developed to help students build skills for success, while employees gain experience.
Over the past three years, Centric’s Columbus team has been engaging in recurring projects with the Management Information Systems (MIS) students at Ohio University (OU).
The intention of these projects is to provide the students with real-world learning as they quickly approach graduation and the start of their careers.
The Project
The concept of the project, called the OU-Centric Recognition Web App Project, works around Centric’s seven core values. Students are broken up into teams and each team must develop a web application upon which they can give recognition to classmates who have demonstrated one, if not more, of the core values.
The project initially started off as an effort to help OU students learn what experience and skill set companies are looking for in college recruits. Since then, the MIS Capstone at OU has molded and reworked parts of their class to fit the specifications that are most valuable.
Professor Luce said, “I believe this has been a very successful, mutually beneficial relationship for us (The Ohio University, MIS Department) and for Centric. My students get exposure to real projects, real clients, real-time pressures and working conditions that are as close to ‘the real world’ as we can arrange. Centric employees have a chance to interact with students, help with their professional development and mold students into better future employees. The projects also provide our students with a great introduction to Centric, your core values and working conditions, and what careers with Centric might be like.”
Check out what the team came up with here. You’ll find a web page where you can recognize other Centric employees for demonstrating one or more of the core values.
The Partnership
The relationship that Centric and OU have built over the previous few years has been honest, open and constructive for both. Columbus’ Michael Glass and Jon Flatt have been at the forefront of forging that relationship. They’ve maintained open lines of communication as Centric and OU have worked to continuously improve this initiative each year. Since the initial start of the OU-Centric Recognition Web App Project, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with 337 students over the course of five semesters.
Columbus employees have also benefitted from this partnership. The team who worked on this project have gained training and experience working in an Agile environment. Whether it’s getting together to establish the initial requirements, ensuring that user stories make their way efficiently across the team Trello board or engaging with the students in bi-weekly Sprint Retrospectives, the team has benefited from playing a role in this project.
Last semester, Columbus team members included Caroline Weist, Jack Koppert, Jon Flatt, Josh Rose, Kyle Priest, and Morgan Howard. Many of these employees have been a part of this project for multiple semesters and all agree that it’s exciting to see the relevant changes and improvements made each time.