Shipping out with offer in tow
Curriculum, co-ops mean nearly all Mass. Maritime graduates leave with a job
When 200 students graduate from Massachusetts Maritime Academy next month, they will walk away with more than a diploma.
"Everybody has at least one job offer at graduation. It's incredibly unusual for people to not have job offers when they get their diploma," said Admiral Rick Gurnon, Mass. Maritime's president. "We're focused on that."
A down economy and surveys suggesting that entry-level hiring is off 10 percent from last year won't change the state school's nearly 100 percent track record for placing students in engineering and maritime industry jobs immediately upon graduation. And many of the students will start at salaries upward of $50,000, with some offers topping $90,000. They will work as engineers, ship pilots, or in the business offices of maritime companies.
"This is the exact job I wanted - it's the job I have been working to get for the past four years," said Matthew Gramolini, 22, of Arlington, who accepted an offer to handle ships for Otto Candies LLC in the Gulf of Mexico. "You learn to figure out what you love to do when you come here, and what I learned is that I love ship handling."
Administrators at the school, located at the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal in Buzzards Bay, attribute the success to a wide range of factors: A regimented curriculum that amounts to four years of hands-on job training, aggressive networking with employers by the career services department, and an active alumni network. Combined, they help the school place students in positions most of their peers at traditional colleges would envy. Students are also required to participate in two to three co-op jobs, depending on their major, and more than half of those co-ops result in job offers.
"It stems from our philosophy of 'learn, do, learn,' " Gurnon said. "We have a hands-on component that is central to our curriculum, and we find that to be incredibly valuable."
Indeed, almost all Mass. Maritime students go to sea during their freshman year. The curriculum requires students to wear uniforms to classes, participate in daily marching drills, and take calculus and accounting courses. Also, most students play sports or are a member of a school club. "It's a very difficult, very challenging lifestyle that prepares students for the workforce," Gurnon said.
"What you learn to do here is multitask," said Samelia Joe, who will graduate next month with a degree in business.
George F. Gillis, Mass. Maritime's director of career services and alumni relations, said several companies return to the Buzzards Bay campus each year for the school's job fairs. Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc., Celebrity Cruises Inc., Siemens Corp., and APM/Maersk are among the firms that routinely hire the school's grads. Heather Twiss, associate director of career services, boasted that Mass. Maritime engineering students often beat out graduates from bigger engineering programs because of their intensive training.
"Wherever we recruit, we're looking for the best and the brightest," said Raytheon Co. spokesman Mike Nason. "Over the years we've hired a number of engineers from Massachusetts Maritime Academy who have proven to do a very good job for us. We're pleased to have them."
One of Raytheon's hires from this year's graduating class is Joe, 23, of Wilmington, Del. Joe will head performance-based logistics at the company's Portsmouth, R.I., facility. She recently attended the graduation of a friend who has not lined up a job and is frustrated with her school's career services department.
"One of the benefits of being here is that career services goes out and finds these companies that have never heard of us and gets them to come here," Joe said. "They get our name out there, and you end up feeling like they're out there fighting for every one of us."
Gillis added, "It's all about relationships. The maritime industry is a pretty tight group and a relatively small business, and we are a major player."
