Embedded Partners: Industry-driven experiential learning directly on campus
June 30, 2026
Since its founding, Northeastern University has fostered student-industry collaboration through co-op and experiential learning programs as a central tenet of its approach to education. The Vancouver campus builds on this tradition in new ways through its innovative Embedded Partners program.
Through this initiative, the campus hosts 60+ companies working on site. The amount of access ranges based on their needs; some teams have dedicated workspaces, while others need conference for meetings or larger spaces for events.
The currency that functions as rent is educational engagement: industry partners host events, provide internships, collaborate on projects, and offer mentorship to students.
Creating an environment for collaboration and inspiration
The program was started by a team of Northeastern faculty and staff led by Steve Eccles, dean of Northeastern Vancouver. Eccles saw the opportunity to create a central collaboration area for experiential learning with local industry partners on campus.
“We’ve blurred British Columbia’s tech companies into a ‘mosh pit’ tech collider,” Eccles said. “The idea was all about a natural experiential learning progression into something more organic, creating a flow between students and industry partners. Accidental mentorship might break out at any second.”
Dominik Beckers, Vancouver’s director of strategic partnerships, spearheaded developing the program in collaboration with Eccles, faculty members, and key early partners like Oracle Labs.
“We developed the entire model together with Oracle,” Beckers explained. “They’re the reason it works. I really appreciate how they leaned in and helped set it up the pilot and make it work with a large organizations and start ups. They have a standing co-op program and every four months will exclusively hire one of our students. They really embrace it by going into the classrooms where they know the best students will be, and they scout them there.”
Tapping into the strengths of the B.C. ecosystem
Eccles, Beckers, and the team around them believe that for students, education is not just about skills development, but also building social capital. Within the thriving tech culture of British Columbia, the vast majority have less than fifty employees.
This offers both a roadblock to the traditional internship model, where enterprise companies hire student co-ops at scale, and a unique opportunity for students to take on more responsibility in more agile companies. The Vancouver campus team had to think of ways to give students experiential learning and employment opportunities that were scaled to these parameters. One such model is the Basecamp Studio program, where students work with partners on four to eight week-long industry sprint projects.
“We get close to partners and think about customized work opportunities,” Eccles continued. “We generated these ‘talent on demand’ opportunities. If you’re a small company and want to get a product done in eight weeks, you might not want a co-op length program. When students have that opportunity, they get a chance to demonstrate not just their tech capabilities, but also their responsiveness and creativity. We have 90% employment within six months of graduation.”
“Nobody else is doing this in the city.”
Many local companies predominantly worked from home in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and there was a market gap for in-person spaces that weren’t necessarily traditional offices. Companies needed in-person meeting spaces to foster innovation as well as entrepreneurial community.
The embedded partners program relies on a system of tokens that represent engagement with students and faculty. This system allows the campus and partners to track using weighted metrics that account for the varying levels of commitment and time that different activities require. A co-op counts as one engagement token, while a single capstone project as half of a token. Other forms of engagements that earn tokens include panel speakers, office hours, and in-class presentations. The tally of these cumulative collaborations demonstrate a partner’s good standing on the agreement.
“We always had the basic building blocks,” Eccles explained. “We developed a contract where partners would pay ‘rent’ in the form of co-ops, capstone projects, and events. We aren’t going to generate revenue, but we are going to generate reputation. At one point, during a project showcase, a senior tech executive approached me and said, ‘Nobody else is doing this in the city.’ Our reputation is now established as a community builder and supporter.”
A gathering place for technology and design
The campus is stepping into this community-building role also by offering a meeting place. In a typical week, two or three events of various sizes are hosted on campus and open to Vancouver professionals and students. Some are presented by embedded partners, some by Northeastern faculty, and others by industry partners and affiliates from the wider network.
Regular reading groups for tech topics are led by faculty. Participants review new publications and studies and discuss their impact. Recent discussion groups have centered on cybersecurity, data science, and different areas of artificial intelligence.
And the tech industry occupies a major role in the campus event space. Within that sector, though, the focus and formats vary widely. In the spring of this year, Cloud Native Vancouver hosted a large networking event as a chapter of the wider Cloud Native Computing Foundation. 021: Zero to One Events hosted workshops for professionals in different fields to upskill with AI tools. Meetups and mixers were hosted by AI engineering group Infer, VanTUG (Vancouver User Technology Group), founder community Novus, and more.
Thanks to a partnership with the Vancouver Tech Journal (VTJ), many major city-wide and provincial events are also held on campus, providing a great interface with government and industry decision-makers. This July, the VTJ and Global Public Affairs are hosting The Year in Vancouver Tech — So Far, a look at the major trends in the industry with founders, investors, and insiders.
An agile program for Canada’s growing tech economy
The program continues to grow and evolve amidst new national opportunities and changing industry conditions.
“We’re going to pay attention not just to technologies but also the ways in which organizations are reshaping and structuring,” Eccles said. “It should always be industry leading the way. I think we’ll soon have more industry research and development opportunities thanks to massive R&D investments across Canada. Applied research is a rich story generator for students applying for a great job.”
Beckers sees that story as representative of experiential learning in its most integrated form, creating a living laboratory where theory and practice intersect daily as students and faculty collaborate with industry on projects, workshops, hackathons, and research initiatives.
“It’s Northeastern’s signature approach scaled and deepened, making industry partnership a foundation to education,” Beckers added. “Watching students gain confidence through Studio projects with embedded companies like Traction Complete, then seeing them become professionals and continue those relationships, creates a powerful sense of sustainable impact.”
Eccles believes that the program owes a lot to Northeastern’s entrepreneurial and adventurous culture, pressing to be on the front foot of education. The model is expanding to other campuses in the near future.
“Innovation is a sincere promise here and not an empty word,” Eccles added. “There may be different evolutions of this program at different campuses. Our value as an institution is truly showcased through our creativity, co-ops and experiential programs.”
Interested in partnering?
Prospective industry partners are invited to reach out to Dominik Beckers for more information. Drop-in tours of the campus are also available during normal business hours.
