Carolyn Veldstra works with students, faculty, and alumni across graduate programs in the Faculty of Arts—and employers interested in working with them—to facilitate work-integrated learning opportunities and the PhD co-op program. She started with the Arts Co-op office as the Grants Editor on Arts Amplifier team. In 2021, she collaborated on the development and implementation of a new team-based approach to work-integrated learning where graduate students from different programs collaborate on a semester-long project for an employer. The result is that more graduate students in the Faculty of Arts have had the opportunity to pursue paid work opportunities that draw on their skills and expertise.

In 2014, Carolyn received her PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University, where she also worked to develop a successful proposal for an innovative PhD program that combines community-based learning and new approaches to the dissertation. She is an experienced editor, with expertise in research- and art-focused grant proposals. Her creative nonfiction writing has been published in the literary magazine Essays in Canadian Writing and her academic writing received honorable mention for the F.E.L. Priestly Prize by the academic journal English Studies in Canada.