“We give students challenges and then we step out of the way and let them surprise us – they do it every time.”

Associate professor Anas Abdallah keeps coming up with new answers every time employers and students ask what’s next.

Abdallah’s on a mission to bridge the gap between industry and academia for the benefit of students and employers. Since joining the Actuarial and Financial Mathematics (AFM) program in 2019, Abdallah has launched a problem-solving workshop, a co-op bootcamp, a program fully loaded with more than 200 work-integrated learning opportunities and a third-year course that’s proven so popular it’s offered in both the fall and winter terms.

All of that brainstorming, collaborating, planning, organizing and last-minute troubleshooting has added up to a whole lot of extra work yet Abdallah says it’s well worth the effort. Students are graduating career-ready, employers have a future-proofing talent pipeline into McMaster and the AFM program’s earning top marks from industry.

Abdallah’s in a unique position to bridge the industry and academia gap.  Before joining McMaster, Abdallah had spent nearly eight years working as a graduate research assistant, research and innovation analyst and actuarial analyst for The Co-operators – a leading all-Canadian financial services co-operative with more than $78 billion in assets.

It’s where Abdallah first noticed the gap. University students were graduating with exceptional technical skills but it wasn’t enough – employers needed grads who were professionally ready to make the move from classrooms to conference rooms and boardrooms. Abdallah believed that a university program that figured out how to bridge that gap would fast-track student careers.

He decided to test his theory by leaving industry and joining academia. Within his first year at McMaster, Abdallah had pitched and sold his former employer on a workshop to help students develop and showcase their professional skills. “We wanted to go beyond the classroom. Students would apply what they were learning to solve real-world problems. With the workshop, actuarial science wouldn’t stop at theory.”

Abdallah and the AFM program would recruit teams of students, run the event on campus and host a post-workshop meet and greet reception. The Co-operators would supply a real-world problem along with the staff to judge student presentations and offer feedback. Winning teams would be invited to deliver their presentations at company headquarters and spend a day job-shadowing employees.

Abdallah will always remember the date of the first workshop because of what happened the day before. McMaster closed the campus on Friday, March 13, 2020 because of COVID. All in-person classes were suspended and all events on campus were cancelled.

The committee that had spent months planning the workshop now had an unanticipated problem of their own to solve in record time. They had two options – cancel the workshop or come up with a Plan B in under 24 hours.

The workshop became the first of many McMaster events to move online. “We were in completely uncharted territory,” says Abdallah. “We had no clue what we were doing.”

Yet they pulled it off. “The workshop succeeded because of our students. We were amazed by their resilience and adaptability.” By the end of the day, Abdallah and The Co-operators knew they had a winner. The McMaster / Co-operators Problem-Solving Workshop’s run every year since, with some AFM grads returning to Mac as Co-operators employees and volunteer judges.

When the Co-operators asked “what’s next”, Abdallah began collaborating with the Faculty’s Science Careers & Experience Centre. In working with the team, he’d found kindred spirits who were just as committed to finding new ways of bringing students and employers together.

Abdallah worked with Dan Manns, the centre’s Work-integrated Learning and Professional Experiences program manager, to launch Advancing Tomorrow’s Actuaries – a bootcamp to prep students ahead of their co-op work terms at The Co-operators. The bootcamp covered off the onboarding that traditionally happened once students started working at the company. It also gave students a competitive advantage by developing and honing their professional skills.

The success of the bootcamp led to another collaboration with the Science Careers & Experience Centre. Director Alice O’Carroll secured funding from the Business + Higher Education Roundtable with support from the Government of Canada to launch the Actuarial Career Test-Drive Program. The year-long program offered AFM students a mix of 231 work-integrated learning opportunities, including internships, case competitions and industry projects.

The Actuarial Career Test-Drive Program included $30,000 in funding to support the development and piloting of STATS 3AT3: Advancing Tomorrow’s Actuaries. The credit course – with a line-up of industry professionals delivering guest lectures – proved so popular it was offered in both the fall and winter terms.

It’s also Abdallah’s favourite gap-bridging initiative to date because it brings together the best of the problem-solving workshop, co-op bootcamp and test-drive program. The course has also made life easier for busy students – they’re now earning a credit for work that had previously been done on top of their already full course loads.

Abdallah admits there was no master plan when he joined Mac six years ago – everything’s happened organically and in direct response to employers and students asking for more. “Seeing the results for our students, our industry partners and our program makes it all worth it.”

The industry’s taken notice – in 2023, the Casualty Actuarial Society’s University Recognition Program awarded the AFM program gold level distinction. McMaster is just one of two Canadian universities to receive the honour. The program has also been recognized by the Society of Actuaries in its list of Universities and Colleges with Actuarial Programs at the Advanced Curriculum tier.

Abdallah, who was appointed director of the AFM program in January 2025, says the greatest reward is watching students repeatedly exceed expectations.

“Everything we do in our program is aimed at student empowerment. We give students challenges, we support them and then we step back and let them surprise us. They do it every time and it’s why I love what I’m doing. I couldn’t be more proud of our students and more grateful for the support of the Science Careers & Experience Centre and our industry partners.”

And he says he’ll be ready to when students and employers once again ask “what’s next?”