Ted Rogers Co-op program surpasses target of 1,500 students

TRSM’s commitment to experiential learning hit a landmark this Fall with the Ted Rogers Co-op program surpassing their target of 1,500 students enrolled in the program. 

“To give you some perspective, our intake in 2016, the year before we took over administering the program, was just 185 students,” says Dr. Al Goss, Associate Dean, Students. The growth rate for the Ted Rogers Co-op program has been more than 300% over the past three years.  The program welcomed 616 new co-op students this semester, breaking the 1,500-student target set by TRSM’s previous Associate Dean, Academic Undergraduate Programs (Dr. Elizabeth Evans) in 2015. 

This significant achievement is thanks to the hard work and dedication of the entire Ted Rogers Co-op team, and the generous $2 million gift by Bill and Catharina Birchall and the additional $250,000 gift by Barrick Gold to expand co-operative education at TRSM. 

"Moving co-operative education into the Business Career Hub improved the student experience and was instrumental in rapidly growing the program,” says Graham Sogawa, Executive Director, Business Career Hub.  

“The synergies created by providing both career services and co-operative education in one office allowed the department to engage industry and work closely with students to promote co-op,” explains Sogawa. “Thanks to the support of the Birchall family and Barrick Corporation, the team created an industry-leading preparatory program that ensures our students have the skills demanded by industry."

The Ted Rogers Co-op program is designed to give students valuable work experience – 16+ months’ worth – while completing their studies, enabling them to graduate with an edge. It also offers students the opportunity to make important connections through networking and apply their classroom knowledge to the work environment.

Through the program, students have the opportunity to work at leading organizations in sectors ranging from healthcare and finance to property development and the public service, giving them the ability to explore different career paths. Job placement rates are close to 100%, and students earn an average $36,000 over the course of their work terms. What’s more is that nine out of ten students have a full-time job offer before they graduate.    

In order to serve TRSM’s growing co-op cohort, the Peer Mentorship program is being expanded.  This program will now be collaborating with the Leadership Centre, who will match industry mentors with graduating co-op peer mentors, in addition to offering coaching/mentorship training for new peer mentors.

"The co-op program at TRSM is a strong community where students are supported on many levels - through one-on-one coaching with their coordinator and faculty advisor, to engaging in dedicated programming in the form of orientation sessions, lumina assessments, and bootcamp programming, to seeking advice and encouraging words from their peer mentors, senior co-op students who wish to give back," says Donna Muirhead, Director, Co-operative Education and Careers.