Forbes recognizes value of the
Cincinnati Co-op

Leadership at UC understand the value of co-op.

"As the global founder of cooperative education — established 116 years ago — UC provides thousands of students valuable real-world education through co-op experiences — where students rotate semesters — on-the-job and in the classroom,” UC President Neville Pinto explained in his State of the University Address earlier this year.

“We operate one of the nation’s largest co-op programs, which is consistently ranked in the top 5 nationwide by U.S. News. Annually we typically make 3,500 co-op placements with more than 2,000 employers in 46 states and 22 countries. We continue to expand the co-op model to all students, with the goal of providing experience-based learning opportunities to all students who desire these.”

Isaac Smitherman knows first-hand how valuable co-op can be — he’s currently finishing his fifth co-op experience. The fifth-year environmental engineering student has plans for law school and hopes to someday practice environmental law.

Smitherman, undergraduate student body president at UC, has completed co-ops at Cincinnati law firm Keating Muething & Klekamp PLL, Duke Energy and through UC’s leadership program and its experiential explorations program designed to assist students when COVID-19 limited co-op experiences nationally.