Social Sciences launches five new co-op programs for students starting in Fall 2025

The Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster is pleased to announce that the following new Co-op program options will be available to students entering Level I in Fall 2025 when they select their upper-year programs at the conclusion of first year in Spring 2026: 

• Honours Anthropology Co-op 

• Honours Environment & Society Co-op 

• Honours Aging and Society Co-op 

• Honours Health and Society Co-op 

• Honours Sociology Co-op 

Building on a Foundation of Success 

These five new programs will join the three original pilot programs which were launched in the Faculty of Social Sciences in Spring 2023: 

• Honours Economics Co-op 

• Honours Political Science Co-op 

• Honours Work & Labour Studies Co-op 

All of these co-op program options represent a variant of the standard Honours B.A. programs, which will continue to be available in their standard non-co-op form. 

Co-op program options allow students to add three paid, full-time work experiences into the program requirements of their degree of study. This means that upon graduation, the student’s transcript and graduation parchment will specially emphasize completion of a co-op program. In addition, the skills and experiences that co-op graduates develop along their way prepares them to confidently face the post-undergraduate world of work or study. 

Continuing a Tradition of Experiential Learning 

Co-op is one of many types of ‘experiential’ learning in the Social Sciences, which values hands-on and applied experiences linked to more academic dimensions of study. Students in programs that do not currently have co-op program options can also benefit from applied, community-engaged, and work-based learning. 

For example: 

• Honours Social Work students complete a field placement, in keeping with the professional standards of Social Work education; 

• Honours Social Psychology courses increasingly involve community-engaged research projects, where instructors and students partner with community partners in hands-on collaborations; 

• Honours Society, Culture and Religion courses often include field trips, site visits, and community engagement experiences to move learning beyond the traditional classroom; 

• Honours Indigenous Studies courses regularly emphasize land-based learning, as well as other active and community-engaged strategies that immerse students in ways of knowing that take them outside of the classroom; and 

• Honours Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour students frequently pursue Undergraduate Student Research Awards, Student Partners grants, and other research-focused experiences. 

In addition, students in all of the programs above are eligible to pursue Social Sciences Internships, where paid part-time or full-time work experiences are recognized formally as a course on the student transcript. Internships differ from co-op in that internships are elective and not required for graduation from the student’s degree program, and not built into the learning plan with the same level of guidance, peer learning, and staff support as co-op programs. Yet the internship option remains highly valued as a flexible way of pursuing formal employment-based work-integrated learning. The path to internship success starts with taking the prerequisite course, Social Sciences 2EL3: Career Preparation in the Social Sciences. 

Getting Engaged and Getting Experience 

Employers looking to hire a co-op student for Summer 2025 or Winter 2026 can potentially benefit from the Ontario Co-op Tax Credit and can review our Employer Resources page for more information. Incoming and prospective students can find more information about co-op on the Social Sciences Co-op page, and can find more information on the Future Students page area.