Stephen Goossen’s co-op placement was, without a doubt, an important milestone in his university education. Most importantly, it also brought him one step closer to achieving a long-held dream.
“I’m pursuing a degree at Redeemer because I wanted to be challenged academically and spiritually,” he says. “I liked the idea of working in business, but my end goal is to be an airline pilot. During my placement, I worked a lot of overtime because I was so emotionally invested.”
Goossen worked at Jetport, a private aircraft management, charter and maintenance company in Mount Hope, Ontario. As the commercial support analyst, he assisted each department and thus relied on nearly every facet of his Redeemer business education.
“Previously, Jetport operated mainly on word-of-mouth marketing, so I ended up creating the majority of its first social media accounts,” he explains. “I implemented almost everything I learned in my digital marketing course at Redeemer, such as search engine optimization and which types of content best suit each social media platform. My marketing communications course came into play when I worked on the social media marketing plan with Jetport’s president and commercial director. I also used a bit of accounting when I worked with the accountants on aircraft annual reports.”
The wide-ranging facets of Goossen’s experience were largely due to Jetport being a smaller company. Although grateful, he didn’t expect to take on so many important tasks, notably when he was put in charge of finding a new customer relationship management (CRM) system.
I’m pursuing a degree at Redeemer because I wanted to be challenged academically and spiritually.
“From the time I started until I left, I researched and tried out different CRM systems. I presented the best one to my bosses, and they’re using it now. With very little experience in the industry, I was surprised to be given so much trust and responsibility. It means a lot.”
With his second co-op term coming up this summer, Goossen is hoping to secure another position at an airline. While he didn’t necessarily need to study at Redeemer to pursue his goals, he remains glad that he is doing so.
“If I can’t fly because of medical issues or for any other reason, I’ll have my business degree to fall back on. Aside from that, the opportunity at Jetport allowed me to gain knowledge and build connections that have set me up for the next couple of years in what I hope will be my career.”