U of T gave Roshawn Jamasi valuable business skills, ignited his passion for science and provided him with the opportunity to champion inclusivity.
As a member of Innis College, Jamasi is graduating with an honours bachelor of commerce with a specialization in management through a joint program between the Rotman School of Management and the Faculty of Arts & Science.
“Something I loved broadly about the program was the quality of professors,” he says. “It was clear how knowledgeable they were in the depth and breadth of their experiences. The wisdom they shared was incredible.”
Jamasi also loved the program’s flexibility, allowing him to take courses in psychology, immunity and infection, human physiology, environmental human health, chemistry, human biology, and brain pharmacology.
“I was able to really develop my skills outside of commerce which helped me find my true passion for science, while teaching me key transferable skills through my program courses.”
Beyond his classroom work, Jamasi was committed to connecting with his classmates, other students and with the city.
For example, he was instrumental in establishing an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team within his program over his first and second year.
“They never had an EDI committee with a specific EDI focus,” he says. “Here I was hiring other students and having no foundation of what initiatives we were going to carry out. It was all so brand new.”
One of those projects enabled international students to better connect digitally with the rest of the program during the COVID pandemic.
“I was the director of this team during 2021-2022 when school kept changing from hybrid to in-person to online,” he says. “There was a group of students in our program from China. At the time Instagram was blocked in China, so was Facebook.”
The problem? Many of the program’s clubs and associations primarily used Instagram and Facebook to promote their events and activities. “These students were missing out on opportunities to network and other resources,” says Jamasi.
He and his team approached all of the program’s groups and helped them share their information on the social media platform WeChat, providing access to students from China and other countries.
“This way, they had another way of getting all of the information, resources and potential job opportunities. That was something we were proud of.”
Wanting to connect students further, Jamasi and his team created a way to show the human side of his classmates.
“We find our program is very competitive,” he says. “Our surveys were showing a lack of connectedness between students, and a lack of appreciation of each other and the diversity we bring.”
To offset this, he and his team created an Instagram page called peopleofRC that features students sharing interesting facts and experiences outside of academics.
“There’s nothing about personal achievements, nothing about accolades, it’s just sharing something unique about yourself that we can all celebrate,” says Jamasi.
Jamasi’s time at U of T also ignited his passion for teaching.
I fell in love with teaching tutorials, working with first-years and helping with lectures. That was one of the more standout experiences I had as an undergrad.
In his second year he reached out to Cindy Blois, an assistant professor, teaching stream with the Department of Mathematics.
“She took a chance on me to help teach a calculus course,” says Jamasi. “I fell in love with teaching tutorials, working with first-years and helping with lectures. That was one of the more standout experiences I had as an undergrad,” he says.
That passion earned him the department’s Daniel B. DeLury Teaching Assistant Award in 2023.
While learning about commerce and science and making efforts to better the university experience of other students, Jamasi also learned a lesson in having to put health and well-being ahead of studies, having to contend with health challenges.
“I've had heart disease since I was 13, and I’ve learned how to manage it,” he says. “It just became part of my life.”
In his first year, he was getting stellar grades, but he pushed himself a little too hard and it took a toll on his health.
“I would wake up at 4:30 a.m. and study for eight hours straight. I'd be getting four or five hours of sleep every night. My grades were excellent but by the exam period of second semester, my body finally quit on me as I incurred a new stomach condition."
This pain paired with managing his heart disease forced Jamasi to step back and better manage his course load and his busy schedule for his remaining years. He’s grateful to Innis College for being supportive and giving him the accommodations he needed to continue his studies.
“At the end of the day, a student can’t perform at their best if they're not in their best health,” he says.
Feeling healthier, Jamasi extended his desire to support others beyond campus, volunteering at nearby Toronto hospitals for much of his degree.
“I began volunteering at Toronto Western Hospital when I was 16,” he says. “That's always been a nice way for me to take my mind off school and focus on other people. I would visit patients who were staying overnight and keep them company and help them feel like they're not alone. That was always really satisfying for me. I learned a lot about so many different types of people.
“Some days I'd have class in the morning. After that, I'd run to the hospital because it's so close and do some volunteering and come back to classes in the evening. Those were some of the best days.”
Jamasi is now excited about the days ahead, having applied to medical school though he hasn’t decided which field of medicine interests him most.
“But I'm happy that I did this Rotman degree because it teaches you so many soft skills, like how to communicate, how to present yourself, how to present in a group of people, how to work in a team and lead a team,” he says.
“All those skills transfer to every aspect of business, whether you're in medicine, healthcare, or administration. I'm just so happy that I got to go to U of T and experience everything I did.”