Dalhousie University and The Next 36 have struck a partnership that will help more Dal undergrads attend one of the most demanding startup programs in the country.

Dal President Richard Florizone and Jon French, Director of Marketing and Communications at The Next 36, announced the partnership at a reception at the president’s residence on Wednesday.  

Though Dal students have already gone through the program, the partnership means Dalhousie will now become one of a handful of educational institutions that have a formal relationship with The Next 36. The university will give financial assistance to students from the university accepted into the program.

Based in Toronto, The Next 36 takes in 36 undergraduate students each summer and puts them through a rigorous program of entrepreneurship and academics. It’s known to be tough, which is an attractive quality given that many accelerators are criticized for handling their charges with kid gloves.

“What we are is a people accelerator,” said French. “We’re a training ground for the top undergraduate students in the country.”

The curriculum includes classroom sessions with some of the leading academics in the world in startup education, and interaction with a network of about 300 leading Canadian corporations.

The students that have gone through The Next 36 include Stephen Lake, the co-founder of Waterloo-based Thalmic Labs, whose smart armband allows users to control devises through their gestures. It’s now one of the most talked-about startups in the country,  given that it recently raised $15 million in venture capital.

The Atlantic Canadian alumni include: Cam McDonald and Daniel Bartek, Co-Founders of Sage Mixology, whose dual-chamber bottle that stores alcohol and juice separately but pours as a mixed drink; Zack Levy, founder of First Exit Media, a web and app development startup in Toronto; and Mitchell Lesbriel, founder of home brewer businesses FastRack and FastFerment.

The other universities that have a relationship with The Next 36 are Queen’s, Simon Fraser, Waterloo, McGill, Ryerson, UBC, University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario.

Applications for next summer’s cohort of The Next 36 are now being taken and will be open until Oct. 27. They are open mainly to third and fourth year university students.