Thompson Rivers University (commonly referred to as TRU) is a public teaching and research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and vocational training. Its main campus is in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and its name comes from the two rivers which converge in Kamloops, the North Thompson and South Thompson. The university has a satellite campus in Williams Lake, BC and a distance education division called TRU-Open Learning. It also has several international partnerships through its TRU World division. TRU is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) at the associate, baccalaureate and master's degree levels. TRU offers 140 on-campus programs, including trades apprenticeships, vocational certificates and diplomas, bachelor's and master's degrees and law, and approximately 60 online or distance programs through the Open Learning division. History Kamloops, the largest population centre in the regions now known as the Thompson-Okanagan and Cariboo-Chilcotin, was chosen by the BC provincial government as the site for one of several new two-year regional colleges to provide academic and vocational programs outside of the largest cities of Vancouver and Victoria served by the province's three universities. The province founded Cariboo College in 1970. Classes for 367 full-time and 200 part-time students began in September, 1970, held in buildings at the Kamloops Indian Residential School for that first year. Cariboo College offered two-year academic programs that enabled students to transfer to UBC and the recently established Simon Fraser University (SFU) and University of Victoria (UVic). The college also began vocational training programs to serve the needs of forestry, mining and other industries in the region. Cariboo's vocational division, now known as the School of Trades and Technology, was established following the move of the college to the new campus built along McGill Road in September 1971. In May 1972, BC Premier W.A.C. Bennett officially opened the vocational wing. By provincial mandate, Cariboo amalgamated with the Kamloops Vocational School in 1974, providing training for occupations in demand in Kamloops and the region. In 1978, Cariboo College was officially designated as a college with corporate status under the British Columbia Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, gaining its own board independent of the school boards that had previously governed it. The Act also created the Open Learning Institute (OLI), which would later become TRU Open Learning, to provide academic programs and vocational training by distance throughout the province to people who were unable to access post-secondary