Institute for Leaders & Emerging Leaders in Cooperative and Work-Integrated Learning

WACE is pleased to announce that we will be holding this Institute in the days leading up to the 2025 Conference. This follows on from a successful Institute held at the University of Waterloo before the last WACE World Conference.

Whether you're an established or an emerging cooperative and work-integrated learning leader eager to enhance your skills and network with other professionals, this Institute is for you! Over two half days experienced WIL professionals will facilitate participants from across the globe to explore leadership, current practice and challenges in the quality WIL context. Through this Institute you will:  

• Explore innovative leadership strategies for the fast-evolving WIL landscape
• Participate in interactive discussions to tackle real challenges in your context
• Be inspired and empowered with actionable insights to implement in your organization
• Expand your global Co-op and WIL network
• Be eligible for a University of Waterloo/WACE Certificate of completion

Institute Overview 

The overall goal of this Leadership Institute is to focus on two key leadership challenges in WIL: Advocacy and getting buy-in. Participants will have the opportunity to learn, exchange ideas, articulate their strategy, receive feedback and build a community of practice.

Leadership Institute learning objectives in which participants will:

• Be introduced to the Leadership in WIL framework developed in Australia (2014) (Monday afternoon)
• Identify a particular leadership challenge they are facing (Monday afternoon)
• Apply two components of the Leadership framework (eg advocacy and buy in) to their challenge (Monday afternoon)
• Discuss WIL leadership challenges with others (Monday night over dinner)
• Develop a 3MT style presentation (one slide) which should follow these guidelines: (Monday night/Tuesday morning)
• Presentation provided clear motivation, background, and significance to the challenge  
• Presentation clearly described the  advocacy and buy in strategy to be used to tackle the challenge 
• Presentation clearly described how the outcomes and impact of the strategy is to be measured 
• Present their slide to a panel of Global WIL leaders for feedback on the proposed strategy (Tuesday morning)

Registration for the Leaders Institute closes on April 16, 2025.

Host