Cara Krezek is the President of the Canadian Association of Cooperative Education and Work Integrated Learning, otherwise known as CEWIL. We talk about how this organization of education institutions has worked recently to expand its definition of and to promote experiential education more broadly for Canadian students. Importantly, the national governments, both conservative and liberal, recently passed legislation and committed funding of about one billion dollars to provide an experiential activity for every Canadian student. CEWIL is in the thick of it focusing on quality assurance through, in part, an accreditation operation. We also talked about Cara’s home institution of Brock University in southern Ontario where she directs the co-op career and experiential program and how Brock became the first institution in Canada to adopt university-wide some 20 definitions experiential education broadly.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
Resources Discussed in this Episode:
Music Credits: C’est La Vie by Derek Clegg
ExperiencED Season 2, Episode 1
Jim Stellar: [00:00:00] Welcome to the ExperiencED podcast. I am Jim Stellar.
[00:00:12] Mary Churchill: [00:00:12] I am Mary Churchill
[00:00:13] Adrienne Dooley: [00:00:13] And I am Adrienne Dooley.
[00:00:15] Jim Stellar: [00:00:15] We bring you this podcast on experiential education with
[00:00:18] Mary Churchill: [00:00:18] educators and thought leaders
[00:00:20] Adrienne Dooley: [00:00:20] from around the country and the world.
[00:00:23] Jim Stellar: [00:00:23] It is our pleasure to have with us today Cara Krezek. Cara is not only the director of co-op, career, and experiential education at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, she is also the president this year of CEWIL, the national co-op education and work integrated learning organization in Canada. CEWIL has more than 50 institutional members, which accounts for over 1100 individual members serving over 75,000 students. It plays an important role in supporting and accrediting experiential programs and in advocating for a recently adopted national government commitment to experiential education for all Canadian students. Cara got her degree in history from Western University, worked in sales and in the recruiting industries for a while before coming to higher education at Brock in 2006. There, she rose up to become director in June, 2015. She has the distinction of leading Brock University senate to make the university the first in the nation who adopt experiential education definitions.
[00:01:32] She was elected CEWIL president this past October, giving her a national profile. Thank you for being with us, Cara. Let's begin with you talking a little bit about CEWIL, its history and Its goals for the coming year.
[00:01:49] Cara Krezek: [00:01:49] All right, well, thanks for having me. CEWIL is a national organization, stands for cooperative education work integrated learning Canada, but that's actually a new name, newer to us.
[00:01:59]Traditionally we were, CAFCE, which many of us knew as, as CAFCE, not only just in Canada, but across the world, which was Canadian Association for Cooperative Education. So, CAFCE was established back in the 1970s, actually when a group of universities and colleges from across Canada got together and formed a group that was very passionate about cooperative education and quality factors around it and what cooperative education does. And then we morphed into CEWIL, I want to say two years ago, we had a change where we expanded beyond cooperative education. And we now we have nine different types of work integrated learning and we've been working now with a more expanded mandate, and more expanded membership and more expanded focus.
[00:02:52] And it's been a really exciting time in Canada.
[00:02:55] Jim Stellar: [00:02:55] That expansion is, something I've also lived through, and I think it's a great thing to try to pull all the forms of experiential education together. and I did know you as CAFCE.
[00:03:06] Cara Krezek: [00:03:06] Most people do know that name
[00:03:08] Jim Stellar: [00:03:08] Well, I know CEWIL too.
[00:03:09] It's a good name. So let's go to the second question, which is, something absolutely fascinating to me here in America, and that is that the Canadian government has fairly recently made a large national commitment to experiential education. So can you talk about that, how your organization and members have helped that commitment come about and what does it mean for students in Canada?
[00:03:32] Cara Krezek: [00:03:32] Yeah. This has been a really amazing time for work integrated learning in Canada and it really does have to do with, I think our roots in cooperative education, the quality of cooperative education that we've had here, from coast to coast, and, the number of programs. But then also, it's just sometimes, I will say, that you can't replicate this in some ways, but in other ways it can take best practices from it because we had some amazing work that was done out in British Columbia around work integrated learning. The matrices out there around topologies. Because the government there actually, had reached out to Ontario and asked them what they had and they realized that they needed some, they needed some topology to start tracking this.
[00:04:14] And then, the federal government was really interested, obviously more so from a future talent perspective and preparing a future workforce. and then we ended up with an association that brought together the businesses and employers, and, educational institutions.
[00:04:32] And started talking about how we better prepare our talent or our students for the world of work. And then we had these amazing institutions that were doing great things. So it was, a lot of things were happening. and then some policies came out of that, of the government. I think interestingly, it actually crossed, two different governments.
[00:04:51] So it originated with the conservative government and continued with the liberal government, which I think goes to show that it's good policy, that it was a good initiative to see how we can start to help the ecosystem and students. So first, there was a pot of money to expand work integrated learning.
[00:05:12] And then they started to put some policies around, I don't know how much detail that I should go into, but, really, the end goal was, we're about one point $1 billion altogether that has come into this ecosystem in a variety of different ways, across the Canadian landscape from the federal government and that money really has been focusing on, it's to focus helping students with offers of worker terms, placements, those types of things. And as well as a different types of innovative work integrated learning or innovative experiential. So it's been quite interesting because it's been a huge gamut of, experiences, but also how they're getting the money into the pockets of the students.
[00:05:59] Jim Stellar: [00:05:59] This is terrific. And I must say that an in time when the whole planet seems to be divided into partisan camps, one of the things that I find, really unites us, is this idea that we should do something to help our students develop the capacity, the skills perhaps, along with the education to, be able to succeed in life.
[00:06:18] And certainly, you know, that America and other places, especially in America, has the student debt issue. but I find that this is a place where the partisan politics takes a back seat to the mission. And so I frankly love the idea that we can work on this besides the fact that it's important.
[00:06:36]so let me, ask the next question, which is, about your members. what does this national commitment mean do you think for you, as head of CEWIL and for the members that are part of CEWIL?
[00:06:51]Cara Krezek: [00:06:51] I think it's meant different things. and it also, to different members and also depends on the province that they're in.
[00:06:58]but I will say, yeah, and I think it depend on the, from the federal perspective, like the money that's coming in from the federal government, this money, at first, when it came out, it was just for, students in engineering and business. And they've recently expanded to every single program. Doesn't matter what any any student is studying.
[00:07:18] I think that was really helpful for our members because we have people that are experts or practitioners that work with students from all populations. there's components of the funding that also ties into students with disabilities, students from rural areas, women in underrepresented areas. So it really has allowed our membership to also reach pockets of students that we wouldn't necessarily. be able to reach or that employers wouldn't necessarily be thinking of. So it's also really expanded, I think who people are hiring and, also just making sure that we're looking at a diverse population from what they're studying to who they are. So that's been really, I think, invigorating for our members.
[00:08:03] A lot of work being done around making sure we reach those populations. And then also research. this has even, elevated the conversation, not just about the money that the federal government has. But on this, there's a lot of provinces that have put money into, experiential or work integrated learning depends what they call it.
[00:08:22] All of our members, it depends what province you're in, but to some degree or not, we're just trying to keep up with all of this happening. I used to say in Ontario, which is the province that I'm in, that it was kind of like standing in one of those money grabbing booths ... what do you call it?
[00:08:39] Jim Stellar: [00:08:39] Air booths. That's hysterical. That's a great analogy.
[00:08:39] Yes. Thank you. Where you were trying to grab the money as fast as you can.
[00:08:44] Cara Krezek: [00:08:44] So, but what it meant is that we had to put policies in place. We had to make sure we have the right tools, the technology. There's a lot of work that's being done in Canada around technology.
[00:08:53] How to support this? How do we make sure that we don't create blockages in the system? How do we make sure that there's equity? There's a lot of conversation over all of this. What this has done is, for CEWIL though, it's helping us. We're making toolkits for employers, toolkits for our members.
[00:09:13] We're sharing best practices. We've got hubs around experiential. We're getting students on panels talking about how this is affecting their lives. So, when I say ecosystem, I don't mean it as a buzzword. It truly is taking an entire country to not only figure this out, but how do we work together? How do we make sure that there is a mandate that we want to continue to lead in? And how do we protect quality from the institutional perspective? And that's something that we hold very true. Cooperative education is accredited in Canada. We are the only accrediting body. There are quality indicators, and we've created a quality improvement council, which has two streams: one the accreditation stream, and the other is a quality assurance stream for those nine types of WEL.
[00:09:59] So that when we are calling things WEL, that they truly are work integrated learning. So it's hard to pinpoint one thing cause there's just so many things.
[00:10:10] Jim Stellar: [00:10:10] So I was going to ask you about the balance between the federal government and the provinces, but I think you've really addressed it.
[00:10:16] So let me switch the question, something of a surprise to you and ask you to comment on the issue of excellence and quality. Because one of the resistance sometimes that one gets, I certainly experienced that in administration, is from the perspective of academic excellence. And so I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how the classical view of academic excellence is assisted by or helped by these kinds of quality assurances that you, as an organization have led that the Canadian government, if I understand it correctly, seems to be insisting on.
[00:10:48] Cara Krezek: [00:10:48] Right. So I think that this goes back to our longstanding history with cooperative education and having those accreditation components, and that has kind of led our way and helped us to ensure that as we go down the path of quantity that quality doesn't suffer. I can speak from my experience at Brock as well, where I work, in the capacity as director, that i t really is a support and making sure that all of those quality components are there.
[00:11:18] I'm not sure if you've come across Dr. Norah McRae's work around quality framework.
[00:11:24] Yeah. So Norah is, I would say, one of the leading thought leaders in Canada and across the world and has done a lot to help us with quality frameworks. And that's really something that, when I talked about the hubs and those pieces of toolkits, we also have faculty toolkits and toolkits that will help institutions because the quality component is very, very important to us and making sure.
[00:11:53]I think the one thing that we've realized through co-op and those accreditations, is the reason quality matters is that it does end up in the student experience. And it also ends up in the employer experience. So if we don't have a very rigorous quality or intent behind what we're doing, then it could hurt the, outcomes in a lot of different ways.
[00:12:14] So, that is really what we have kept our eye on. And Norah has been key as well as Nancy Johnson and a lot of the leaders in this space to help keep that eye on quality.
[00:12:27] Jim Stellar: [00:12:27] You know, I have watched Norah and Nancy . You may be aware that Nancy as incoming president of the World Association of Cooperative Education was a podcast interview last season and she was terrific. But I also think, that CAFCE and now CEWIL helped interact with Norah and Nancy and others - you - to sort of provide a nice synergy, to develop quality and the focus on quality.
[00:12:52] I started with the focus on the adoption of work integrated learning programs by the faculty, but you took it appropriately to the students since the employers, because the outcomes really matter and the outcomes have to be high quality for all of the parties involved. I do think that if you're doing adoption, and development, it's important that the faculty see that quality too.
[00:13:13] That's a very big interaction with the students and a big part of the university's expenditures, the faculty salaries. So I think this is really terrific if you want to comment on that, but I want to drop to the personal level a little bit. Do you want to say anything about what I just said?
[00:13:27] Cara Krezek: [00:13:27] Well, I just would say that one of the reasons why we've really held strong on the quality is that we want this to be sustainable.
[00:13:36] And the outcome of what all of this that we've done in Canada has. We don't want this to be just a moment in time. We want it to be sustainable. And quality does allow for sustainability.
[00:13:48] Jim Stellar: [00:13:48] It does and so does the wonderful synergy of a national commitment with a robust organization that drills all the way down to the institutions.
[00:13:56] And finally, of course, to the students, the employers, and the faculty. So I want to switch if it's okay, and talk a little bit about you because you have an important role at Brock University, which of course is a member of CEWIL. And can you talk a little bit about that and how you as a director of the co-op program at Brock see yourself fitting with you as president of CEWIL or maybe just the two organizations.
[00:14:23] Cara : [00:14:23] Yeah. So I came into my role here in 2015 and actually, I was given a mandate by our provost before that and looked at what was happening in this ecosystem, and said, what would you do? And I created career and experiential education, which out of time was a little bit different because not everybody was putting this under the same umbrella.
[00:14:50] And, really what we had done at Brock was, with some of the best practices that were happening across both your country and my country. So across Canada, in the U S and took a look and said, not only what's happening, but where is this going? So at Brock, what we did was we brought together cooperative education, which was very defined career education, which was being called career services across the institution and really turning to an educative model and then also experiential education, which was being done in pockets around the institution. And Brock has a longstanding history of service learning. And, it was a really great opportunity to take this micro version of what we could do to expand experiential, bringing co-op as the most robust form of experiential, and then also make sure that career education was core to everything that was happening, that students understood the experiences that they were having, being able to translate those experiences into skills and being able to couple that with employers and opportunities for their future. So, we started this work about five years ago now. And, 100% of our programs at Brock have experiential in them in a variety of ways and it was a huge success for us, but a lot of intent put behind it.
[00:16:06] And when I saw what we were doing, when I came into this role, I hadn't been as involved with CAFCE when it was CAFCE and I came into this role and looked at what CEWIL was doing and see a very big alignment between what we were trying to do on the institutional level. I think what a lot of institutions now across Canada have done is tried to expand and see how to get a variety of experiences for students as they go through their academic careers, how they translate those experiences and how that is meaningful for them.
[00:16:37] So there was a really great alignment. We had, at Brock, gone through some things. I would always call it a micro version. I saw some of the potholes and landmines or great success stories that we could build from. So, it's been great because it's helped me as president in this role know that, for example, language matters.
[00:16:58] So things that we say as a community that make sure that all types of people will feel included, especially when you're coming from a very strong cooperative education background. and making sure that we have that the outcomes around, what this means for the student, what this means for the employer.
[00:17:14] So it was a nice alignment. And, then, also now as my role in CEWIL, we'll bring those learnings back to Brock and how we can continue to develop.
[00:17:24] Jim Stellar: [00:17:24] Well, that's terrific. And I love the way you phrased it. I'm going to ask a question now that goes back to my checkered history: 22 years at Northeastern University, a co-op school, 10 of them as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, during which time we adopted as part of our core curriculum, experiential education. You probably would have called it WIL now, but it was what you said about co-op being the best practice, but all the others having to be at the table as well. So, I want to ask you about how you got the Brock senate to be the first institution in Canada, if I've got this right, to vote for these kinds of implementations, the standards, the opportunities that you put out for the students. and how did you do that?
[00:18:10] How'd you get the senate to do that?
[00:18:13] Cara Krezek: [00:18:13] Well, it was a little bit of planned happenstance is what I would say.
[00:18:19]Well, when I came into the role, the work that was done around the WIL matrix was what kind of our starting ground.
[00:18:28] So when I came into this role. one of the first things I did was, we hired an associate director of experiential education. and then we also had a faculty associate of service learning, which then we, expanded into a faculty associate of experiential. And, Dr. Madelyn Law, who is now our associate vice provost of teaching learning. But at the time really was, that's the faculty side and was the faculty voice. And then we had this operational side. The other thing that we did was we embedded experiential education coordinators in each faculty. So this was part of the whole system. But one of the things that I looked at is - I think that typology matters - and so what we found was things would come across my desk and they would say, well, we want this new co-op program. But I would look at the indicators and say, this isn't a co-op program, this is a practicum. So what we realized quickly was that by having the definitions that were fixed definitions, actually on my table, I was able to say.
[00:19:32] In order to keep the quality of co-op or keep the quality of service learning or keep the quality of a particular program, we have to make sure we're calling it the right thing. So between myself, Sandy Howe, who is the associate director of, experiential education and Dr. Madelyn Law, we came up with a process to work this through the entire institution. So it took about a year. It was Madelyn's process. It was a reverse Delphi process, to, gather consensus building. We went through, I think 12 different committees and finally ended up at Senate as an FYI, and a Senator at Senate put up their hand and said, if this isn't something we vote on as an institution, that we're not doing our job.
[00:20:14] So we just kind of looked at each other and then they voted it in. So we have 20 types of experiential education. They're not all work integrated learning, but 20 types of experiential education that had been voted by our senate and we were doing mental cartwheels down the hallway.
[00:20:33] Jim Stellar: [00:20:33] Well, that's a great story and I love the fact that it had a little serendipity at the end. But I think you guys get some credit for preparation and for being inclusive and spending all the time in those meetings. Frankly, what I want to do is to pretend I'm a New York Times reporter and come up and write an article on how you did it.
[00:20:51] Because I think there's a lot of interesting things in there for universities in general about how to incorporate something that's so important like this into other institutions and do it well.
[00:21:04] Cara Krezek: [00:21:04] It's funny you say that. We just had a reporter here last week and there should be an article coming out shortly in University Affairs magazine, regarding how we pulled it all together.
[00:21:18] So, yes, we will pass that along.
[00:21:20] Jim Stellar: [00:21:20] Yeah. Do pass that along because in the podcast, we like to have some links, and we have some already, as you know, from the preparation we've done. But that would be great to have that. So is there anything else you want to add? We've been at this about 20 minutes or so.
[00:21:35]Did we cover most of it? Do you think?
[00:21:39] Cara Krezek: [00:21:39] I think so. I think that, perhaps, you know, what we're looking to, going into the future and what we're looking at within CEWIL now it's interesting because this has been the efforts of so many people and a very long history of brilliant, passionate volunteers.
[00:22:00] We are a volunteer run association. and people do this on the side of their desk. The work that our past presidents have done, Kristine Dawson, and Anne Fannin, and I mentioned Norah McRae. There are so many people that have been part of this. And I think the other thing is now that we're looking to the future, our incoming president is Matt Rempel and we're having lots of conversations around data. And we have a database actually that we collect the number of co-ops across the country, but we're trying to expand that into work, integrated learning. And there's even conversation of how do we collect all of this and continuing to be this advisory to a portion to the government as they continue to evolve. There's conversation on innovative work integrated learning, these hubs and how we have these tool kits. So I mostly want to just point out that this success that we've seen in Canada has been built on the backs of very passionate people and very passionate people in the government.
[00:23:04] Our government colleagues are amazing. So, I wanted to kind of give them a bit of a shout out because we work really closely with a lot of, even our technology providers in Canada are very passionate about this. So, from that to data collection to, we also have our national conference coming up in St John in July, so that's kind of our time to celebrate all together as a country.
[00:23:28] Jim Stellar: [00:23:28] Well, it's a good place to be and a good time to be there unless you need to ski. Maybe then this July wouldn't work for skiing. Well, thank you, Cara, for spending a little time with us. It's a fascinating conversation. I think what's happened in Canada, is a very important model for the planet, frankly, and I hope that your neighbor to the South can learn a lot of lessons from the way you've described working together, what you've done.
[00:23:51] And I love the fact that you ended on data because I think having the data makes its case and it will make it sustainable. So I really appreciate your time with us. Thank you so much and we'll look forward to getting this thing up on our podcast.
[00:24:05] Cara Krezek: [00:24:05] Thank you.
[00:24:06] Mary Churchill: [00:24:06] Thank you for listening. We hope you will come back soon for the next installation of ExperiencED
[00:24:12] Adrienne Dooley: [00:24:12] as we continue to talk about the neuroscience and sociology of enhancing higher education
[00:24:18] Jim Stellar: [00:24:18] by combining direct experience with classical academic learning.