UC hosts 21st WACE World Conference

The World Association for Cooperative Education comes to the University of Cincinnati, the birthplace of cooperative education, this summer. UC will host the 21st biennial WACE World Conference Aug. 5-7, 2019, with preconference events Aug. 3-4.

The conference will bring together academics, researchers and practitioners from around the world. WACE embraces a wide definition of work-integrated learning, including co-ops, internships, service learning, undergraduate research and broader issues of professional education.

The conference showcases one of UC's unique strengths for a world audience.

“We’re very excited about bringing the conference here and bringing it back to the birthplace of co-op,” says Todd Foley, director for engineering and technology initiatives in UC’s Division of Experience-Based Learning and Career Education. Foley is one of the conference organizers. “It’s a great tie-in for us with our bicentennial and 200 years of celebrating the impact the university has had on education worldwide.”

The co-op model of work-integrated learning in universities was born at the University of Cincinnati. Herman Schneider, the first dean of UC's College of Engineering (now the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, CEAS) placed the first students under this “Cincinnati plan” into local industries in 1906. The rest is co-op history.

Today, UC students earn in the neighborhood of $66 million through co-ops with 1800 employers worldwide, and they engage in a broad spectrum of other work-integrated learning experiences as part of their educational programs.

UC’s Division of Experience-Based Learning and Career Education serves as the hub for these activities. The division manages the university’s two largest co-op programs, in CEAS and the College of Design, Architecture, Art, & Planning. It also manages the program for Information Technology students in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services. Students in those programs alternate mandatory semesters of full-time work with semesters of classes. Most complete three to five rounds of co-op and graduate with substantial experience equivalent to entry-level professional work in their chosen fields.

Co-op is not mandatory in most other programs, but work-integrated learning is an essential part of curricula across UC. Professional programs in business, medicine and healthcare, the sciences, education, law and the performing arts use co-op, internships and field work to prepare students for highly specialized careers. UC’s regional campuses also use work-integrated learning to ready students to enter the global workforce. And an increasing number of courses in a variety of disciplines incorporates service learning projects with nonprofit organizations.

Foley hopes that academics and practitioners from all of these areas will become involved in the WACE conference. “Any time that you’re taking part of your academic programs and allowing students to experience the things that they’re learning in the classroom out in the world—which is experiential learning—that’s what we’re talking about. Folks that don’t necessarily see themselves as [involved in] co-op or internship but that are doing this kind of work, I think it would be great to reach them and have them be part of this experience.”

UC President Neville G. Pinto will open the conference, which is expected to draw some 500 delegates from around the world.

Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO, will offer the keynote address. June Huynh of SAP America and Adrienne Trimble of the National Minority Supplier Development Council will also speak at plenary sessions.

Former UC President Nancy Zimpher will host a Presidents' Summit for university leaders on the future of work integrated learning. This event will take place in the 1819 Innovation Hub, UC’s newly opened anchor for Cincinnati’s innovation corridor, where UC faculty and students collaborate with industry and business leaders.

Interchange 2019 will run concurrently at the 1819 Hub. Senior executives, mostly in human resources, from companies around the world will meet by invitation to strategize about the future of work, particularly how industry connects with academia.

UC’s Director of Service Learning Michael Sharp will lead a pre-conference event on Saturday, August 4, a participatory event that focuses on the experiences of people in poverty in the US. UC faculty will then lead a panel on the event and on how to incorporate service learning into curricula.

UC is working to make the co-op experience available to all interested undergraduates, no matter what their program of study is. Co-op 2.0 is one of the pathways in UC’s Next Lives Here strategic direction designed to lead the university into a new era of impact, inclusion and innovation.

“Co-op 2.0 is a term that President Pinto has been using. His idea is that we should provide meaningful, relevant working experience for all students. We want to build on our signature programs and we want to create flexible pathways for our students,” explains Hang (Helen) Chen, associate provost and executive director of the Experience-Based Learning and Career Education division.

One example of her office’s innovative programming is UC Forward, an initiative that pulls together transdisciplinary teams of students and faculty with outside experts to solve real-world problems. Students from all majors and disciplines may apply. The teams address problems like community health, urban futures or environmental impact that require complex approaches.

This sense of cross-disciplinary synergy is also what Chen looks forward to at the WACE World Conference. “This conference is quite unique, because a lot of conferences are very academic-focused, talking about papers, talking about research. This conference is very integrated from the industry perspective, from the higher education system, and from practitioners. It’s a very unique mix of participants.

“I think UC is really pioneering a lot of space in co-op and in work-integrated learning, and we need to really showcase our success stories and just engage all our international partners,” says Chen. “I think it’s time to celebrate."