World Association of Cooperative Education (WACE) conference.

 

-Jim Stellar

 

I just came from the World Association of Cooperative Education (WACE) and as I post this brief note from the Vancouver airport, they are wrapping up the meeting.  Some 400+ people from dozens of countries all over the world attended to discuss this powerful form of education that, to me, represents the calibration standard for experiential education in that paid full-time co-op is both authentic and substantial.  Those words appeared in the strategic plan of Northeastern University, resulting from a task force that I co-chaired several years ago.  More recently, Rick Porter and I (who co-direct the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute on Global and Experiential Educaiton for WACE with Tim Donovan and others) wrote a grant application about creating an access pipeline from high school through college to professional schools or the job after through cooperative education. Much of the rest of the world calls this activity Work Integrated Learning and the point here is that it may have wider application than personal development leading to a great job after graduation or a good graduate or professional school.  

 

The last element of the conference I attended was a terrific address by Nancy Zimpher, past President of the University of Cincinnati (a major coop school) and new current Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.  Among many other good points, she noted that so many Americans do not achieve a college education and that is a serious issue given the National economic and general needs for education in a modern information-rich society.  This shortcoming particularly hits the lower socioeconomic classes where the college completion rates can be in the low single digits – a tragedy, in my opinion, for a country as rich as the United States.  The reason I bring her address up here is that she pointed to cooperative education and experiential education in general as a potentially powerful element to help address this problem….something to think about, particularly on this website.