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Stephanie Waterman, a CIHE faculty member, was invited to present her research at both the American College Personnel Association’s conference in Montreal, as well as the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators’ pre-conference in Indianapolis.

Dr. Waterman’s presentations focused on Aboriginal/First Nations/Indigenous/Native access, equity, and inclusion in postsecondary education, as well as Indigenizing programs for student success.

CIHE and Georgian College will be co-hosting an event promoting college-university partnerships and measurements of their success. The event will be taking place on May 19, 2016, 8:30am to 2:30pm at Georgian College in Barrie, ON.

The panelists will discuss policy and governance, including institutional realities, challenges and potential. The keynote speakers will include Sheldon Levy, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, and Michael Skolnik, Professor Emeritus and CIHE member at OISE.

PhD student, Emma Sabzalieva, has been recognized by The Guardian for her insightful blog, which focuses on education, society and politics in Central Asia. The link to her blog can be found here: https://sabzalieva.wordpress.com/

The Guardian has labelled Emma’s blog as one of the best social media accounts for academics to follow. Their list includes all sorts of irreverent, funny and informative accounts that are worth scholarly attention. The link to The Guardian’s article can be found here: http://goo.gl/bihp69

Merli Tamtik will be presenting her recent study entitled, Coordination within Fragmentation – Insights on Governing Canada’s Innovation Agenda.

Dr. Merli Tamtik is a graduate of OISE, higher education program (2014), a SSHRC postdoctoral researcher at York University (2015) and recently appointed Assistant Professor of Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology, University of Manitoba (2016). The presentation summarizes findings of her 2-year postdoctoral research project that analyzes policy coordination issues in Canadian innovation policy.

The specific details of the event, including an abstract of her presentation can be found on CIHE’s Events page.

Reform VET ‘in stages’

Below is a recent article in The Australian, which quotes both Gavin Moodie and Leesa Wheelahan in regards to vocational education and training (VET) outcomes:

Dr Moodie said the opposition’s promise of a comprehensive VET review – the first in two generations – was a welcome development. But he said an incoming government would be “well advised” to roll out the results in three stages.

The first would encompass pre-existing commitments and any urgent changes. The second would address review recommendations on financing, quality and governance, while the third would look at long-term changes to curriculum, pedagogy and fundamental quality and governance settings.

“Since this would be the first comprehensive public review of vocational education since (the Kangan report in) 1974, it (should) be given the time and scope to review all the developments since (then).”

Opposition VET spokeswoman Sharon Bird, who last week promised the review if Labor won the forthcoming election, said VET was struggling with increasing costs and declining quality. “While schools and universities have had full reviews into funding with the Gonski and Bradley reviews, the VET sector has been left behind.”

University of Toronto researcher Leesa Wheelahan said the review should develop a “mission” for TAFE. She said that when the Kangan committee had set up the national TAFE system, it had been unable to formulate an enduring definition of technical or further education.

The Australian Council for Private Education and Training said a detailed examination of VET was warranted. Chief Rod Camm said the review should look beyond quality concerns.

Which students are most likely to drop out of university? Students aged 25 and over are twice as likely to drop out than students aged 19 and under, according to CIHE’s Gavin Moodie. Through a study of Australian university students, Gavin Moodie provides some insightful findings on the contributing factors for attrition, as well as the steps that need to be taken to prevent at-risk students from dropping out of their university programs.

A link to his article in The Conversation can be found here: https://theconversation.com/which-students-are-most-likely-to-drop-out-of-university-56276

On February 25, 2016, Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie presented at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL)’s Knowledge and Work Symposium at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper titled What should qualifications look like if the links between qualifications and jobs are so weak? focused on wealthy liberal market countries and explored how the qualifications are shaped and conditioned by the structures of the labour market. To view Leesa and Gavin’s paper, use the following link: https://goo.gl/NWPGos

Leesa Wheelahan then traveled to London, England to present at the Association of Colleges Governance Summit (March 2, 2016) alongside Professor Ewart Keep (Director of the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance at Oxford University). Professor Wheelahan presented on the topic of outcome agreements, what these could look like, and what uses these might fulfill in the English policy context. Leesa subsequently presented at the Association of Colleges’ Higher Education Conference and Exhibition (March 3, 2016) in London, England on the purposes of qualifications as well as the nature of skill and the role of theoretical knowledge in curriculum development, social mobility and occupational progression in the labour market.

The Pathways to Education and Work Research Group led by Leesa Wheelahan recently launched their website (http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/pew/). The website provides an overview of the team’s research projects which investigate the nature of pathways within and between colleges and universities, as well as between postsecondary education and the labour market. These research projects are supported by funding from the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer (ONCAT), the Ontario Ministry for Training, Colleges and Universities through the Ontario Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund (OHCRIF), and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

You can follow the Pathways to Education and Work research team on Twitter: @OISEPathwaysGrp. https://twitter.com/OISEPathwaysGrp

Recently appointed CIHE member Stephanie Waterman was invited to speak on a Presidential Session panel at the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) in Denver, Colorado. As a part of this Presidential panel, Waterman discussed culturally relevant research in higher education and questioned the impact of methodological and analytical choices on issues of inequality in higher education.

Last month, Patricia successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled: Inuit self-determination and postsecondary education: The case of Nunavut and Greenland, which was supervised by Creso Sá. The entire team, many of which attended Patricia’s mock thesis on September 19th, is very proud of Dr. Gaviria’s accomplishment and wishes her the best in the coming year.

Creso will lead a new Policy Research Project funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) entitled The State of Entrepreneurship Education in Ontario Postsecondary Education. With the support of graduate students Andrew Kretz and Kristjan Sigurdson, the project will provide a detailed assessment of educational programs in Ontario universities and colleges that purport to teach or support entrepreneurs. The results of this research will be published by HEQCO in the first half of 2014. For more information visit the Projects page.