CEWIL Canada Practitioner Profile—International WIL 

Julie Walchli Executive Director, Work Integrated Education and Career Initiatives UBC Arts and Co-Director, Canada Japan Co-op Program

How did you become interested in pursuing an international opportunity? 

 My work to create international co-op experiences for students really started right when I began working in Co-operative Education in Spring 1999. I was hired to start the first co-op program in the Faculty of Arts at UBC, which has over 16,000 undergraduate and 3000 graduate students from a wide range of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Creative and Performance Arts majors. Students are studying a range of issues across these disciplines that have an international angle—particularly in majors like International Relations, Asian Studies, and Latin American Studies, for example—and right from the beginning were interested in international co-op opportunities. This isn’t a surprise given that UBC is a global centre for teaching, learning and research consistently ranked as one of the top 20 public universities in the world, attracting students from a wide range of countries with varied interests.

 Can you provide a brief overview of the international WIL work you were involved in? 

 Initially I focussed on developing international co-op terms for Arts students by contacting UBC Arts Alumni living abroad; the first international co-op terms for UBC Arts students were in China, Hong Kong, the US and Mexico in 2000 with alumni working there. Over the last 20 years I’ve had opportunity to meet with employers, including UBC alumni, around the world—particularly in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Japan and the US—to develop co-op opportunities for my students, often doing site visits with students in these locations. Seeing firsthand the transformational experiences that living and working abroad brings is incredibly motivating, and I’m regularly humbled by my students’ ability to take on significant personal and professional challenges and thrive.

In August 2015, as CAFCE President (CAFCE was the forerunner to CEWIL Canada) I represented Canada at board meetings of the World Co-op Association during its biannual conference which was held that year in Kyoto, Japan. After the conference I travelled as part of a delegation of Canadian schools that make up the consortium for the Canada Japan Co-op Program (CJCP), meeting with co-op students from across Canada who were doing work terms in Japan at that time. CJCP is a really unique consortium-based international co-op program which started in 1991 and has sent over 1200 Canadian PSE students to Japan since then. It was headquartered at UVIC until 2005 when its office moved to UBC.  

In 2017 I had the opportunity to become co-Director for CJCP, working with its other Co-Director, Sara Buse, and its Manager, Yuko Nemoto. Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the needs of Japanese industry and the ways Canadian co-op students can contribute. To date the Program has largely served students from STEM disciplines; in 2019, with funding from the BC Ministry of Advanced Education’s Work Integrated Learning Initiative, we started to explore the potential to build out a non-STEM stream in the Program so more students have access to these incredible experiences. We hope to launch this initiative once international learning programs can resume, when the pandemic improves. We’ve worked in close partnership with the Canadian Embassy in Japan and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and building relationships with staff in these organizations has been a wonderful opportunity. At the heart of developing international experiences for our students are strong relationships with individual partners abroad. I’ve learned not to underestimate the power of individual connections and the value in taking time to find shared goals.

 What were the deliverables or outcomes of the experience?

 Since those early days of the UBC Arts co-op program in 1999, a few hundred students have completed co-op terms abroad, and I’ve had the pleasure to work with many of them and their employers directly. The Canada Japan Co-op Program sends about 50-70 Canadian students to Japan each year, and I’ve appreciated working with co-op students from non-Arts disciplines as I supported their experiences through this Program. A highlight for me is participating in the Pre-Departure Training Week for CJCP that’s hosted at UBC each May; the students going to Japan from across Canada come to UBC for the training, which is led by 2 CJCP alumni with co-op employers and other partners participating. Hearing from the alumni about their experiences in Japan is always fun and inspiring. And seeing the anticipation on the faces of the cohort of students getting ready to head to Japan is fantastic. 

 What was the biggest take-away from your experience?

It’s hard to pick one! I’ve already mentioned the deep personal and professional learning that international experiences bring to our students, and that’s what motivates me to try and grow these opportunities, even though it’s often hard work, time consuming, and not often a straight line.  

Another take-away is the complex legal and safety issues involved in sending students abroad on university activities. I learned more about these in 2008/09 when I was seconded to UBC’s International Learning Programs office; the core project I worked on was developing the first draft of what became UBC’s Student Safety Abroad policy (see https://safetyabroad.ubc.ca/about). Researching best practices at other North American universities around safety abroad and interviewing dozens of UBC professors, university administrators and students who were participating in a wide range of international learning programming helped me develop my skill set in risk management practices. That’s been useful in the work I’ve done since then.

Perhaps one of the most significant take-aways is how strong Canada’s model for co-operative education and workplace learning in post-secondary education is; we are the envy of many other countries working to grow this pedagogy in their post-secondary systems. This strength is in part the result of the many WIL practitioners who’ve been involved with CEWIL Canada (and its predecessor, CAFCE) over many decades. Our collective, national effort to build high-impact, quality work integrated learning experiences, and to commit to shared standards and practices, is an incredible asset we have as WIL practitioners in Canada. I personally have benefited considerably from the strength of our professional association and the community of practice it supports, and am grateful to the many CEWIL members I’ve worked with and learned from over the years. 

I think we can all agree that some of the most ‘wicked problems’ of our time, like global pandemics and climate change, require global solutions. Helping our students learn in a range of contexts—including international ones—can only help to better prepare them to take on and find solutions to these challenges, and others ahead. I’ve worked in the field of WIL for so long because I believe deeply in its power as a pedagogical approach, and I encourage others interested in starting international WIL programs, or working in ones already underway, to ask questions, learn, and find ways to get involved.

Click here to learn more about the UBC Arts Co-op Program  

Click here to learn more about the Canada Japan Co-op Program  

Click here to learn more about CEWIL’s International Committee