Detailed Session Descriptions |
|
Breakout Session #1
Breakout Session #2
Keynote Speaker
Social Enterprise Panel
Breakout Session Descriptions:
When you register for the Interuniversities Forum 2010, you will be asked to select one topic for each Session.
The Forum 2010 is designed to be an interactive, collaborative day of sharing best practices and ideas. If you have any suggestions for topics and/or issues you would like to see addressed in the sessions for which you have registered, please email tking@wlu.ca. Your comments will be forwarded to the session facilitators.
Breakout Session #1: 9:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.
Career Professionals 2.0 - Re-Building Our Professional Brand (Workshop)
Presented by: Tara Orchard, Co-ordinator: Career Consulting, Laurier Career Centre
How do you build your brand as a professional career expert in a world where your students have access to instant information, ideas and a plethora of ’career experts’?
This interactive session will look at recent changes and emerging trends in the Career field. Together we will explore how these changes are impacting our ability to thrive as career professionals and to offer tangible value within our institutions. Feel free to bring your wireless device to provide real-time content and engagement. Have you upgraded your Tweetdeck lately?
Career Resource Sharing on the Cheap: Best Tips, Tweets and Texts (Roundtable)
Professionals working in the career development field need up-to-date resources to provide clients with the best information... on any budget. In this roundtable session, we will discuss and share resources that have been helpful to us, as practitioners, and/or our clients. We ask that participants send 2 to 3 of their most recommended resources in advance of the event, so that they may be compiled and distributed to other session participants. Recommendations can include any written or electronic resource. You will have the opportunity to share your print resources - feel free to bring them along - and demonstrate your electronic resources. Please submit your recommended resources by Wednesday, April 21, 2010 to Jillian Perkins-Marsh at jperkinsmarsh@wlu.ca.
Welcoming Diversity in the Career Centre (Roundtable)
The presence of diversity on university campuses offers valuable opportunities to expand our professional experiences and to challenge ourselves with new ways of thinking about how we do things. This session will discuss what career centres are doing to meet the demands and to stay on top of changing information. Possible topics of discussion could include: increasing numbers of international students, transition issues and AODA requirements. In this roundtable discussion, participants will have an opportunity to share information, discuss new initiatives, challenges and opportunities working with a variety of populations. Participants are encouraged to offer topics of interest prior to the event.
Employer Engagement on Campus (Roundtable)
There is a heightened recognition among employers today that becoming more engaged on campus will enhance their recruiting efforts to attract candidates to their organization. This session will focus on the opportunities created on campuses to engage employers through events and partnerships to achieve this goal. Challenges and successes will be explored in this roundtable session.
Breakout Session #2: 11 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Leveraging Social Media in Our Career Centres (Roundtable)
How do you effectively leverage social media communities to engage students, alumni and employers to build relationships and share information? Is the tipping point of social media upon us or passing us by? What is the Wikinomics of social media for university career centres?
In this roundtable discussion, we will share better practices and explore how to start, build and maintain social media connections (including Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Linkedin) and identify the pitfalls and advantages of using social media to engage relevant communities.
Grab Those Grads! Tips for Engaging Graduate and Doctoral Students (Workshop)
Presented by: Keturah Leonforde, Career Consultant (Graduate and Professional Programs) and Laura Peace, Career Consultant (School of Business & Economics Graduate Programs), Laurier Career Centre.
Anyone who has ever attempted to promote career services to graduate students knows that getting and keeping them focussed on career planning can be a real challenge. Yet for many students, the expectations they place on career counsellors to assist them with employment placement are as high as the financial investment they have made in their education!
This interactive session will look at some of the key challenges and opportunities that we face as career practitioners attempting to provide meaningful service to this distinct clientele. We will also explore some ’tried, tested and true’ approaches to graduate student engagement.
Current and Future Labour Market Trends (Workshop)
Presented by: Christine Neill, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Unemployment rates among young people, including university graduates, are at highs not seen for more than a decade, as is summer unemployment among students. As an active contributor to the ’Labour Market News,’ published by The Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis, Christine’s session will focus on current and future labour market trends from a broad perspective, as well as include the latest research findings on student employment during the year and the summer.
Balancing Value in Career Centre Peer Programs (Roundtable)
Anyone who works with training and supervising student peers (volunteers) in a Career Centre knows that achieving a balance between giving and receiving can be...well, a balance. This interactive roundtable session will provide an opportunity to discuss some common practices for ensuring a decent ’Return On Investment,’ look at some of the key challenges and opportunities that we face as volunteer/peer managers and explore the types of projects Peers can engage in to provide value to a Career Centre.
Keynote Speaker: David McMurray, Assistant Vice-President: Student Services
Biography:
David McMurray is currently the Assistant Vice President: Student Services and Dean of Students at Wilfrid Laurier University. An accomplished, award winning student affairs and services professional, David has successfully implemented strategies in a wide variety of student affairs and services venues achieving high standards of excellence, innovation and recognition. David’s student-centred leadership philosophy is on the comprehensive education and development of the whole student. Student satisfaction and engagement are central to his commitment to the delivery of an exceptional quality of student life and learning experience.
Keynote Topic: “Career Development…from Transaction to Transformation”
What is our impact on the purposeful education and development of the whole student? This introductory afternoon session will speak to the overall purpose of higher education, identify expectations of the institution, and articulate how career development professionals play a key role in serving the university mission.
Social Enterprise Panel
Join us for a lively discussion on Social Enterprise! The panel will be moderated by Dr. Barry Colbert, the Director of the Laurier CMA Centre for Business & Sustainability, and will showcase two grads and one student who are leading organizations which apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. Panel members have a social or environmental purpose that remains central to their organization’s operation. Panellists will present information and answer questions on social enterprise, including, their unique career paths, advice for students interested in careers in social enterprise and trends in the industry.
Moderator:
Dr. Barry Colbert
Director, Laurier CMA Centre for Business & Sustainability
Dr. Colbert leads Wilfrid Laurier University’s CMA Centre for Business & Sustainability, which serves as a catalyst to bring together faculty researchers, students, and leaders in industry and civil society in order to build capacity for more progressive, socially engaged organizational leadership. Dr. Colbert is also an Assistant Professor of Policy & Strategic Management in the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his research is centred on the ways and means by which organizations align a vision for sustainability, corporate and business strategy, and the strategic development of human capital. His writing has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Human Resource Planning, and the Journal of General Management, along with several recent book chapters, including ’The Business Case for CSR’ in the Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility.
Panel Members:
Mike Morrice
Co-founder and Executive Director, Sustainable Waterloo
Mike is the Executive Director of Sustainable Waterloo, a not-for-profit that advances the environmental sustainability of organizations across Waterloo Region through collaboration. Currently, Sustainable Waterloo is working with 20 local organizations - including Wilfrid Laurier University, Sun Life Financial, and the City of Waterloo to help them set and make progress against voluntary carbon reduction commitments. Mike is a 2008 graduate of Wilfrid Laurier, where he concurrently completed a BBA and a BSc in Computing and Computer Electronics. In 2009, Mike was selected by The Record as one of Waterloo Region’s Top 40 under 40.
Greg Overholt
Executive Director, Students Offering Support
Greg Overholt is the founder and executive director of SOS: Students Offering Support and is a recent graduate of the Business and Computer Science program at Wilfrid Laurier University. Students Offering Support is a charitable sustainable social venture that develops and supports SOS chapters residing within post-secondary schools across the nation. Since 2005, over 700 SOS volunteers have tutored over 7,000 students and raised over $340,000 for various communities in Africa and Latin America.
Sasha Hennebury
MBA Student Organizer, Net Impact
Sasha Hennebury is the Co-President of Net Impact and a current MBA student at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Net Impact is an international non-profit organization with a mission statement to Connect, Educate and Inspire students to use the power of business to promote environmental and corporate social responsibility. Since starting the chapter in November, 2009, Net Impact at Laurier has gone from a group of 12 executive members to 63 members from the Laurier MBA program.
Growing Professionally...Together.