The Community Health and Social Innovation Hub (CHASI) is proud to introduce the Career and Learning for Life (CALL) consortium, our newest group of researchers. This team represents CHASI’s first dedicated research cluster and will collaborate amongst themselves and with the greater CHASI team to address needs of our research partners and communities.
The new research cluster is comprised of Drs. Michael Batu, Candy Ho, Michael Maschek, and Linda Pardy.
CALL recognizes the need for research to inform transformative social innovation in how we think structurally, economically, socially, culturally, and politically about equitable career learning and higher education’s role in preparing graduates for the rapidly, and often dramatically, changing world.
As CALL integrates into CHASI, the research cluster already has a number of projects underway. Drs. Maschek and Batu are working with students to create a public facing Labour Market Information (LMI) dashboard and will soon be responding to news stories related to the social and economic factors that impact work and career. Dr. Ho is travelling to New Zealand and Vienna to deliver keynote presentations on career education, sustainable development and open recognition, while exchanging best practices with international colleagues. Dr. Pardy is working with students on an academic program to career mapping data visualization project. The CALL team is facilitating a survey that explores faculty work and student career development. Together, Drs. Pardy and Ho are in the writing and dissemination phase of their SSHRC funded project Student and faculty perceptions about knowledge transfer, epistemic fluency, and career development.
In addition, CALL will partner with CHASI’s Knowledge Mobilization Team to create a series of podcasts as part of the CHASIcast. These podcasts will explore CALL’s projects, other expert perspectives, and broader discussions on the nature of career and learning. CALL’s CHASIcast series will begin in the near future with a discussion between Dr. Pardy and CHASI Director Dr. Martha Dow.
CALL will support students, educators, employers, and community organizations to better understand labour market trends, integrated models of career development, career pathway planning, the evolution of a liberal arts education as the catalyst for gaining the skills needed for the future, and the impacts of decent work, economic sustainability, and technological changes on health, well-being, inclusion, and equity.
The researchers in CALL bring a wealth of experience as transdisciplinary liberal arts educators and researchers. Collectively they have led numerous projects related to better understanding access to career education, employer needs, how labour market data is used for career planning and university programming, factors related to student mental health and work/life readiness, the relationship between education and career planning, the integration of career learning in academic credit courses, and teaching strategies that foster education-to-employment skill transfer.