BUILDING THE FUTURE OF CONTINUING EDUCATION
Tracey Taylor-o’reilly York University
ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES IS NAVIGATING AN ECOSYSTEM WHERE JOBS AND SKILLSETS ARE CHANGING ALL THE TIME ... MANY CAREER OPTIONS ARE NO LONGER INTUITIVE AND WE ARE LEVERAGING THE POWER OF BIG DATA TO HELP PEOPLE FIND THE BEST OPTIONS AND HOW TO GET THERE. — TRACEY TAYLOR-O’REILLY, YORK UNIVERSITY
When Tracey Taylor-o’reilly was recruited to join York University as assistant vice-president, continuing studies, she was given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build an entirely new model for continuing professional education from the ground up — literally and figuratively. “I had a fresh canvas to reimagine the entire system,” says the recipient in the WXN CIBC Executive Leaders Awards category.
“It was our president, Dr. Rhonda Lenton (another former WXN winner), who had the vision to create a new school,” she adds. “She just set the guardrails and let me go.”
Taylor-o’reilly has long been a champion of transforming post-secondary education to meet rapidly evolving workplace needs. “The pace of change has hit warp speed compared to previous decades. Yet the post-secondary system hasn’t kept pace,” she explains. “Continuing education was largely still based upon 13-week terms and evening classes or online equivalents, just like it was when my dad was an adult learner in the 1970s. Developing this school was my opportunity to finally change that.”
She set out to rebuild the new school in a way that put the learner first and employment as the target. “In this competitive workforce, we knew we needed to help students reach their goals faster. That meant connecting them more directly to industry leaders, helping them build a robust professional network, providing relevant work experiences, and preparing them with the cross-functional skills to grow within their organization,” she explains.
Her team looked at all the emerging factors that were transforming the job market and holding professionals back from reaching their potential in their careers. These included low graduation rates, the national skills gap, new technologies and industries.
The first order of the day was to build accelerated cohort-based part-time and full-time professional programs to address the critical skills gaps in partnership with industry leaders. The programs also needed to incorporate career supports, cross-functional skills, experiential learning and the ability to create a portfolio to demonstrate the graduate’s skills and experience to employers. “Unlike most universities who were in the business of selling courses, we were in the business of professional transformation,” she says.
Under Taylor-o’reilly’s leadership the school has developed many first-to-market programs in emerging fields that fill urgent skills gaps, with a particular focus on increasing representation of women and immigrants. “Our certificate in blockchain development is one of the first in the world and made news globally,” says Taylor-o’reilly.
Clearly, the gap was being filled. She reports that the professional education programs grew tenfold in the first five years versus an industry that averages single-digit annual growth.
The positive impact of her project, which officially launched in 2015, exceeded expectations — including her own. Graduation rates went from an industry norm of 10 to 20 per cent to more than 90 per cent, resulting in more students becoming better prepared with the skills, knowledge and experience to advance their career or transition into an adjacent field. “We’ve helped change people’s
lives through as little as six months of part-time study. I think that’s extraordinary,” she says.
An equally important component was creating accessible opportunities, including gender equity in a variety of male-dominated emerging technology fields. Between fall 2019 and winter 2020, 29.1 per cent of all students enrolled in its tech programs identified as women. In the following year that grew to 35.4 per cent. “Enrolment is still open for the winter 2022, but we’re on track to surpass that number,” she says.
By way of comparison, when the school launched the country’s first cyber-security certificate program five years ago, only 10 per cent of the industry identified as female. “Today, two of our first female graduates have progressed to leadership positions in their careers and have returned to the program to teach,” says Taylor-o’reilly.
Victoria Granova, a previous WXN nominee, was one of those students. Since graduating, she has achieved thought leadership status in the field and has the distinction of being the first female cybersecurity program instructor at the school and champion for the program.
“The York cybersecurity certificate program was life-changing for me,” says
Granova. “My career plan before falling into cybersecurity was accounting. I believed that I would continue down that path until the program opened my eyes to the cybersecurity threats many organizations were facing, and how unprepared most were to protect against them. I felt a new passion and purpose: to work in a field that keeps people and companies safe.”
Taylor-o’reilly’s passion for marrying the world of academia and professional employment dates back to her own university years, when she found herself wondering how she could navigate a successful career in her final year. “I had the classic ‘oh no, now what’ moment,” she says. “I saw my social sciences and humanities education as the basis upon which to build a life of contribution. But I also realized I was missing the skills, support and connections needed to develop a meaningful professional career. I felt wholly unprepared for the next stage of life. That was the first time I felt the deep chasm between our post-secondary system and needs of our labour market.”
The gap once again came to light during her career in public health when hiring entry-level employees with specific skill sets. “I realized universities were not teaching the skills I required, even in so-called ‘applied’ programs. I reached out to department chairs to try to bridge the world of academia and employment but found little interest in aligning curriculum with workforce needs.”
She was able to start bridging the two worlds when she was asked to lead Mcmaster’s Centre for Continuing Education. There, she engaged deeply with employers in the development and teaching of the professional curriculum, and combined professional and degree courses to create online and in-person degree pathways. “I was able to develop the kind of management and leadership programs I wish had existed when I was starting out.”
She rose to the challenge again with the onset of the pandemic that brought mass unemployment, including a loss of over two million jobs by April 2020. “The sudden lockdowns affected the way we worked and lived almost overnight, eliminating many jobs altogether but also suggesting we were about to have a surge of demand in specific professions and shortage of skilled workers. So, we began to ask ourselves, how could we anticipate where the shortage would be? How could we help people transition to the high-demand, highpaying roles? How could we help employers fill the gaps?”
The school immediately put the wheels in motion to ensure their students’ and employers’ needs could be met. “We talked to employers about where they were hiring and their anticipated needs to help guide people to where jobs were. I also asked the team to pull in every instructor and offer as many sections of every related program we could for spring 2020. We filled to capacity.”
With millions facing unemployment, the school also initiated Canada’s only continuing studies emergency benefit to support those in the most need to change the trajectory of their lives. It awarded 17 students a tuition credit and helped to remove financial barriers. A donor also came forward to support an additional seven students.
“Receiving the benefit truly helped and I am tremendously grateful for it,” says former student Lily Quynh-thu Thai. “With being laid off when the pandemic started, I was burdened with a lot of financial responsibilities at home.”
Taking the UX Design program at York helped her land a job with a creative agency doing UX/UI and web design. “I really wanted a course that could help me build my professional portfolio so that I could pivot my career into this field,” she says.
As a leader who is dedicated to promoting gender equity in male-dominated industries, Taylor-o’reilly also takes time to mentor women who demonstrate the potential to succeed. “One of my role models from my time at Mcmaster University has been a friend and mentor for over 15 years. She raised my awareness of the importance of mentoring and creating a supportive environment to help women gain the confidence they need to challenge boundaries and excel.”
Now almost eight years into her role, Taylor-o’reilly is continuing to transform the professional education landscape. “One of the biggest challenges is navigating an ecosystem where jobs and skillsets are changing all the time. We’re now working on the first Ai-driven career navigation platform for adult learners that helps them identify their skills, the career options available to them, the skill gaps, and how to find courses or short programs to close those gaps. Many career options are no longer intuitive and we are leveraging the power of big data to help people find the best options and how to get there.”