As a university-wide initiative, we want to ensure that everyone in our university community understands and feels welcome to engage with the Wellness Collaborative. Addressing holistic wellness at our university requires input and involvement from everyone, and we are here to support you in this. Here are some ways that you can get involved with the Wellness Collaborative.
Sign up receive communication about activities related to the Okanagan Charter, the Wellness Collaborative, and opportunities to get involved.
The Community of Practice (CoP) is one way of participating in the Wellness Collaborative. The CoP brings together relevant partners across job descriptions, disciplines, department/units, and affiliated colleges to increase awareness of health and wellness-related work across campus. This is done by:
- Networking – facilitated activities that focus on increasing participant’s understanding of each other’s roles, expertise and professional networks.
- Professional development and capacity building – presentations or workshops that increase knowledge and skills of participants. Examples of this could include a presentation about the results of resilience literature review, or workshops on effective strategies for student engagement or program evaluation.
- Consultation – opportunities to provide input or consultation on various health and wellness-related activities and initiatives across campus.
- Collaboration – identify opportunities for coordinating and leveraging of each other’s health promotion and wellness work outside of the CoP to minimize duplication.
Involvement in the Community of Practice is open to all University of Waterloo members. Follow this link to join the CoP MS Team and receive invitiations to upcoming meetings.
The Function of the Advisory Committee of the Wellness Collaborative is to:
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Develop and implement a plan for moving health and wellness priorities forward using the Okanagan Charter action framework and Healthy Workplace Statement, by:
- Reviewing the best available evidence about the wellness needs of University of Waterloo community
- Identifying priorities for action
- Identifying and engaging necessary stakeholders and resources to establish action groups
- Providing advice to action groups (e.g., recommending evidence, best practices, or activities)
- Developing an accountability framework to monitor performance indicators (e.g., process and outcomes) of the action groups
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Create a mechanism to review new or revised policies and procedures of the University through a health and wellness lens. Consult and/or make recommendations to the appropriate committee or department.
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Report to the Associate Provost of Students and the Associate Provost of Human Resources to:
- Ensure alignment with larger University initiatives
- Advocacy and communication to ensure support from senior leadership
- Obtain funds or resources necessary to carry out priorities
Based on these functions, the Advisory Committee is made up of representatives from a diverse cross-section of campus stakeholders, including students, staff and faculty. Each stakeholder group was invited by the executives sponsors to identify a representative to serve on the advisory committee for a minimum of a one-year term.
The expectation of Advisory Committee members is to:
- Bring diverse perspective of students and employees
- Serve as influencers/linkages to senior administration in respective area
- Engage in strategic planning and thinking
- Provide expertise in research, evaluation, and/or evidence-based practice for health promotion and wellness
- Engage in systems-thinking and design
- Be spokespersons for the Collaborative
For information about the mandate and composition of the Advisory Committee, open up the PDF below for the Terms of Reference.
