Work-Learn Institute’s David Drewery wins CEWIL award for research and impact

By: Matthew King (he/him)

David Drewery PhD, associate director of the Work-Learn Institute (WxL) at Co-operative and Experiential Education’s (CEE) is this year’s recipient of Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada’s (CEWIL Canada) Dr. Graham Branton Research Award.

The national award recognizes individuals or teams whose research initiatives have significantly pushed the boundaries of current work-integrated learning (WIL) knowledge and practices. The award prioritizes initiatives that focus on issues of equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI), access and accessibility at the post-secondary level in Canada.

Drewery has been a prominent figure in the WIL space for over a decade and his work in EDI began several years ago when he explored inclusion from the perspective of LGBTQ+ co-op students (Mallozzi & Drewery, 2019). It was one of the first studies to explore the dynamics around LGBTQ+ employment issues in co-op and offered insightful strategies that employers can use to create inclusive co-op workplaces.

Drewery’s research in this area has continued in recent publications exploring gender equity in time on tasks at work (Ademuyiwa et al., 2023) and identifying barriers that students from equity-deserving groups encounter when participating in co-op programs (Khan et al., 2024).

Drewery’s initial research in this field has pushed the understanding of EDI in WIL and laid the groundwork for future research to better understand how we can all contribute to equitable WIL experiences.

Drewery is the second most published author in the International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning (IJWIL) since 2018 and is responsible for 20 per cent of all quantitative research published by IJWIL in that time. As of May 2024, others have cited his research over 500 times.