Invest in your future and earn the Aspire Certificate, which is designed to complement your academic program by providing opportunities to develop a range of skills and competencies.
To earn the certificate, complete five workshops in at least two Aspire pillars.
Learn more details about the Aspire Professional Development Certificate.
Some of the workshops are self-directed on MyLearningSpace. First, register for the workshop by selecting "Self Registration," then select the workshop, and select "Register."
Take charge of your personal well-being. Our workshops provide you with the skills to manage your time, mental health, and work-life balance. Foster self-awareness and mindfulness in your personal, scholarly, and professional life.
All sessions are virutal, 1 hour in length and open to all students.
In this workshop, we will explore the concept of balance in all areas of our lives. We will talk about the roots of balance, whether perfect balance is a myth, and will develop skills and strategies to make balance work for you. This workshop is for graduate students only. It is eligible for the Aspire Certificate.
Skills Acquired: We will talk about the roots of balance, whether perfect balance is a myth, and will develop skills and strategies to make balance work for you.
Facilitator: Claire Howarth, MPH, MSW, RSW – Wellness Education Coordinator
Sessions offered:
In this workshop, we will learn about building and nourishing our relationships so they are sustainable, as well as supportive communication strategies. Relationships including friendships, romantic relationships, and supervisor relationships will be explored. This program is only for current graduate students. This is eligible for the Aspire Certificate.
Skills Acquired: In this workshop, we will learn about building and nourishing our relationships so they are sustainable, as well as supportive communication strategies.
Facilitator: Claire Howarth, MPH, MSW, RSW – Wellness Education Coordinator
Sessions offered:
Our teaching development workshops offer transferrable teaching skills and foundational teaching knowledge that can be used for both the classroom and the workplace. Learn about different pedagogies and hear from experienced staff and colleagues as they reflect on their experiences and share their knowledge.
All sessions are 90 minutes in length.
Self-paced Microsoft Stream recorded workshops:
Does the room go quiet when you ask questions? Do you see blank stares when you try to get students talking? Knowing how to actively engage your students to enhance their learning is an important skill. This workshop will introduce you to some strategies to both ignite and sustain student engagement.
Skills acquired: This workshop will introduce you to some strategies to both ignite and sustain student engagement.
Sessions offered:
For teaching assistants, recognizing how and when to provide feedback to learners can be a tricky task. Concerns about how much and the quality of the feedback provided is fundamental to students’ success. In this introductory session, participants will spend time exploring the complexity of providing guidance to learners as a TA and explore the idea of feedforward to support ongoing student development.
Skills Acquired: In this introductory session, participants will spend time exploring the complexity of providing guidance to learners as a TA and explore the idea of feedforward to support ongoing student development.
Sessions offered:
For teaching assistants, recognizing how and when to provide feedback to learners can be a tricky task. Concerns about how much and the quality of the feedback provided is fundamental to students’ success. In this introductory session, participants will spend time exploring the complexity of providing guidance to learners as a TA and explore the idea of feedforward to support ongoing student development.
Skills Acquired: In this introductory session, participants will spend time exploring the complexity of providing guidance to learners as a TA and explore the idea of feedforward to support ongoing student development.
Sessions offered:
Does the room go quiet when you ask questions? Do you see blank stares when you try to get students talking? Knowing how to actively engage your students to enhance their learning is an important skill. This workshop will introduce you to some strategies to both ignite and sustain student engagement.
Skills Acquired: This workshop will introduce you to some strategies to both ignite and sustain student engagement.
Sessions offered:
In any academic or professional environment, strong communication and leadership skills are critical. Perfect your writing and oral presentation skills with help from specialists in the field.
On-going self-paced learning on MyLearningSpace:
Details for each session and registration links can be found on the Graduate Tab of the Writing Service Workshop site.
Graduate students are often tasked with writing a literature review during their coursework or graduate studies. This workshop will provide MA and PhD students with strategies on how to organize, structure, and write a literature review. We will also discuss how to frame your literature review around a research gap or scholarly problem. The Zoom link for the workshop is included below. The Zoom link will also be emailed to all registered participants prior to the workshop.
You can register for the workshop on the Student Success Portal.
In this ASPIRE workshop, students will develop tools and strategies to write critical reflection papers. The workshop will discuss common challenges students face when writing reflection papers, including how to relate their personal experiences to academic literature. By the end of the workshop, students will have a better understanding of how to write and structure their reflection papers. The Zoom link for the workshop is included below. The Zoom link will also be emailed to all registered participants prior to the workshop
You can register for the workshop on the Student Success Portal.
Move successfully into your next career phase. ASPIRE workshops, run by Career Centre professionals, can help you to market your transferable skills, build your resumé, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile, and network and interview with confidence, among many other skills.
All sessions are virtual on Zoom.
Did you know that most jobs are filled before they are posted? Employers hire people through people. Participants in this workshop will learn how to tap into the hidden job market using effective research and networking techniques.
Skills Acquired: Job search strategies
Facilitator: Lisa Roy, Career Centre
Sessions offered:
This session is offered on Zoom or join in person for conversation with other graduate students (Waterloo Career Centre, Room CC-101).
Create engaging documents that will get noticed. Interested in a career in academia or research? Lets build a CV, for academic and research roles!
Skills Acquired: Participants will learn the unique purpose, format and guidelines for creating an effective Curriculum Vitae (CV), as well as clarify the main distinctions between a resumé and a CV.
Facilitator: Career Centre
Sessions offered:
Join the session on Zoom, or in person for coffee and conversation, at the Waterloo Career Centre, Room CC-101. Please register to receive the event link.
Have you updated your resume lately? What are employers looking for in resumes and cover letters? Do you have to target your resume? Do you even need a cover letter? Participants in this workshop will learn tools and strategies to present your relevant qualifications effectively and connect your skills, experiences and abililties to a target job.
Skills Acquired: Participants in this workshop will learn tools and strategies to present your relevant qualifications effectively and connect your skills, experience and abilities to a target job.
Facilitator: Lisa Roy, Career Centre
Sessions offered:
Join the session on Zoom, or in person for coffee and conversation, at the Waterloo Career Centre, Room CC-101. Please register to receive the event link.
Can you identify what competencies you have and what employers are seeking? Align your skills with your career goals in this workshop. You will be able to identify and assess your personal competencies, identify areas for development and learn how to showcase the value of your experiences to an employer.
Skills Acquired: Skill translation
Facilitator: Lisa Roy, Career Centre
Sessions offered:
This session is offered on Zoom or join in person for conversation with other graduate students (Waterloo Career Centre, Room CC-101.)
Research is a huge component of many Masters, PhD and Postdoctoral Fellow programs. Workshops in our research pillar can help you to complete the work that you are doing at Laurier and help prepare you for future research opportunities. Through workshops ranging from how to develop a research question, to managing your data, our research experts will teach you how to translate your technical work for non-specialist audiences.
Self-paced MyLearningSpace modules:
Students must self-register for "Libary Reserach Workshops" on MyLearning Space to gain access to these courses.
Use Zotero to streamline how you collect sources and create bibliographies. If you’re doing a research assignment, thesis, dissertation, or capstone project, this tool will save you time. Please note: a workshop about Mendeley is also available. If you’re unsure which tool to use, it helps to ask a professor or student in your program what they use.
Skills Acquired: Organize their sources using folders and tags; Automatically cite their sources within MS Word; Search their sources
Facilitator: Greg Sennema
Session offered: Oct. 1, 2025 10:00 a.m. Register for Oct. 1 workshop.
Learn how archival material is organized, how to access, use, and evaluate archival material, and what to expect when visiting the archives.
Skills Acquired: Identify common characteristics of archival material ‚ Find and evaluate archival material
Facilitator: Amanda Oliver
Session offered: Oct. 1, 2025 at 2 p.m. Register for Oct. 1 workshop.
Research Data is now an established output of scholarship that many journals, grant agencies, and fields require to be archived. At Laurier, faculty, grad students, and other HQP can submit their non-sensitive research data to the Library's data archive Borealis, for long-term archiving, access, and sharing. This webinar will introduce you to Borealis and our data curation service. We will cover: Who can use Borealis (Faculty, Grads, HQP) What kind of data we accept How grad students should archive their thesis data Open access and non-sensitive data requirements Metadata and Licensing How to get started By the end of the session, you will learn how to submit your valuable research data for archiving, access, and re-use. This webinar is geared toward researchers and grad students. It is also part of the 2025 ASPIRE series of workshops. For more information, contact Research Data Services at researchdata@wlu.ca
Skills Acquired: Data archiving - Tri-Agency research policies - Open access
Facilitator: Michael Steelworthy
Session offered: Oct. 2, 2025 at 11 a.m. Register for Oct. 2 workshop.
On Jan. 1, 2026, Tri-Agency is expected to release a new Open Access (OA) policy. This policy, currently in draft and available for reading, is an update to the 2015 OA Policy. Under the revised policy, recipients of Tri-Agency grants will be required to: deposit peer-reviewed research articles associated with a Tri-Agency grant in a Canadian institutional repository at the time of publication use an open license at the time of deposit for these articles (e.g., Creative Commons licensing) Retain rights for the dissemination of peer-reviewed articles Acknowledge Agency contributions in all research outputs, including but not limited to peer-reviewed articles These changes are expected to be implemented on January 1, 2026 and will be applicable to recipients of grants awarded after that date. This webinar will introduce Library supports that will help researchers meet their OA requirements under the new policy. In particular, we will introduce Scholars Commons, our institutional repository, and explain how it will help you meet these requirements and disseminate your outputs with ease. This webinar is included in the 2025 ASPIRE series of workshops; researchers are encourage to invite their grad students to help them learn more about Tri-Agency's research policies. This webinar will be recorded and a link will be shared with participants for future playback.
Skills Acquired: Knowledge of Open Access - Academic repositories - Tri-Agency research policies.
Facilitator: Michael Steelworthy
Sessions offered:
Evidence synthesis projects aim to produce a transparent and reproducible review of all the available literature on a topic and therefore require a more structured and systematic form of search development than we use in many other contexts. Becoming an expert in building this type of search takes considerable time and experience that a 1 hour workshop cannot replace. However, it can provide an introduction to the process and deepen your understanding of what is involved. In this session, we will review the steps required to build a systematic search along with some tips and tricks to make this process more effective. This workshop is not database specific but will instead focus on guidelines and principles that can be applied to searches in many health-focused databases, such as PubMed, CINAHL or PsycINFO.
Skills Acquired: Participants will learn how to define systematic searching, plan a search using PICO(T) or similar, incorporate subject headings and keywords into a search, describe the process for translating a search to a different database, and create a validation set to test a search.
Facilitator: Fiona Inglis
Session offered: Oct. 6, 2025 at 1 p.m. Register for Oct. 6 workshop.
Discover how to access and use key library databases to research industries—whether you're looking for market analysis, financial statistics and data, competitive landscape analysis, or future outlooks. This workshop will guide you through the best tools and strategies for finding credible, up-to-date industry information to support your coursework, case studies, and business plans.
Skills Acquired:
Facilitator: Yanli Li
Session offered: Oct. 8, 2025 from 10 to 11 a.m. Register for Oct. 8 workshop.
Learn the very basics (or come for a refresher) on how Canadian laws are made, their key parts and where to find them. Discover resources for the analysis of laws and their impact, and how they have been interpreted in judicial proceedings.
Skills Acquired: Awareness of key legal instruments; awareness of how a Bill becomes a Law; where to look for the different parts of Law; discovery of sources for Legal Commentary.
Facilitator: Helene LeBlanc
Sessions offered:
Use Mendeley to streamline how you collect sources and create bibliographies. If you’re doing a research assignment, thesis, dissertation, or capstone project, this tool will save you time. Please note: a workshop about Zotero is also available. If you’re unsure which tool to use, it helps to ask a professor or student in your program what they use. Questions? libcitations@wlu.ca
Skills Acquired: By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to use Mendeley to: Organize their sources using folders and tags; Search their sources; Automatically cite their sources.
Facilitator: Pauline Dewan
Session offered: Oct 22, 2025 2 p.m. Register for Oct. 22 Zoom workshop.
Data management plans (DMPs) help researchers identify and implement their data management needs during the life of their research program. This includes topics like storage, access, description/metadata, backups, sensitivity, and more. Since 2021, the Tri-Agencies have required DMPs or data management methodologies to be included in all grant applications. It's also just good practice to identify these data strengths and gaps, especially at the start of your research programme. This webinar will introduce the Library's data management planning service and our free webtool, the DMP Assistant. We'll demonstrate the Funding Opportunity DMP template, which covers 5 core areas critical to researchers who are in the initial stages of their grant application: Ethics, Legal, and Commercial Issues‚Äã Data Collection‚Äã Data Documentation‚Äã Data Storage and Access‚Äã Data Archiving and Disposition This webinar will benefit researchers and grad students, especially if you are planning a new grant application. Grad students are especially welcomed to this webinar given the benefits that data management planning brings to thesis preparation and fieldwork! This webinar is geared toward researchers and grad students. It is also part of the 2025 ASPIRE series of workshops.
Skills Acquired: Data management planning - Grant applications - Tri-Agency Research Policies
Facilitator: Michael Steelworthy
Session offered: Oct. 23, 2025 at 1 p.m. Register for Oct. 23 workshop.
Covidence is a web-based tool that streamlines the screening and data extraction components of an evidence synthesis project, such as a systematic, scoping or rapid review. In this session, I will show you the main features of Covidence and provide a few tips and tricks for using it.
Skills Acquired: Participants will learn how to set up an account in Covidence, import references and remove duplicates, reduce bias and assess interrater reliability during screening, and build a data extraction table.
Facilitator: Fiona Inglis
Session offered: Nov. 5, 2025 at 11 a.m. Register for Nov. 5 workshop.
On January 1, 2026, Tri-Agency is expected to release a new Open Access (OA) policy. This policy, currently in draft and available for reading, is an update to the 2015 OA Policy. Under the revised policy, recipients of Tri-Agency grants will be required to: deposit peer-reviewed research articles associated with a Tri-Agency grant in a Canadian institutional repository at the time of publication use an open license at the time of deposit for these articles (e.g., Creative Commons licensing) Retain rights for the dissemination of peer-reviewed articles Acknowledge Agency contributions in all research outputs, including but not limited to peer-reviewed articles These changes are expected to be implemented on January 1, 2026 and will be applicable to recipients of grants awarded after that date. This webinar will introduce Library supports that will help researchers meet their OA requirements under the new policy. In particular, we will introduce Scholars Commons, our institutional repository, and explain how it will help you meet these requirements and disseminate your outputs with ease. This webinar is included in the 2025 ASPIRE series of workshops; researchers are encourage to invite their grad students to help them learn more about Tri-Agency's research policies. This webinar will be recorded and a link will be shared with participants for future playback.
Skills Acquired: Knowledge of Open Access - Academic repositories - Tri-Agency research policies.
Facilitator: Michael Steelworthy
Sessions offered:
Learn the very basics (or come for a refresher) on how Canadian laws are made, their key parts and where to find them. Discover resources for the analysis of laws and their impact, and how they have been interpreted in judicial proceedings.
Skills Acquired: Awareness of key legal instruments; awareness of how a Bill becomes a Law; where to look for the different parts of Law; discovery of sources for Legal Commentary.
Facilitator: Helene LeBlanc
Sessions offered:
Confused and overwhelmed by the proliferation of AI tools and their applications in the research process? This session will introduce GenAI tools designed specifically for scholarly literature research.
Skills Acquired: Assessment of academic research tools, critical thinking, literature search skills .
Facilitators: Peter Genzinger and Joanna Blair
Session offered:
On January 1, 2026, Tri-Agency is expected to release a new Open Access (OA) policy. This policy, currently in draft and available for reading, is an update to the 2015 OA Policy. Under the revised policy, recipients of Tri-Agency grants will be required to: deposit peer-reviewed research articles associated with a Tri-Agency grant in a Canadian institutional repository at the time of publication use an open license at the time of deposit for these articles (e.g., Creative Commons licensing) Retain rights for the dissemination of peer-reviewed articles Acknowledge Agency contributions in all research outputs, including but not limited to peer-reviewed articles These changes are expected to be implemented on January 1, 2026 and will be applicable to recipients of grants awarded after that date. This webinar will introduce Library supports that will help researchers meet their OA requirements under the new policy. In particular, we will introduce Scholars Commons, our institutional repository, and explain how it will help you meet these requirements and disseminate your outputs with ease. This webinar is included in the 2025 ASPIRE series of workshops; researchers are encourage to invite their grad students to help them learn more about Tri-Agency's research policies. This webinar will be recorded and a link will be shared with participants for future playback.
Skills Acquired: Knowledge of Open Access - Academic repositories - Tri-Agency research policies.
Facilitator: Michael Steelworthy
Sessions offered:
