Associate Professor Sonia Ferns is a Managing Partner of LearnWork Consulting, Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University and Adjunct Teaching Fellow at the University of Western Australia. She was previously Science Academic Lead at Curtin University. She has led institutional strategic projects on curriculum renewal focussing on quality enhancement and establishing an institutional quality framework for Work-Integrated Learning (WIL). In 2020 she led renewal of the Mining Engineering degree in partnership with industry and the Minerals Council of Australia. Designing and delivering interdisciplinary WILsubjects to Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) students has been a key part of Sonia’s role in recent years. She is Immediate Past President of the Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN). Sonia has led or been a member of the lead team for 13 national projects on WIL. She has published extensively on industry engagement and WIL and is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of WIL. She works collaboratively with an international consortium of WIL researchers.
