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Strong work-integrated learning partnerships often begin with a real organisational challenge, a course where students can make a meaningful contribution, and a participation model the partner can sustain.

Career Accelerator helps external organisations and 91ɫ��Ƭ Business School teaching teams turn live organisational challenges into structured student projects, giving partners fresh analysis while students work on questions with real-world consequences.

For Kathy Garland, Senior Business & Communications Officer at Forbes Shire Council, the opportunity connected Council’s need for fresh thinking on business attraction and circular economy opportunities with her ambition to give local young people a stronger connection to higher education.

Forbes has no university on its doorstep, so higher education can feel distant to some local young people. Many Sydney-based students, meanwhile, have limited exposure to regional Australia as a place to work, build businesses or contribute their skills. The partnership with Career Accelerator brought those two perspectives together.

The relationship began after Kathy heard Sandeep Kirpalani from 91ɫ��Ƭ’s Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE) speak at a conference in Dubbo and invited the TRaCE team to Forbes. The team toured the Central West Industrial Park and local businesses, discussed the region’s sustainability ambitions and ran a circular economy learning session for community members. Although the visit did not produce a formal project, it established a working relationship between TRaCE and Forbes.

At a networking event, Cerys Rogers from Career Accelerator learned about TRaCE’s work with Forbes and other regional circular economy partners, leading to an introduction to Kathy and Forbes Shire Council Business Development Officer Amy Strudwick. Forbes brought the regional challenge and local knowledge, while Career Accelerator and the teaching team shaped it into a workable COMM2244 Future of Work Project and supported delivery throughout the term.

A genuine challenge is essential, but it also needs to be appropriately scoped, relevant to the course and achievable within a ten-week term.

Forbes’ starting point was ambitious: industrial growth, circular economy development, business attraction, workforce needs and future possibilities for the Central West Industrial Park. The co-design process turned that breadth into focused questions, with the circular economy providing continuity as successive cohorts explored industrial development, construction, business attraction and sustainable enterprise.

With each cohort, Career Accelerator worked between Forbes and the teaching team to preserve the real organisational need while refining the brief around what students could contribute and what context they needed. The process also showed why local context matters. When one group suggested the 391-acre industrial site could be used as a farm, Council saw how differently metropolitan and regional scale could be understood.

Students had to test their assumptions against local realities, while Council sharpened how it explained Forbes’ priorities to others. The students were learning how to work with a real client; Council was learning how to frame its challenges so others could help address them.

The partnership’s value was not measured by whether Council adopted every recommendation. Some ideas tested assumptions, opened new lines of inquiry or contributed evidence to wider work. One clear example came when Forbes prepared a prospectus for the NSW Government’s investment team while pursuing an opportunity linked to modern methods of construction, drawing on research and analysis from the student projects.

Council also drew on conversations with younger metropolitan and international students while refining the Forbes Financial Gap Year, a campaign encouraging young professionals to experience regional living. Their perspectives helped Council test what potential residents valued: not only employment and affordability, but cafés, green space, community connection and life outside work.

For students, the projects exposed regional economic development as a complex challenge involving infrastructure, housing, sustainability, workforce attraction and community identity. They needed to listen to the partner, question assumptions and adapt familiar business tools to a context many had not encountered before.

For an external organisation, a valuable work-integrated learning experience depends on two things: a genuine challenge and a practical engagement model. Career Accelerator and the teaching team structured Council’s involvement around four planned touchpoints: a kick-off, two progress conversations and final presentations. These gave students access to Council while feedback could still shape their work.

Career Accelerator and the teaching team managed the project preparation, scheduling and course requirements, allowing Forbes to concentrate its time where its expertise added the greatest value. Kathy said the organised structure made participation manageable and not demanding on time.

That structure made Forbes an active but sustainable partner. Council contributed local knowledge, responded to student questions and provided feedback throughout the term, while Career Accelerator and the teaching team held the course architecture. The result was a partnership that became more useful with each cohort.

In August, Forbes Shire Council was named a finalist for the 2026 WIL Australia Local Hero Award, recognising smaller organisations whose contribution to student learning exceeds what their size might suggest. For Kathy, the longer-term ambition remains the one that first prompted her to seek a university connection: helping young people in the region see higher education as visible and possible.