Welcome to the Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education

The Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education (CECE) is UNE’s hub for interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice. Recognized as a national IPE leader, UNE is the only institution in New England that is part of the National Center for Interprofessional Education and Practice’s prestigious Innovation Network.

Our mission is to prepare students to work collaboratively, across disciplines, to achieve more successful outcomes as members of clinical and community teams.

Our work touches every health professions program at UNE and, increasingly, many of the arts, sciences, research, and humanities programs as well. We foster an inclusive environment where students, faculty, and community partners learn together to advance effective health practices and improve the quality of life for all people.

Interprofessional education takes place when students from two or more disciplines learn with, from, and about each other to better understand different profession’s roles and expertise, improve communication, enhance teamwork, and advance future workforce skills.  

IPE began with health professions, with students from different programs being taught to work together as part of larger, interdisciplinary healthcare teams. This approach has proven to produce successful patient outcomes, and the model is now expanding, so it can be applied to broader situations.

Collaborative Practice is the professional application of IPE, with people from different backgrounds and with different areas of expertise working together to deliver a higher quality of service and care to achieve common goals.

Teamwork allows you to achieve more together than any one person could achieve alone. 

In addition to making people more effective health care providers, IPE helps people get hired, maximize leadership opportunities, avert professional burnout, develop resilience, and more.

These are among the findings from a recent survey of alumni, asking them to gauge the impact their interprofessional education is having on their working lives.  

Learn more about the impact report

Why Interprofessional Education Matters

CECE engages UNE undergraduate and graduate students in a wide range of cross-disciplinary experiential activities, immersive service-learning opportunities, team-based community initiatives, and collaborative research projects.   

Students can earn an IPE Honors Distinction by documenting participation in CECE activities in an e-portfolio and producing a meaningful interprofessional project. 

If you’d like to learn more about CECE opportunities, email Michelle Cote at mcote8@une.edu.

Faculty and professional staff are always welcome and encouraged to become members of CECE’s lively community as facilitators, advisors, and researchers to advance knowledge of IPE’s efficacy.

To learn more about employee opportunities, email Shelley Cohen Konrad at scohenkonrad@une.edu or email Kris Hall at chall4@une.edu. 

CECE builds relationships with faculty, university centers, programs, community partners, and national organizations. These partnerships contribute to state-of-the-art programming, meaningful co-curricular and service-learning opportunities for students while at the university, and lifelong connections post-graduation.

If you would like to partner with our center, email Shelley Cohen Konrad at scohenkonrad@une.edu.