Join/Renew
The Queens College (QC) Experiential Education Office administers community-based experiential learning opportunities that help cultivate students’ long-term success inside and outside the classroom, including internships, community-engaged learning, and community service.
One of these programs is CUNY Career Launch, a CUNY-led, paid summer internship program open to eligible undergraduate students in the CUNY system. As the nation’s largest urban public university, the CUNY system spans 25 colleges across the city’s five boroughs.
Last summer, QC incorporated the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into CUNY Career Launch and, using the NACE Competency Assessment Tool, QC Experiential Education was able to quantify gains interns made through participation in the program.
Eligible applicants for CUNY Career Launch must be 18 to 24 years old, have a GPA of 2.0 or higher, and not have held a paid internship as a CUNY student. Students meeting these requirements can apply to one of CUNY Career Launch’s four industry hubs, including:
- Community & Social Services (CSS);
- Healthcare;
- Marketing & Communications; or
- STEM/Green.
Each of these hubs is managed by a separate CUNY campus. The CSS Hub is staffed by Julie Bashioum, program director; Debby Amaya, program manager; and Simran Parkash, administrative coordinator.
The seven-week internship program—one week of training followed by six weeks in the internship—takes place from July to mid-August. Students work 19 hours per week and earn $20 per hour. Beyond pay, students gain meaningful, supervised, and relevant work experience in their internship.
“QC Experiential Education leads the Community & Social Services Hub, which places students in mission-driven organizations that serve New York City residents and improve the lives of individuals, families, and local communities,” explains Cristina Di Meo, experiential education director at QC.
“During these internships, students participate in hands-on projects in nonprofit organizations or government offices that impact social change. Students gain skills in advocacy, coordinating, event planning, project management, research, social media, writing, and more.”
In summer 2025, 422 students in the CSS Hub completed the CUNY Career Launch internship program. As part of their pre-internship training week in July 2025, students were introduced to the NACE competencies in a career competency and goal-setting workshop conducted by the CSS Hub staff.
“We explained the competencies and why they are important. We also highlighted the three main ones that are important to employers: communication, critical thinking, and teamwork,” Di Meo says.
“We gave the students scenarios to help them think how they would use these skills in their internship. Students value having clear language to describe their skills. While they recognize they’re developing important abilities, they often struggle to articulate them. Employers note that students do have strong evidence of these skills but don’t always connect them to their career goals. This focused experience provides a framework that helps students confidently communicate their skills.”
Of the 422 students who completed the internship program, 129 students completed the NACE Competency Assessment Tool before and after their internship, yielding key data points comparing the pre- and post-self-assessment:
- Overall, across all the competencies, there was an increase in the percentage of students rating themselves as a 4—the highest level of mastery—from pre- to post-assessments.
- The largest increases were seen in the leadership competency’s “engage various resources and seek feedback” dimension (up 34%), followed by a 33% increase in students rating themselves a 4 in the “demonstrate dependability” dimension in in the professional competency.
- There was also a 31% increase in the number of students rating themselves at the highest level of mastery in the “integrate strengths” dimension of the teamwork competency.
Di Meo also reports that in the post-internship assessment, there was a decrease in the percentage of students who rated themselves at the lower ends of mastery—the emerging knowledge and understanding levels—across the eight competencies, indicating students’ growing confidence.
“An exception was in the career and self-development competency,” she says.
“In particular, post-internship, there was a 16% increase in the number of students who gave themselves the lowest ratings in the 'networking' dimension and a 2% increase in the number of students who gave themselves the lowest rating in the 'awareness of strengths and challenges' dimension.”
Di Meo says this may be due to students’ recognition over the course of their internship of their skills and areas for growth.
“The reflection piece is really important, and we're trying to develop more ways for students to do that, because they're immersed in their internships, but they don't necessarily document specific examples of how they’re demonstrating the competencies,” Di Meo explains.
“Having more opportunities to think about what they did and reflect on how it relates to the key competencies is critical. Unless students have that time to reflect on their skill development, put the information on their resume, and start articulating it, it gets lost.”
Di Meo offers several tips to her colleagues for using the competencies and the assessment tool in internship programs and in courses:
- Use S.M.A.R.T. goals—After introducing the competencies and having interns complete the assessment tool, CSS Hub staff asked them to create a S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal for themselves so they have a professional objective on which to focus. This is especially helpful as CUNY Career Launch is a short-term program and the students can try to achieve a goal by the end of it.
- Collaborate with faculty—As part of a QC Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership initiative, Di Meo is co-facilitating a seminar with faculty around career-connected learning and how faculty can introduce concepts around career into their syllabus. The goal is for faculty to consider where there is alignment between the competencies, their discipline, the course, and their students’ learning outcomes, and to come up with an activity or assignment to connect these.
Feedback from interns about the integration of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into CUNY Career Launch has been positive.
“Students say the NACE workshop and competency assessments helped them to reflect on their skills and what they need to improve and that they know the necessary transferable skills to work on and use from their internships as they pursue a career,” Di Meo says.
“This integration has been a real benefit to them.”
