NACE’s Competency Symposium 2022 is the premier gathering for higher education professionals and faculty, professional associations, collaborators, and partners to engage and learn about institution-wide competency implementation strategies and leading practices.
This year’s virtual event will feature expert voices, leading practices, and practical, actionable take-aways for specific attendee persona’s including faculty, higher education leaders, campus collaborators and partners, career services professionals, and more!
Leading voices from AAC&U, NACA, NASPA, and NACE will discuss the importance of competency implementation in addressing the challenges, opportunities, and impact higher education can and must have on student success and preparedness.
March 3, 2022 ∙ 1 – 2 p.m. ET | Professional Association Kick-Off Panel: Opening Session
Competency development is essential for students as they prepare for a successfully transition from college to career. The extent to which students hone competencies has real-life implications on equitable outcomes. Recent NACE data point to employers hiring decisions emphasizing competency proficiency, more so than GPA when considering who to hire. Now, more than ever before, colleges and universities are integrating competencies into the fabric of their student experiences by infusing intentional competency-based student learning into the curriculum and co-curriculum—all with the goal of fostering student success and career readiness.
Join us as association leaders discuss the impact competency implementation has on institutional effectiveness and student preparedness, the importance of competency implementation across the higher education community, opportunities for collaboration between academic and student affairs, and strategies and leading practices with institutions to establish new and enhance existing competency initiatives.
Presenters:
Competency development is essential for students as they prepare for a successful transition from college to career. The extent to which students hone competencies has real life implications on equitable outcomes. This year’s symposium will share leading practices for strategic institution-wide approaches to competency implementation within a framework of foundational outcomes: academic achievement, career readiness, life preparedness, and social justice. Each session will feature expert voices, leading practices, and practical, actionable take-aways for institutions and individuals in every stage of progress – from those just beginning to those with years of experience.
Fee: $100 (members); $100 (nonmembers); FREE (HBCUs)
Separate registration required for the free kick-off webinar on March 3, 2022.
Save with 5+ people! It’s fast and easy to apply a team discount with online registration: 5+ members from the same organization save 10% or 10+ members save 15%. No discount code required. It’s automatically applied.
Register Now Register Now (HBCUs Only)Employers engage students and candidates in meaningful ways throughout the talent acquisition life cycle, often starting as early as the first year of college. Interactions between employers and students focus on—among a number of topics—awareness of career opportunities and expectations about the importance of understanding career path possibilities, building networks, and being prepared for a successful transition from college to career. NACE research points to employers emphasizing competencies—on par with GPA—when making hiring decisions. This panel discussion will highlight how employers view and incorporate competencies into their recruiting strategies and practices and the ways in which they collaborate with higher education partners.
Panelists
This session is designed for those beginning their competency program. Learn about the concept of “The Four Pillars” that frame competency work:
Designed with multiple entry-points, The Four Pillars can help you create plans, gain support, and track progress, however it makes most sense for YOUR campus and students. This session will provide a thorough overview of the four pillars accompanied by practical steps for initiating the launch of a competency initiative.
Session Focus: Beginners
Learning Outcomes:
Presenters
Join Matthew Brink, NACE assistant executive director and Randy Bitting, Career Readiness Project co-founder from SkillSurvey Career Readiness™ as they present updated national findings and analysis based on the ratings of more than 50,000 student evaluations by 70,000 supervisors and coworkers at 25,000+ companies on the extent students engaged in 28-30 behaviors during an internship, co-op, or student employment.
Over the course of two years, NACE teamed up with SkillSurvey and 200+ NACE-member institutions to validate that a proven HR platform developed by I/O Psychologists could be adapted and used to assess students' work experiences against the eight NACE Career Readiness Competencies.
Hear from two Career Readiness Awards Winners, Scott Travis, program director, Work + Learn, Arizona State University, and Sarah Ratekin, director, CareerBound & Undergraduate Student Engagement, Krannert Professional Development Center, Purdue University, who will discuss how they are leveraging assessment and data in innovative ways.
Session Focus: All
Learning Outcomes:
Presenters
Guttman Community College began 10 years ago with a commitment to integrate equity-focused career exploration, planning, and development into the curriculum. In this presentation, we will share how this commitment has evolved. We will highlight 1) a required course called Ethnographies of Work; 2) the critical role of Experiential Learning Opportunities; 3) how we have aligned our institutional learning outcomes with the NACE Career Readiness Competencies.
Session Focus: Faculty Engagement
Presenters
This presentation will focus on a multidivisional initiative called Student Milestones and how different areas of the college collaborate to enhance student learning and development. Through a collaboration among Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Information Technology, and Marketing and Communications, LaGuardia Community College developed student self-guided milestones aligned with the college’s learning objectives, academic and career advisement standards, and NACE Career Readiness Competencies. The milestones are markers of student progress that support and complement the student’s coursework and plans for their future: Students complete tasks by attending events or meeting with an office or person to meet each milestone. Milestone tasks are related to degree, transfer, and career planning and are intended to keep students on track to graduate, transfer, and/or enter the job market.
Session Focus: Career Services
Presenters
Career Services and faculty spaces on most college campuses operate independently. It is rare to find a university that has integrated the two spaces well. While there are faculty who utilize the tools and expertise offered by their university's career center, it is more often a situation of faculty believing "students learn about professionalization over THERE." Research points to the fact that students trust the career advice given by faculty members over the training and advice offered by career services experts. Since students spend more time with faculty than they do with any other entity on campus, it might be time to rethink (and restructure) how colleges deliver employment tools, career-readiness activities, and professional mentoring. This session provides an example of how to integrate the career services and academic spaces.
Session Focus: Faculty Engagement
Presenter
Key leaders from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota will share insight about the Career Readiness Initiative that has become a core focus of the college’s mission since its inception in 2015, when Dean John Coleman created a strategic roadmap for the college. Career readiness is defined as the acquisition of 10 core competencies inherent in a liberal arts education—providing a framework for supporting student success and career-related goals and outcomes of both curricular and extracurricular activities.
Using our initiative as a case study, we will share how we navigated leading institutional change, key strategic decisions, and moments crucial for success in three distinct phases over the last seven years. The College of Liberal Arts is the largest college on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus educating 13,000 plus undergraduate students offering over 65 major programs in 31 departments.
Presenters
This session is designed for those beginning their competency program. Hear from three different career services leaders about how they developed and launched their new competency programs. Learn key insights about planning and implementation and hear how it’s going. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.
Session Focus: Beginners
Learning Outcomes:
Presenters
This presentation will focus on a college-wide initiative—LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative (LHI)—at LaGuardia Community College of City University of New York that aims to foster experiential learning and strengthen student learning outcomes when partnering with local and global organizations. The presenters, representing both Academic Affairs and Students Affairs, will highlight how a collaborative endeavor opens up avenues for students to engage in deep learning, facilitate inquiry and problem-solving competencies, engage in ethical reflection of global issues, and understand translation of skills and classroom knowledge when engaging in professional settings. With a specific focus on NACE Career Readiness Competencies, the presentation will foreground how LHI’s engagement with digital technology, leadership, and global awareness inculcates invaluable transferable skills among students, such as professionalism and critical thinking. The presenters will provide an overview of the formation of LHI, its goals, impact, and implications and the diverse ways in which an integration of NACE Career Readiness Competencies within the framework of curricular and co-curricular activities benefits students, staff, faculty, and the institution.
Session Focus: Institution/College-wide Initiatives
Presenters
As institutions look toward the future of work, re-designing curriculum with an eye on competency development, and communicating this to students, entities that connect heavily with industry should be brought into the fold. Studies conducted by McKinsey, Deloitte, EAB, Hart Research, Gallup, and others report a common thread when it comes to the communication between higher education and industry – it is lacking. Spearheaded by the career center, using lateral thinking to innovate a new path forward, University of North Carolina at Charlotte has embarked on a strategy to assist in the translation between higher education and industry through the creation of techniques, technology, and consulting with faculty. This session will introduce participants to the work that has been done so far and the direction we are taking toward competency integration.
Session Focus: Faculty Engagement
Presenter
Academic and Student Affairs leaders will share the University of Tampa’s journey implementing an institution-wide competency development that focuses on academic achievement, career readiness, life preparedness, and social mobility and justice. The discussion will provide insight into strategies, provide examples of competency development being embedded into curricular and co-curricular experiences, and consider ways in which an institution-wide initiative may result in positive impact on recruitment, retention/persistence, and fund raising.
Using the University of Tampa’s Spartan Ready as a case study, participants will be encouraged to consider how they might strategically embed competency development at their institution, recognizing the unique nature of each campus community.
Session Focus: Institution/College-wide Initiatives
Panelists
This session is designed for those beginning their competency program, thinking about how to assess the competency program or student learning, or needing a refresher on assessment. We will ground the session with basic terminology, components of an assessment plan, and a variety of assessment cycle models. From there, we will offer questions to ask about your current data and assessment efforts, practical strategies for assessing at the student level in curricular and co-curricular experiences (micro) and the program or institution level (macro), and ways to connect your work to larger college, division, or institutional goals/metrics. Finally, we will close with resources to enhance your culture of evidence and continuous improvement efforts as well as and staff competence and confidence around assessment.
Session Focus: Beginners
Learning Outcomes
Presenter
Attend this session to hear a variety of perspectives regarding competency initiatives and how to personalize them for students on campus.
Session Focus: Intermediate
Learning Outcomes
This session will feature five schools who will highlight their competency initiatives on campus. Panelists will discuss how they personalized their competency initiative; how they raised awareness with students and faculty; how they get students to participate; how they have scaled their programs on campus; and how they assess their initiative’s impact on career readiness.
Panelists
This presentation addresses a multi-level collaboration among career specialists, faculty, and administrators from nine colleges and universities in the United States and Middle East and North Africa region that are involved in the Global Scholars Achieving Career Success (GSACS) virtual exchange program. The program connects students from the New York City with students in Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, and Morocco. Students collaborate virtually on curricular projects that address UN Sustainable Development Goals, and they engage in experiential learning activities that often include work with community-based organizations and NGOs. At the end of the program, students present their work at the virtual conference and participate in the career success workshop.
By engaging students from different countries in productive teamwork using technology, raising issues of global significance, and taking students outside of class to engage in experiential learning activities, GSACS serves as a fertile space for developing students’ career competencies. We will discuss strategies for facilitating career success activities in this multi-national academic and civic context from the beginning of virtual exchange to the alumni stage. We will also examine best practices in coordinating efforts among career specialists, faculty, and program administrators across national borders.
Session Focus: Campus Collaboration
Presenters
The Career Exploration & Development Center at Lehman College uses the digital badge to provide first year students and sophomores with a foundational understanding of what it means to be career ready and why it is important at this point in their college experience. Learn about the value of the Career Ready Micro-credential as a tangible measurement of students’ development of these competencies to employers, as well as best practices, lessons learned and success.
Session Focus: Career Services
Presenters
Xavier University of Louisiana will present an overview of a campus-wide approach integrating academic initiatives into various pathways to ensure the career readiness of first-year students. This session will outline the steps to build a comprehensive career model of connecting students to the necessary resources. Additionally, we will provide the tools used to engage the entire campus into the process. We will focus on a team approach of advising first-year students using the Strong Interest Inventory (SII). We will share information on key staff that serves as team Advisors, including becoming SII trained and certified. We will share the implementation of Career Pathways, including engaging faculty, embedding staff into departments, hosting workshops, and utilizing campus resources. We will share how the SII is used to develop career and academic plans during advising sessions for first-year students and how faculty have integrated the CPI into the College Experience course curriculum. We will share how the career pathway initiative incorporates the NACE Competencies.
Session Focus: Institution/College-wide Initiatives
Learning Outcomes
Presenters
For students, the college experience is rich with possibilities and opportunities for understanding, developing, and honing essential competencies and skills in preparation for a successful transition from college to career. Prioritizing, managing, and balancing the myriad of opportunities a college experience presents can be a daunting undertaking, particularly during the current challenges brought on by the global pandemic. Join us as students share their living experiences, journeys of self-discovery, and insights about the guidance and support they experienced during their college career.
Panelists
*Schedule subject to change
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
University of Minnesota
Lehman College, CUNY
Lehman College, CUNY
SkillSurvey
Guttman Community College, CUNY
JPMorgan Chase
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Georgia State University
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
The University of Tampa
AAC&U
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
University of Minnesota
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
The University of Tampa
Cepheid
University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Voorhees College
Xavier University of Louisiana
Guttman Community College, CUNY
LHI and Elmezzi Career Fellows Program
University of Minnesota
The University of Tampa
Hendrix College
University of Minnesota
Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The University of Tampa
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Maximus, 2021-22 NACE President
Guttman Community College, CUNY
Cigna; 2022-23 NACE President-Elect
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Xavier University of Louisiana
The University of Tampa
Hostos Community College, CUNY
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
The University of Tampa
Hostos Community College, CUNY
Hendrix College
Lehman College, CUNY
The University of Texas at Austin
Clemson University
Guttman Community College, CUNY
Interested in sponsoring this event? Contact Ashley Kuback, Business Development and Outreach Manager, at businessdevelopment@naceweb.org, 610.625.1020.
Career readiness is a foundation from which to demonstrate requisite core competencies that broadly prepare the college educated for success in the workplace and lifelong career management.
For new college graduates, career readiness is key to ensuring successful entrance into the workforce. Career readiness is the foundation upon which a successful career is launched. Career readiness is, quite simply, the new career currency.
For higher education, career readiness provides a framework for addressing career-related goals and outcomes of curricular and extracurricular activities, regardless of the student’s field of study. For employers, career readiness plays an important role in sourcing talent, providing a means of identifying key skills and abilities across all job functions; similarly, career readiness offers employers a framework for developing talent through internship and other experiential education programs.
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