NACE’s Competency Symposium 2022 | Virtual

This session is designed for those beginning their competency program. Learn about the concept of “The Four Pillars” that frame competency work:

1. Establishing a Plan
2. Engaging Stakeholders
3. Resource Development
4. Measuring Impact

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: 

• Learn about the four pillars of competency implementation: establishing a plan; engaging stakeholders; developing resources; and measuring impact;
• Gain insight from others who have recently initiated competency work on their campus; and
• Learn assessment strategies that can help you state the need for a competency development push on your campuses, and then assess growth as you begin your competency work.

Presenters

• Leigh Lassiter-Counts, Director of Career Services, Hendrix College
• Kristin Walker-Donnelly Ph.D., Director of Assessment, Division of Student Affairs, Clemson University

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: 

• Discover best practices by 200+ participating institutions on supporting competency development and awareness by leveraging and acting upon Career Readiness assessment data;
• Explore how participating students compare to the project’s large national sample of other students and 87,000 job candidates rated on the same behaviors;
• Hear how Arizona State University Work+ fundamentally redesigned student employment and captures assessment data to ensure that it aligns to a student’s career goals; and
• Learn how the CareerBound program at Krannert’s Professional Development Center at Purdue University captures baseline career readiness scores on all first-year students and leverages the data to create personalized development plans to address competencies in areas of need.

Presenters

• Randy Bitting, Head & Co-founder of Career Readiness, SkillSurvey
• Matthew Brink, Assistant Executive Director, NACE
• Sarah Ratekin, Director, CareerBound and Undergraduate Student Engagement, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
• Scott Travis, Program Director, Work + Learn, University College, Arizona State University

Sponsored by

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

• Dr. Niesha Ziehmke, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Guttman Community College, CUNY
• Nicola Blake, Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs, Guttman Community College, CUNY

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

• Ramon De Los Santos, Ed.D., Assistant Dean for Student Success, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Joshua Goldblatt, Associate Director, Advising Initiatives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Leah Richards, Ph.D., Professor of English; Faculty Advising Lead, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Jessica Perez, Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

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

• Angela M. Christie, Ph.D., Faculty Director, College to Career; Director of the Accelerator Program, National Institute for Student Success, Georgia State University

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.

• Phase 1: Pre-Initiative Launch: We will share key considerations, the role of the original faculty blue ribbon committee and pathways concept, establishing a faculty director role, compass team, and the acquisition of resources.
• Phase 2: Building the Foundation for Integration in the Student Experience with a Scalable Model and Faculty Engagement: We will share the conceptualization of the framework, which is inclusive of career services, how we have integrated it into existing structures, and our investment in building scalable tools and resources. A key focus has been our faculty engagement strategy and the creation of the Teaching Fellows program which has been critical to responding to faculty feedback as well as creating a pedagogical approach to integrating competencies into the classroom.
• Phase 3: Scaling for Impact: Towards a More Inclusive Career Management Support Model: We will share how our efforts are allowing us to prioritize underrepresented students and students of color by moving away from one-to-one service to utilizing a scalable approach, removing barriers for underrepresented students, and providing experiences that support the acquisition of requisite experiences leading to success.

Presenters

• Judy Anderson, Director of Career Readiness, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
• Nanette Hanks, Assistant Dean of Curriculum, Office of Undergraduate Education, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
• Dr. Ascan Koerner, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, Professor of Communication Studies, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
• Dr. Amy Lee, Director of Faculty Engagement for Career Readiness; Director of First Year Writing, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
• Alexander Hines, Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Program, PES CLA Undergraduate Education, University of Minnesota
• Maggie Heier, Director, Career Services, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota

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: 

• Learn about the four pillars of competency implementation: establishing a plan; engaging stakeholders; developing resources; and measuring impact;
• Participants will gain insight from others who have recently initiated competency work on their campus; and
• Participants will learn assessment strategies that can help them state the need for a competency development push on their campuses, and then assess growth as they begin their competency work.

Presenters

• Dr. Tondaleya G. Jackson, Director, Center of Excellence for Educator Preparation and Innovation; Associate Professor, Voorhees College
• Robert Vega, Deputy Director, Texas Career Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin
• Dr. Leslie Templeton, Associate Provost for Faculty Development and Professor of Psychology, Hendrix College

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

• Tuli Chatterji, Associate Professor, Department of English; LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative Founder, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Yacquelin Nava, CCPD CUNY Service Corps Manager; LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative Member, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Stefania Dinu, ASAP Advisor; LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative Member, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Rocio Reynoso, ASAP Career Specialist; LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative Member, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

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

• Patrick Madsen, Executive Director of the University Career Center, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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

• Dr. Cheri Etling-Paulsen, Associate Dean, Center for Teaching and Learning; Associate Professor in Finance, The University of Tampa
• Tim Harding, Vice President for Career Development and Engagement, The University of Tampa
• Ana Maia, Senior Associate Director of Leadership and Assessment in Student Leadership and Engagement, The University of Tampa
• Joshua Pullens, Assistant Director, Competitive Sports - Campus Recreation, The University of Tampa
• Amber Rivera, Associate Director of Residential Education in Residence Life, The University of Tampa
• Dr. Stephanie Russell Krebs, Vice President of Student Affairs, The University of Tampa

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

• Define basic data and assessment terms and components of an assessment project and assessment cycle;
• Conduct a data inventory around competency development and a competency program;
• Identify at least one strategy to implement assessment at the micro or macro level that connects to larger college, division, or institutional goals or metrics; and
• Evaluate resources provided that would enhance your culture of evidence and/or staff competence and confidence around assessment.

Presenter

• Kristin Walker-Donnelly Ph.D., Director of Assessment, Division of Student Affairs, Clemson University

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

• Integrate NACE Career Readiness Competencies initiatives on campus;
• Integrate student reflection throughout the career readiness journey;
• Learn why personalization is important to be successful;
• Use digital badges to recognize career readiness milestones; and
• Build competency-based student records.

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

• Sean Carson, Senior Vice President, University Partnerships, Suitable
• Jeremy Taylor, Ph.D., Dean of the Institute for Career Readiness and McMaster School, Defiance College
• Tracey N. Hanton, Assistant Director for Career Development; Endorsed Program Coordinator, Purdue Fort Wayne
• Suzi Billington, Director, Carson Center for Student Success, Washington State University
• Sarah Soule, Associate Director of Professional Skills, Providence College
• Courtney Bigger, Associate Director, Undergraduate Programming, University of Maryland

Sponsored By

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

• Olga Aksakalova, Professor of English; Coordinator of Collaborative Online International Learning Program, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Grace Pai, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies; Faculty Coordinator of International Education and Experiential Learning, Guttman Community College, CUNY
• Amy Ramson, Professor of Legal Studies and Criminal Justice; Coordinator of Collaborative Online International Learning, Hostos Community College, CUNY
• Lisanette Rosario, Director of Career Services, Hostos Community College, CUNY
• Jessica Levin, Experiential Learning and Study Abroad Manager, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
• Patricia Jean, Career Program Manager, Center for Career Preparation & Partnerships, Guttman Community College, CUNY

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

• Bascillia Toussaint, Director, Career Exploration & Development Center, Lehman College, CUNY
• Luisiana Baez-Canela, Internship Coordinator; Career Counselor, Lehman College, CUNY
• Leah Benitez, College Assistant, Career Exploration and Development Center, Lehman College, CUNY

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

• Attendees will be provided with a systematic model to introduce and incorporate career service involvement and awareness to new university students.
• Attendees will learn techniques to encourage multiple stakeholders (faculty, staff, and administration) participation and cooperation related to student career development.
• Attendees will be challenges to conceptualize programs and approaches that could be utilized on their campus to inculcate a ‘culture of career readiness’s driven by first year student involvement.

Presenters

• Tracey Jackson, Director, Office of Career Services; Program Manager, UNCF Career Pathways Initiative, Xavier University of Louisiana
• Dr. Richard Peters, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences; Faculty Director of the Core Curriculum; Associate Professor of Management Bank One Solutions; Professor, Division of Business, Xavier University of Louisiana

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

• Nicole Hall, Director of Career and Professional Development, University of North Carolina Greensboro
• William Arnold, Senior, Political Science Major, The University of Tampa
• Ellen Hollins, Senior Psychology Major, Hendrix College
• Bibi Khemraj, Biology Major, Elmezzi Career Fellow, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Joey Adamle, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
• Ashley Persson, Clemson University