Call for Proposals - Overview
Are you interested in helping your students connect their learning experiences with real-world workforce skills? We are looking for faculty to be a part of a cohort to work together to explore multiple methods for supporting students in making connections between their course work and the skills desired by employers. Students regularly engage in course work that helps prepare them for careers after college. Our challenge lies in equipping students with the vocabulary to articulate the connections between these experiences and the skills and competencies that will help them in the job market. Interested faculty will work with support from the TLTC, the Career Development Center, and the Faculty Center.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is a professional association of college career service professionals. They use a framework of eight competencies and behaviors for addressing career-related goals, which they define as “a foundation from which to demonstrate requisite core competencies that broadly prepare the college educated for success in the workplace and lifelong career management.” The eight career readiness competencies identified by NACE are:
- Professionalism
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Teamwork
- Technology
- Leadership
- Equity & Inclusion
- Career & Self Development
Multiple offices, including the Career Development Center and Student Life, already use these eight competencies as a framework for connecting college work with career development. By using the NACE framework across all career readiness projects on campus we can establish a common vocabulary to provide context for faculty and students.
A recently released a report called, “Integrating Academic and Career Development: Strategies to Scale Experiential Learning and Reflection Across the Curriculum,” identified practices that encourage ongoing reflection and narration for students. This helps them transition from “I took” and “I learned” statements towards “I did and I can do” assertions. Faculty members in this cohort will be integrating teaching practices that encourage students to reflect and assist them with incorporating course competencies into the development of their professional persona. Throughout students’ SUNY Oneonta experience they collect artifacts, experiences, and new competencies; one of the goals of this project is to help students articulate their experience to themselves and others. Students could be saving class artifacts in a portfolio to share later, taking time in the moment to reflect on growth and goals, or doing mock interviews and practicing how they will talk about connecting their classwork with skills for a potential job.
You do not need to have any previous experience integrating career competencies to participate in the funding opportunity. This grant is focused on embedding career readiness skills early in students' educational experience, integrating into 1000, 2000, and potentially 3000 level classes. We are looking for professors who are interested in working within a cohort model to explore how these competencies could be incorporated into a wide-range of disciplines and who would be willing to share their findings with others.
- Incorporating a new activity that directly connects critical thinking done in a course activity with how the students would use that in their career.
- A syllabus reorganization or redesign that emphasizes and highlights teamwork and leadership skills that are necessary for successful employment and already a part of your course.
- Designing a mock interview in which students prepare statements on how their course work prepared them to be more capable in using technology and being more professional.
- Incorporating regular reflections throughout the semester that ask students to make connections between equity and inclusion topics in your coursework and how students could talk about these in job applications and job settings.
- A project that serves a local community or simulates a task someone in a professional career would do that includes a reflection on how the students would talk about this project during an interview.
- A series of guest presentations that explore and connect your course material with professional practice and communication.
- If you are thinking of something that isn’t on the list, please contact us. We are especially interested in projects that support coursework not always associated with career readiness by our students.
- Attend the SUNY conference titled “Open and Public” hosted at SUNY Oneonta, November 4-5 (registration fee is covered as a part of the grant).
- Participate in monthly group sessions beginning in November 2022.
- Attend a January workshop to refine your plans for your project.
- Submit a revised syllabus and plan by the end of April 2023 for how you would incorporate student reflections about career readiness competencies – This plan could be for a spring 2023, summer 2023 or a fall 2023 course.
- Willingness to share syllabi, discussion prompts and sample assignments with future cohorts.
- Paid registration for November 4-5 conference
- $90 stipend (either paid directly or can be used to reimburse travel) to attend the January workshop
- $510 stipend (either paid directly or can be used to reimburse travel) upon submission of course redesign plan and updated syllabus
- Working with a cohort of faculty and professionals who are interested in connecting course activities with career readiness competencies.
If you are interested, please submit a 1-page proposal (max 500 words) that includes the following information:
- Name
- Department
- Course(s) you are interested in doing this work with
- What semester would you expect to implement this work? (Spring 2023, Summer 2023, or Fall 2023)
- Narrative that includes:
- What, if anything, are you currently doing to connect your course work with career skills or competencies (i.e. are you currently connecting your course work to career readiness or are there ways that you are using real-world scenarios in your classroom?)
- What do you hope to gain by being a part of this community?
- What support do you think you would need to be successful?
- What could you contribute to the community?
Applications are due by October 7, 2022
Here is the link to the Application Submission Form