The Career Readiness Project
The Career Readiness Project strives to weave career education throughout the Metro State student journey. A Career Readiness framework provides a way for faculty, advisors, and students to reflect on how coursework can help students understand their educational experience and prepare them for professional journeys. Career Readiness is a university-wide effort that encourages faculty and staff coming together to foster a culture of career development, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and a community of practice. Universities are integrating this approach institution-wide by infusing intentional student learning mapped to career competencies into the curriculum and co-curriculum.
Career readiness defined
The simplest way to define Career Readiness is a mastery of the 10 core career competencies:
- Professional communication
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Ethical decision making
- Innovation and creativity
- Leadership and followership
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Cultural agility, inclusion, and anti-racism
- Community engagement
- Digital literacy
- Continuous learning and career management
Tools and resources
- Teams site for current practices collection and communication
- Linked In Learning Career Competencies
- Linked In Learning Career Steps link
- Competencies Symposium: Strategies for Institution-wide Competency Development link
- Podcasts
- Articles
- Link to self-evaluation tool + PDF
- Link to CCs
- Link to Overview Handout + PDF
- Faculty Survey benchmark results
Timeline of accomplishments:
- May, 2017: Started with Career Center Strategic Planning
- Summer, 2017: With College of Sciences, wrote HHMI Grant featuring Career Readiness model
- September 8: Established a working relationship with University of Minnesota, which commits to working with 3 schools in a mentorship capacity: Portland State, University of Minnesota Duluth, and Metro State. Assoc. Dean Ascan Koerner presents to science faculty.
- November 5, 2018: Think Tank presentation by Paul Timmins
- November 17: College of Liberal Arts invited University of Minnesota faculty back for a Liberal Arts faculty retreat
- February 15, 2019: Faculty Brown Bag event
- April 5, 2019: University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts faculty workshop for Metro State faculty
- Spring 2019: Professor Lawrence Moe has Career Readiness initiatives in College of Liberal Arts as part of his paid workload for the year
- September 2019: Efforts featured in two NACE articles highlighting work of Denise Williams and Bill Baldus
- August 2020: Deans agree to appoint one faculty member from each college formed a work group using 1 credit of workload
- May 4, 2021: University of Minnesota faculty leads meet with Metro State Deans, Provost, and Associate Provost to discuss implementation