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Career Center for faculty

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:

  1. Professional communication
  2. Critical thinking and problem solving
  3. Ethical decision making
  4. Innovation and creativity
  5. Leadership and followership
  6. Teamwork and collaboration
  7. Cultural agility, inclusion, and anti-racism
  8. Community engagement
  9. Digital literacy
  10. 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