Career Competency Institute Recognized as a Best Faculty Program

The University Career Center (UCC) won Best Faculty Program for its Career Competency Institute project at the 2021 EY Global Career Services Summit. UCC piloted the Career Competency Institute in May 2020 with five departments from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences to partner on the integration of career competencies into their academic courses in order to support students in their overall skill development. The goal is to increase the visibility of career competencies already found in current course activities and existing curricula. A second group currently is participating in the institute with an eye to expanding the program to include grant opportunities for guest speaker costs, networking events or other career-related activities.

“Essentially, the Career Competency Institute demonstrates to faculty that they are already doing these things and provides them with tools to translate the competencies so that the students understand more of the ‘why’ of the content and how it connects to purpose after college,” said Patrick Madsen, executive director of University Career Center.

Approximately 550 students participated in class sections where these career competency tools were employed. An end-of-term student survey found 96 percent of students said it is important to them to find a sense of purpose in their work, and 90 percent of students found the course was delivered in a way that enabled them to understand how the course builds transferable skills and competencies for a future career. In addition, 82 percent of students said it is important to them to clearly understand the connection between what they learn in class and purposeful work.

Research shows that employers seek job candidates that concretely exhibit skills attainment in communication, critical thinking, diversity, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, self-awareness, teamwork, and technology. UCC has been offering programming in these areas for a while. This includes their Competency Compass that allows students to explore campus activities and courses that align to the eight career competencies. Now UCC is expanding this programming to show faculty how to integrate these competencies into their curricula, thereby putting value on the academic qualities and capabilities while demonstrating to students the applied advantage of their acquired knowledge in the workplace.