Student career readiness

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About the career-readiness project

Being “career-ready” means that students have developed a range of skills that they can transfer to different settings once they graduate.

Students are often unsure or unaware of the many career readiness skills they are developing during their university studies. While we, as faculty, may be deft at highlighting the disciplinary knowledge and subject-specific skills students have developed, we often fail to make transparent the transferable, "career-ready" skills that are embedded in our courses. There are many reasons for this, but one concern is that if we focus on career-ready skills, it will detract from the humanistic and mission-driven part of our curricula.

We encourage you to think of highlighting career-ready skills as foundational to your curriculum and to the "whole person" education we offer our students.

This is also an issue of equitable pedagogical practice. We know that under-represented students benefit in myriad ways when transferable skills are made transparent. Moreover, the ability of our students to find meaningful work, that will pay for college and allow them to be stewards of our mission, hinges on their ability to recognize the skills they have gained. 

A straightforward tool for faculty 

To help you make the career readiness of your own programs transparent to your students, the Center for Faculty Development has created a course-level inventory and program-level map that faculty can complete and share so that prospective students can see what skills they’re likely to practice in their major and so that current students can reflect on those skills as they build their résumés or portfolios.

We’ve drawn on the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs 2018, the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2019 graduate competencies list, and Seattle University’s own outcomes and mission to create the inventory. Conversation with our colleagues in the Career Engagement Office has led to further refinements.

Below you’ll find guidance for faculty on how to use the course-level inventory and program-level map, followed by a list of the various skills and their descriptions.

Holly Slay Ferraro, David A Green, & Katherine Raichle | Center for Faculty Development | July 2020 

Guidance for faculty

If you would like to discuss anything related to this career readiness project, please request a consultation using this quick online form or email us directly at faculty-development@seattleu.edu.

Career readiness skills and descriptions