Implementation Model

All of the projects, tools, resources, and strategies implemented in our faculty-led Career Readiness initiative drive towards helping liberal arts students conceptualize and articulate the value of their education. Our ultimate goal is for College of Liberal Arts alumni to be the most desirable graduates available to employers, graduate programs, and professional schools. The Career Readiness Initiative Report summarizes the phases of the effort starting in 2015 and through 2024.

CLA’s Context and Organizational Structure

The College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities has embarked on an ambitious effort to make career readiness an integral part of the undergraduate student experience through the Career Readiness Initiative. We are a national leader in evolving our approach to serving undergraduate liberal arts students, who make up approximately 40% of all undergraduate students at The University of Minnesota–Twin Cities campus. The College of Liberal Arts consists of 31 academic departments, and 65+ majors and 70+ minors.

Readiness was one of four strategic CLA Roadmap goals formulated under the leadership of former Dean John Coleman in 2014. In its current state, it has been institutionalized as part of the operational structure of CLA positioned within CLA's Office of Undergraduate Education, with oversight by the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, but viewed as being the work of everyone in CLA. The ongoing work is funded by an annual recurring investment by the Office of the Provost of $500,000.

The current organizational structure for Career Readiness was put into place at the end of the second year of the initiative. The original Faculty Director position has been elevated to become part of the role of Associate Dean, as this position oversees units where Career Readiness is integrated, such as Career Services, Academic Advising, President's Emerging Scholars Program, the Martin Luther King Junior Program, and the Office of Student Experience. A different Faculty Director role focused on the Faculty Engagement Strategy has been created to lead the effort to work with faculty and instructors in the college. The original position of Coordinator of Career Readiness was elevated to a Director-level position to drive the day-to-day responsibilities and opportunities to impact the student experience across the college. Career management courses are largely taught by CLA Career Services counselors, with additional sections taught by teaching specialists who are mostly CLA academic advisors.

The Career Readiness Initiative and CLA Career Services are separate but well-coordinated and interdependent units within the Office of Undergraduate Education (UGE), which also includes units for academic advising and student services; first-year and transfer student experience; curriculum; communication, recruitment, scholarships, and awards; diversity, inclusion, and equity programs and initiatives; individualized degree programs; and the learning abroad initiative. Together, the UGE units provide resources, opportunities, and systems from recruitment through graduation that promote student success, career readiness, and personal well-being so students can leverage the advantages of their liberal arts education to the benefit of society.

Also critical to the success of the Career Readiness Initiative was the support and effort of a dedicated cross-functional committee of CLA faculty and staff, the Compass Team, which met monthly from summer 2015 to summer 2024, to provide a coordinated effort on different aspects of the Career Readiness work that is going on at all times throughout the college. Future work will be coordinated in a new cross-functional approach leveraging the knowledge of individuals in CLA specific to priorities. 

Our Philosophy and Purposes

CLA approaches Career Readiness as being the work of everyone in the college. The responsibility is shared between student services units and academic units, as CLA faculty are key participants in the initiative working to embed the framework of the Core Competencies into the classroom. This integrated model bridges both the curricular and co-curricular experiences of students.

The key focus of the Career Readiness Initiative is to help liberal arts students understand the Core Competencies they are developing in their liberal arts education, articulate how they have developed these competencies through their academic and co-curricular experiences, and translate the value of these experiences into the language of employers. Additionally, the initiative serves to:

• Create a cohesive and inevtiable student experience as it relates to Career Readiness with an emphasis on our Career Management Competencies development
• Help students plan both their academic and co-curricular experiences to develop their Core Competencies
• Provide a proactive approach to defending the liberal arts as a sufficient and even preferential preparation for future career success
• Provide a common language for all staff and faculty to talk about the value of the liberal arts from a position of strength 
• Help level the playing field for first-generation students and those from underrepresented backgrounds
• Fulfill our land grant mission and advance the importance of how our graduates shape our communities and our state 

Development of Our Framework

We conducted extensive research and peer review of key reports and articles related to liberal arts education and employers while developing our Core Competencies framework. CLA asked employers what they most valued in recently hired and experienced employees. We also asked our CLA alumni what made them successful in their careers. Overwhelmingly, they reported that the liberal arts education generally and competencies such as thinking critically, communicating clearly, and solving complex problems are what matter more than having a specific major as a career path. In other words, employers and alumni told us that a liberal arts degree, with its emphasis on a well-rounded education, is the foundation for a productive and successful career. Accordingly, the centerpiece of our framework is a set of ten Core Competencies that reflect the very essence of liberal arts education. These competencies were identified through discussions with employers, graduate and professional schools, faculty members, students, alumni, government agencies, and national career development organizations. 

CLA Career Services Structure

CLA Career Services strives to offer a continuum of increasingly inclusive and high impact career management development that advances readiness for all CLA students. The office has four functional areas: Career Counseling, Employer Engagement, Career Management Curriculum, and Internship Support. Each serves a distinct purpose, but all are interrelated in the day-to-day work of the primary mission for CLA Career Services: To develop our students' competency in Career Management, which is one of the ten Core Competencies for CLA.

Career counseling uses a blended model to support our liberal arts students, by their major or by their intended career field.

• Support by Major: Each major or department in CLA has a dedicated liaison relationship with one of our career counselors. This facilitates more personalized referrals from the departments to CLA Career Services and has allowed counselors to develop expertise in the unique career needs of students in each major across our 31 departments and more than 65 majors in the college.
• Support by Career Field: During the second semester of our required First-Year Experience course, students are asked to opt in to receive one or more of our eight Career Field Monthly Updates. (This is also broadly advertised to all liberal arts students and is integrated into the career management course curriculum.) The eight Career Fields are Arts, Business, Communications & Media, Education, Government & Law, Healthcare & Science, Nonprofit & Advocacy, and Tech. 

Both of these counseling paths are closely aligned with our Career Readiness Initiative, our employer engagement efforts, and our Career Management model (Explore, Experience, Excel).

Scaling Up Our Support of Students

We do not rely on students to visit our CLA Career Services office; rather, we use every opportunity to integrate Career Readiness tools and resources into the student experience at key moments and touchpoints including recruitment activities, admissions events, orientation, advising appointments, First-Year Experience and Transfer Student Experience Courses, etc. For example:

• CLA’s Career Readiness Guide is put into the hands of every CLA student to provide an overview of Career Readiness and support students in all stages of their Career Management.
• CLA Career Corner is emailed to all CLA students, faculty, and staff on the first of each month to highlight timely career management information, opportunities to engage with employers, and other relevant information primarily for students (and also as a key strategy to build a culture of career in CLA).
• The CLA Career Hub is a student-facing webpage centralizing all of the tools and services for their career preparation, including a section that helps students understand the ten Core Competencies through alumni videos that describe how the competencies have given CLA graduates an advantage in their careers.
• RATE™, our digital reflection and self-assessment tool, allows students view a course assignment or co-curricular activity as a career readiness experience and Reflect on the experience, Articulate how that experience helped them develop competencies, Translate how those competencies are of value in professional contexts, Evaluate their level of readiness in those competencies through a self-assessment.
• MyCareerManagement, our digital recommendation tool, checks a student's career progress and suggests next steps they can take for their career preparation.

Faculty & Department Engagement 

Engaging students in a consistent conversation about the value of their liberal arts education ultimately needs to happen in the classroom. With 500 tenured faculty and 300+ instructors in CLA, providing opportunities for them to engage in the work and to think differently about their teaching has become a central focus of the Career Readiness effort in the college. CLA’s Core Competencies are aligned with the Student Learning Outcomes of the University of Minnesota. Embedding these outcomes into syllabi, assignments, and classroom discussions is critical in order for students to connect what they are learning in the classroom to their future career success.

Our Faculty Engagement strategy has been led by faculty leaders and administrators. This effort has been coordinated with the departmental career counseling model to leverage partnerships with faculty and departments. Key faculty engagement strategies continue to evolve and have included: 

• Creation of the Readiness Teaching Fellows 
• Creation of the Faculty Advisory Board to guide messaging and direction 
• Building out additional faculty leadership roles and recognizing participation
• Communicating upfront in the initial stages of Career Readiness with departments, and regular updates from the Dean (leveraging the Roadmap goal) and leveraging the voices of involved faculty to tell their story to others
• Building community and providing opportunities outside of departmental silos for faculty to engage around teaching and learning
• Incentivizing participation with stipends for use as professional development funds
• Inviting skeptics to join and responding to their concerns (their voices help to shape the direction of the Career Readiness Initiative)

To help incentivize CLA departments that want to initiate, revise, or expand their ability to support undergraduate career readiness small grants of up to $2,000 to support an event, program, activity or new opportunity related to career readiness.

To recognize faculty and departmental staff who engage deeply in advancing the goals of Career Readiness, CLA confers annual awards. The Career Readiness Teaching Award of $2,500 recognizes an instructor who has made outstanding contributions to undergraduates’ career readiness in the College of Liberal Arts and demonstrated leadership in our Career Readiness initiative. CLA staff who find new ways to incorporate career readiness language and thinking into the daily work of the college, in service of helping students understand and articulate the value of their liberal arts education, are recognized with the Career Readiness Advocate Award of $1,200. 

Timeline of Our Implementation