Building a Trackable and Measurable Career Ecosystem

Career learning is evolving from optional, opt-in services to embedded experiences that reach every student. Dr. Wyatt explains how UTSA developed their "Future Ready Roadrunners" philosophy, which focuses on academic strength, professional preparation, and personal development for all students, and the key focus areas driving the success of this effort.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Career Ecosystem Era and Higher Education podcast, where we explore the systemic changes colleges and universities are making to ensure every student receives the career learning they need to succeed. My name is Jeremy Badani. I'm the CEO and founder of the Career Leadership Collective, a consulting company dedicated to helping higher education transform their career ecosystem. Today, Career Ecosystem Era and Higher Education Podcast listeners, we are going to listen to an incredible interview that I did with Dr. Tammy Wyatt, Senior Vice Provost for Student Success in Academic Affairs at the University of Texas, San Antonio. This was actually a main stage session at our virtual conference in November 2025. And we loved it so much and thought many of you don't have access or didn't buy access to that conference. We wanted to make it available to everyone. And in this interview with Dr. Wyatt, we talk about what led them to move away from an opt-in model toward an embedded model of career learning. Particularly, she spends a good amount of time on measurement and impact. I know measurement is something that's on a lot of folks' mind when it comes to building out their career ecosystem. They're doing it in a really sophisticated manner, so I think you're going to love it. She also digs into their classroom-to-career movement, which is pretty outstanding and how they've been able to bring faculty along with this and develop communities of practice and get their buy-in. I also love how she talks about partnerships with workforce and aligning with workforce. And finally, she just is really great about the lessons learned along the journey. So let's take a listen to my interview on the main stage from our 2025 virtual conference with Dr. Tammy Wyatt. Tammy, it's great to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Thank you. I'm excited to be here and excited for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, we we've we've spent some time together on this topic, and I feel like this is really going to be helpful to the campuses that are listening. So you have we titled this Building a Trackable and Measurable Ecosystem where career-engaged learning is integrated into the academic experience. And you've spent a good amount of time on this over a few years. This is not something that is a new philosophy. You've you've put in place a lot. So let let's let's uh help our listeners walk through your vision philosophy, measurement and impact, how you're doing classroom to career work, uh partnerships with workforce alignment, and and and then future lessons that you've learned. So we'll we'll really uncover everything for them. So let's start out. One of the things that UTSA frames is future ready roadrunners, and it positions career learning and readiness as a as embedded and a shared responsibility, not an add-on. Uh how did that philosophy take root institutionally? And what were the conversations that led to moving away from an opt-in model and toward an embedded model?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Sure, sure. So at UT San Antonio, what we call our future ready roadrunners, um, that philosophy grew out of a very simple but power, I think, powerful idea. You know, every student should graduate academically strong, professionally prepared, and personally equipped to thrive. And so we recognized early that career readiness couldn't rely on optional programs or self-selection. Um, too often, students who would benefit the most, um, particularly those who are first in their families to attend college or who are navigating financial barriers, and that's a large percent of our student population here at UT San Antonio, they're often the least likely to find or access career engage opportunities on their own. And so for them, the university experience is already full of new systems and expectations. And so expecting them to opt in to optional programs meant leaving success to chance in many ways. And so that's why around 2018, we launched our quality enhancement plan, which is our classroom to career. Um, and the goal was to intentionally embed career-engaged learning into the curriculum. And so the goal was that to ensure that every student, regardless of where they start or what they study, uh would graduate having applied what they learned to the real world context. And so this initiative became the foundation for a broader cultural and structural transformation that we did across the institution. Um, we moved from a model where career preparation was owned by individual offices to one that is shared across the institution, and it's supported by a hub and spoke ecosystem. And so this structure connects our academic colleges and our centralized support services that includes our career engaged learning team and others. Um, and we it it connects us around unified goals, shared data that we can talk about, and coordinated strategies that extend across that whole student life cycle. And all of this is in support of our efforts to positive, positively impact um student thriving, what we like to say is student thriving.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah. Well, well, first of all, well done. I mean, incredible and and aptly timed for everything that's happening across higher education. And uh I love to talk about that last note you mentioned was the word student thriving. Um we talk about unique institutional contexts a lot and how the this work broadly is needed, but the you have to appreciate your institutional context. And one of the things you all have done is say, let's connect career learning, career readiness to student thriving, which is uh well-being, belonging, purpose, all that and employability wrapped up in the one. What why was that important for UTSA?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah. So for us, you know, we view it as, like you said, um, it's where academic progress, engagement on campus, and purpose all come together, right? So, and it's not just about performing well in courses. You know, you can have a 4.0 student who graduates in four years, but they may not be thriving and they may not be a career ready graduate, right? So it's about how do we fully make sure that our students are fully able to engage in the university experience and then how confidently they can connect their learning to their future goals. And so career readiness fits naturally into this concept and framework. It you know, it strengthens the sense of purpose. When students understand how their coursework translates into real world skills and opportunities, that's where their engagement often will deepen. Um, they can participate more fully in class, make stronger connections with faculty, which our data is telling us is extremely important for our students. And then they can seek out learning experiences that will reinforce reinforce what they're learning. And so for our student demographics, which again, very high percent first gen and high PEL or high financial needs students, this connection is extremely important. You know, often those students arrive with you know tremendous motivation, but they often have less clarity about how to navigate or maximize that full university experience. And so for these students, time is limited. You know, they are balancing work. 80% of our students work at least part-time. Uh, they're balancing family responsibilities, financial pressures. So optional career experiences can often feel out of reach, um, even when students may want them. And so that's where this concept of the cost of experience becomes so important. And that's a term we've coined that really references those hidden barriers for students. It's the time, the money, the awareness, the access that prevents students from participating in high value opportunities like internships, undergraduate research, you know, the professional networking. And so when career development is optional or requires students to self-navigate often complex systems, those hidden costs often fall heaviest on our students who already face the most constraints. And so by embedding our career-engaged learning into the curriculum and our student thriving framework, we've been able to reduce those barriers and those, you know, the that cost of that experience. You know, our students don't have to search for opportunities. They don't have to worry about whether they can afford the time away from their paid work. Instead, they can gain those structured experiences as part of that academic pathway.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

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SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yes. So we are we are in the process of still building. Um, this will be many phases, but absolutely we're super excited about it. I may start talking really fast because I did it called that. Um one of the so one of the biggest shifts we're making is really moving beyond solely relying on traditional measures of student success and you know, like retention rates, GPA, graduation outcomes. Um, you know, those measures are extremely important and we will track them, but they only tell us what happened after the term is over. They don't really give us the insights of how our students are progressing and engaging and developing in real time. And so, um, and and that's also around thriving, right? Like I said, you know, you can have this 4.0 student who graduates in four years, but did they really engage and thrive and develop those skills that are necessary? Um, and so that's why we built and are building our thriving multi-model. This is in partnership with Civitas Learning, which is our student success technology platform vendor. And so together we're developing a predictive analytics framework and tool. It really reflects that philosophy of thriving. And so we're connecting academic progress, engagement, and career readiness in a unified way. You know, we have our current tool with Civitas Learning really is has been focused on persistence to the next term, retention, those um activities and engagements that will impact that, which again is very, very important. But we wanted to be able to have some real-time measures and to also be able to specifically see um three core dimensions. Uh, how academic achievement, you know, that steady progress, that course performance, the credit momentum, your more traditional pieces, how that impacts our students on a in real time, um, engagement and learning. So meaningful participation in academic and co-curricular experiences that often that strengthen that connection and motivation in real time. How are we seeing that impact there thriving? And then career readiness indicators. So how involvement in things like project-based courses, undergraduate research, um using VMOC, all of those things, right? How does that mean attending a career fair? How does that impact um their various academic engagement and career readiness scores? And all of that adds together to give us this third quotient. So we're we're we are ready to, you know, we've been building it um across the summer and across this fall semester, and we're really excited about the potential for what it has to offer for us.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah. And you have had some early insights about learning, even before building that, um looking at some of the data about which experiences most kind of strongly predict thriving and post-graduation outcomes. What were some of your early uh insights there?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Sure. Um, so you know, by by integrating these areas into that multi-model, you know, we're going to generate this thriving score. So we um we expect to see uh you know better understanding um uh you know, just not how our not just how our students are performing academically, but we really want to see those early goals. So we expect to see with with the model and through other tools, we've seen, you know, national research suggests strong links between experiential learning and persistence, and we've seen some of that. Um, but what we want to be able to do is using our at scale, our data at scale and in real time, we want to see which specific types of experiences, right, have the greatest impact for our students. And so while we've been able to track, you know, does engagement in in uh these experiences overall make an impact? How does undergraduate research specifically play a role? How does um attendance at a career fair play uh impact that? And so we want to be able to see the specificity of the different activities, um, but also we want to see um, you know, certain milestones anticipate certain milestones about when is it best, right? When is the right time? So, you know, is it the first year um assignment related to career? Is it a second-year project-based course? You know, where do we see the stronger trajectories for a future trajectories for our students? So understanding when the experiences matter most will help us to refine our curriculum design and our outreach. And we're also excited about how this tool will help support actionable outreach. So as those capabilities expand, as we continue to see more data, um, this is going to help advisors, faculty, our student success teams engage with students with timely check-ins. You know, we can see from day to day there's been a change, what's going on? Did this increase um engagement? Did this, are we seeing a dip? So we can send out encouragement to our students, we can send appropriate resources, and we can do it in the moment, not at the end of the semester once grades have rolled, right? So it's about allowing us to see those experiences, uh, you know, what it the specificity of what experiences, when it's happening, and then what are the action steps we can do in the moment to make adjustments?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

It's really fantastic. I think you're gonna have uh hundreds around the country on the edge of their seat to see to see what is happening here. And it's and and I think there's already a lot of note-taking about wow, this is a sophisticated system that can appreciate great career learning, great thriving, uh, measuring how that's effective, uh, and eventually being able to tell a pretty powerful story with that of success. And I I'm just imagining um the drool uh from your enrollment colleagues when they when you really get to the heart of some of this and and and from and and what how alumni will appreciate the value of their degree. I feel like there's so many benefits that come alongside with this.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah. Uh so let's dig into classroom to career. I you use that phrase. Um I I think 2018, an initiative started, then it's evolved into this future ready framework. And uh talk about the key steps from moving a classroom to career initiative to institutionalizing it within the curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Right, right. So um, so first, you know, we knew it needed to be woven directly into the academic experience. And so um you're right, 2018, we started with the QEP and you know, we set at the time what we called a bold institutional target, um, that by 2028, 75% of all of our undergraduates would participate in at least one career engaged learning experience. And so, you know, as we had joked um before, you know, I'll be honest, every now and then I wonder why didn't we just say 100%? Um, I think at the time we wanted to be ambitious and realistic at the same time as we scaled it. Um, but we are getting close to that 75%. So we'll definitely go into reach that goal. But we've got I've got my eye on that 100% for the future. But, you know, we needed to invest in infrastructure uh to be able to achieve the goal. And so, you know, I briefly mentioned a hub and spoke model. So we created a hub and spoke model where every academic college partners with our student success and our career engaged learning team uh to coordinate in this specific particular context, you know, career coordinate career experiential learning opportunities. We can track participation, we can monitor outcomes, we've created a career engaged learning dashboard that um and that makes that progress visible and it helps ensure consistency across colleges. So we've worked with our institutional research team to create um a dashboard of all of our experiences. Um, and we're already starting to see the impact of that work um since 2022. We've seen an increase in an 85% increase in the number of courses that are offering embedded experiential learning opportunities. And so that growth, yeah, it's exciting. And we've been able to inventory it, we can see it visually, right? In the dashboard. So that growth reflects, you know, a real cultural change. You know, faculty are embracing the applied learning not as an extra task, but as an essential part of high quality instruction.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Uh yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

A major, another major engine of the work was when we when we started, we knew we needed a center to be able to really um focus these efforts. And so our NAGEM Center for Innovation and Career Advancement was created, and that's been a major engine behind this transformation because it provides holistic, collaborative, experiential programming. It's that's that hub that then works with the college success centers as spokes to really build in those skills. And so one specific program that has been exciting and is now, I can say, an award-winning program uh within the state is our NAGEM Strategist program, and that connects students with paid interdisciplinary project-based learning opportunities in partnership with our industry partners here in town. Um, and so today the program partners with over 70 industries and organizations in San Antonio and gives students that access to those real world challenges. They're working with industry leaders to develop and solve a specific challenge for that particular industry or organization. So it helps the it helps the industry partner, but it also builds those skill sets in our students so that when they go out into the real world, they're ready from day one. So those are a couple of infrastructure pieces that we put into place.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

That's great. And I'll I'll I'll tie some history together for our listeners here. 1998 and 2002, that that you know, four to five year span there. Uh here's what Hub and Spoke meant. It meant get a career coach or a career team in the academic college in order to do more appointments there. You're saying Hub and Spoke is now about integration. Hub and spoke is now about. It's not about just putting a coach there or putting another team of career professionals. That if that happens, that's great, but it's it really truly is about curricular integration and ensuring that faculty can better their practices in the process. Fantastic. Yeah. That's right. That's fantastic. And the the the new and improved hub and spoke academic integration. I love it. Um you've also developed career readiness maps and they align with student pathways and competencies. Um can you talk about what's been effective in helping faculty adopt and embed these?

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So one of our most impactful tools has been our career readiness maps. And so they outline the skills, applied experiences, you know, learning milestones that students encounter across the major. I'm sure many institutions and many folks listening today have career ready maps, right? Um, what we've found is that these maps give faculty and advisors as well, academic advisors, but uh from a faculty perspective, they give faculty a very clear program-level view of how readiness builds from year to year. And they make it easy to identify where experiential or project-based-based learning naturally fits within the existing coursework. Um faculty appreciate that the maps don't ask them to reinvent the curriculum, but it helps them surface where real world skills are already present and where they can be strengthened. So it really helps to um in the fine-tuning, right? Of again, getting at that how, right? The map is the what, but then it helps lead to how do we always continuously improve and fine-tune, and that also allows that to take place.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah, that's great. And it really plays into some of the work you're doing to kind of connect this to regional industry sectors. You're I mean, from cybersecurity to biosciences, and we could just kind of go on of a list of how how do workforce partnerships in the in your context and what you're building out, do they at all inform some of this design work?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

And oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yeah, how does that play out?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah, yeah. So workforce alignment is an extension of our academic mission, right? We want students to graduate with strong disciplinary knowledge, but also those skills that our industry partners say are necessary, and especially in a rapidly changing environment and economy. So um we we aligned uh, you know, the fountain, we aligned all of our top um academic programs with the most dynamic industries in San Antonio. And you mentioned a few cyber, biosciences, data science, healthcare, engineering. And so by mapping our degree programs to these sectors, we were able to design learning pathways that prepare our students for those real world opportunities. And so the partnership shaped our curriculum in many ways. Um, first, I guess number one, partners help validate the skill outcomes. You know, the industry leaders are giving us direct insight into those competencies, the tools, the skills that are emerging in their field in real time. So we can make sure that we are adequately preparing our students. Um, they also help create authentic project-based learning, like I mentioned earlier with our NAGEM strategist program as an example. Um and through also through opportunities like career paid internships and so forth. Um, but I think um equally importantly is workforce alignment benefits the region as much as it benefits our students. And so, you know, by preparing our students with those high demand skills, we're strengthening San Antonio's talent pipeline, Texas's talent pipeline. 90% of our students are remain in Texas upon graduation, up to three years after graduation. They're still in Texas. So we are we are helping to support the talent pipeline, not only in our in our city, in our region, but across our state. And so, and helping employers find graduates who are ready to contribute day one. That's our goal. And so um all of our colleges have um industry um advisory boards, and so we work very closely with our colleges in support of that and gather that information. We truly see our industry partners, uh, our industry uh in the area as true partners and collaborators in this process.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, and it's it's it's so interesting to hear you talk about that in the context of this broader strategy that started with you know philosophical underpinnings about why we do this, building out a system, tracking and measuring it. It sheds a whole new light on industry partnerships when you put it in that context. And I really, I really love this. Um, okay, one final question. If you could share your lessons or insights with other institutions who are seeking to build out from philosophy to tracking and measuring to a true curricular-infused ecosystem, uh, they're seeking to do this. What lessons have you learned along the way?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Sure, sure. Um, well, I say it's not just about launching new programs, right? Um, it's about creating systems, it's about shifting both culture and infrastructure. So both are necessary. Um, but it will take time. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Um, and so as many student success initiatives, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So um understanding that to change culture and to change infrastructure takes time. Um in terms of insights, I would say first design for access, not selectivity. So if it's optional, it'll always be uneven. And so students with the least time, fewest connections, like we'd said, um, are often the ones who miss out. So embedding applied learning as much as possible into the curriculum is critical and important. Um measure what matters and measure it early. And so, you know, like again, those traditional uh outcomes are essential, but they're retrospective. So identifying and creating infrastructure and ways, uh data that uh the on those leading indicators so you can see how students are progressing in real time. And again, that takes that takes time and resources to be able to build that. We we are not a resource-rich institution. We had to be very strategic about how we repurposed our funds and our resources in this way because this was a a very important initiative for us. Um, so that kind of gets to the third. Invest in the right infrastructure, invest in what um where you feel you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck, right? So um, and innovation doesn't scale without infrastructure. So you've got to invest. So um creating um structures organizationally, um, opportunities where you're going to be connecting. We often say we're like the plumbing in student success. We connect many things together. That's our role. The experts are uh many of our experts, and especially in career-engaged learning, are going to be in the colleges and with our faculty. So, how do we bring that expertise together and funnel it together? So creating that ecosystem is really important. Um, and so to invest in that is critical. And then I would say lastly, probably should be the first thing I said, but I'll end with it is you know, center the student experience in every decision. Um, that should be the first thing that you say and think of, you know, and and that was our guiding question was how do we ensure every student has access to these experiences? And so when access, purpose, and readiness are at the core design principles, everything else seems to fall into place.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Wow. Well said. Dr. Tammy Wyatt, Senior Vice Provost at UTSA. Thanks for the outstanding conversation today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Thank you for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I just love that session. Good stuff, Dr. Wyatt. And I will say I believe she's one of the more strategic minds in the career ecosystem era. And I particularly love how she and the Academic Affairs Division at UTSA are keeping students at the heart of it all. They are focused on every student. They certainly are doing the work of building a career ecosystem, no longer an opt-in system, moving toward everything embedded on multiple career learning outcomes. And the beauty, they're measuring it all, and they're creating a very robust system to do so. Well, you can catch all the episodes and subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter at career leadershipcollective.com slash podcast. As always, if you've not yet ordered the book, The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education, we encourage you to do so. Send us your questions, thoughts on what's working in your career ecosystem, and challenges you'd like us to address at podcast at career leadershipcollective.com. We're building a new era together. Bye for now.