What if Career Learning was Actually Built into College?

What if career learning was actually built into the college experience instead of remaining optional? In this episode, Jeremy Podany, Monique Frost, and Nick Cattin explore the growing movement toward embedded career learning and the strategic integration of career milestones across the student journey. Together, they unpack what meaningful career milestones look like, where colleges should embed them for maximum impact, and why the future of career readiness depends less on optional programming and more on intentional institutional design.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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 Padani. I'm the CEO and founder of the Career Leadership Collective, a consulting company dedicated to helping higher education transform their career ecosystems. And today I am here with my amazing colleagues.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hi, everyone. My name is Monique Prost, and I'm a consultant with the Career Leadership Collective.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Hi everyone, this is Nick Ketten. I'm the senior manager of consulting and training and executive search with the collective.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Embedded career learning. That's right. So we're going to ask the question what if career learning was actually built into the college experience? We previously did an episode on how to define institution-wide or college-wide career learning outcomes. But today is talking about how do you take those definitions and actually create a milestone experience for students.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Yes, Jeremy. And uh in talking with not only Career Center staff, career center leaders, um, but and university administrators, I'd say this is the top trend we have seen since the career leadership collective started nearly 10 years ago. Um, it holds a lot of promise, but it raises many questions for us to discuss today, such as what does strategic integration of milestones look like? Where should colleges actually embed these milestones? How do you choose the right milestones so you ensure students are realizing the career learning outcomes that you previously established? And why is trying to get every single faculty member to do this the wrong strategy? Um, and if that's not the case, if we're not going to pursue that, what are high-leverage points of integration to really help students hit every milestone that we want them to?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, Nick and Jeremy, and I have to say that we just wrapped up an amazing annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, one of my favorite places where embedded career learning was the sole focus. And it was quite impressive to see nearly 40 breakout sessions, a faculty mainstage panel and the provost and vice president of student affairs on the main stage, all just digging into the dimensions of integrating career learning. I am excited to bring some of what we learned from the conference to the show today.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yes. Well, let's roll up our sleeves. But first, you know, the eternal optimist in me loves the what if question. So the question, what if career learning were actually built into the college experience is I love it, but it does kind of point to the fact that it's not. So we're we're addressing this big problem uh as the value proposition of higher ed is taking center stage and all the the subtopics around that um bring career and career learning to the forefront. Uh it's almost like one of those shh, don't tell parents. Um career services is actually optional. And you know, it's something we don't do with any academic department and say, well, you don't have to go to biology classes or anything like that. So uh we are we are addressing this for a really important reason that it's it's uh it it's at a space, uh a point in time where career services is optional, career readiness is optional, uh career learning is optional. So it's a pretty important what if, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yeah, so let's just give a little bit of a roadmap around what is a career milestone. So, Jeremy, you and Nick always say that strategic embedding involves career milestones. When you say career milestones, what do you actually mean?

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah, it's it's good. A milestone is much different than a service, just offering a service. So uh think of an inescapable designed developmental moment for students. So it's literally a milestone along the journey that they have to walk through, something intentionally placed in that student journey, connected to a career learning outcome that the institution's been pretty thoughtful about. Uh often something that's embedded into an existing structure, not doesn't have to be something that's newly created. And I think importantly, a milestone involves learning. It's not just exposure. It could be just exposure, but it really involves learning, which I continue to say is the heartbeat of higher education, right? We're not promising jobs, we're not promising internships. We like those, but those are the outcome of the actual learning process that we can walk students through. So an example of that might be a first-year seminar course that exists, and then they say we're reserving four to six sessions to have a really substantial assignment that helps all of our students design a plan for their career. That is embedded career learning. They're walking through that. It's an iterative project that faculty can then refer back to and make do a lot more of that sense-making work there.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Yeah, and Jeremy, just building on that, I think a lot about an event or a workshop or even a career appointment, particularly when they're optional, is an invitation that a student may or may not attend, and particularly for first-gen students or those who aren't in majors that are very professionally linear. Um, they aren't going to get those milestone experiences. So a milestone is really a part of the pathway along the journey. There's stops that make sure we know students are making progress. And I just think about Monique's in Cleveland, I'm in Indianapolis. If we said, hey, we're going to road trip to visit Jeremy in Fort Collins, and he says you have three days to make it, how would we be able to report back in and know that we are making progress on that journey, even though we may be on different roads, right? So it's that idea of how do we know students are making progress? Once we both hit the Kansas state line, you know we're over halfway to our road trip. So what are those developmental speed bumps across our campus ecosystem that make students kind of slow down, experience career learning as they continue on their journey? And so really it's thinking about milestone A plus milestone B plus milestone C means a student has realized a specific career learning outcome. And Jeremy, that just makes me think about one of the biggest questions campuses ask us is well, if we're gonna have these milestones or these developmental speed bumps, where do we actually embed career milestones?

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, that's right. Where is a is a key question to look at. And when we work with campuses and they're laying out a matrix of, okay, we're going to tackle embedded career learning, looking at all sorts of where's right, where can we actually do this? And broadly, I when we initially started this work, I had a top 10, and I've really whittled that down to a top four. And then, and then there's it's gonna depend on campus within that top four. But if you think about the classroom, it has to be one of these areas. We have to look across the the courses that are available and think about uh foundational courses, gateway courses, professional seminar courses, capstones, etc. Um sometimes that's gonna vary highly based on departments. Um I want to reiterate something here as you think about embedded milestones. The goal is not every faculty member has to do this. The goal is every student. So that may only be 10, 12% of courses in a given department. It's not every one of them, right? So it's not as if you need this broad buy-in from everyone. There may be a few faculty that are like, I'm not gonna participate in this, and that's totally okay. It may not even be needed, right? So courses are are a big space. Uh another another space that's ripe for embedding is uh the student employment space on campus. So all the supervisors that supervise campus jobs, this is a uh part of a large majority of the student experience. Now that may not cover every student, but it can be a part of where embedding actually happens. Uh then we'll have to hedge and say, okay, if if we have a career learning outcome around um around the topic of learning how to articulate the skills that you're learning, right? If that's one of the articulation is one of the learning outcomes, then let's say 30% of the student body is going through that learning outcome through their student employment experience. Well, where then does the rest of the student body get that? So it is a big matrix, but student employment is one space to look at. Academic advising is another space to look at. And again, this is also not to tax academic advisors, but it's already coming up, right? Career design and career exploration and questions around that are already coming up in those spaces. So, how do we actually embed in the in certain processes that already exist? Um, so we we can continue to walk the path of where and and get specific. And you know, some campuses are ready for different locations over the next three months. They're like, oh, this writing-intensive course has opened up in these six departments, and they're looking for things like this right now. Is the timing right to cultivate your career ecosystem? Then consider the consulting services of the Career Leadership Collective and learn from the best. We are the leading experts in helping U.S. colleges and universities build and cultivate thriving career ecosystems. At the collective, we've served over 1,100 institutions across the country. Our consulting team combines national expertise with deep appreciation for your institution's unique culture, structure, and goals. Together, we can help you design bold, data-informed strategies that scale career learning for every student. Contact us today at consulting at career leadershipcollective.com. Other times there are ideal courses to embed, but we need a little bit more time to talk it out about how it's going to work to get more buy-in from instructors or or to get more buy-in from uh on-campus employment supervisors, etc. So it takes some time, but those really you're looking for those high-leverage insertion points.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah, and Jeremy, if I had to pull to the top, one of the aspects that I kind of hear you saying is the key is embedding in places where students are already regularly learning andor going, not necessarily by creating an entirely new structure.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

It's so good. Yeah, I I mean I don't think I've ever seen a it's rare to see an entirely new structure and campus tradition get created very quickly. Now, sometimes that happens over time. Um, sometimes it happens in a similar environment, like a career course could get uh created that's required. We're seeing that pop up more and more than it has in the past. So and I think you know Nick is Nick might be the most strategically brained person on the staff, so I'm gonna push this question his way. Um and so much though so that there's frustration with lack of strategy sometimes. But you know, hey, I I think it's important we can't just do random embedding here. So uh let's let's talk about this. One of the things that and I hinted at this that we've learned is trying to get all faculty to embed uh everything usually usually fails. So, Nick, why would you say that is?

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah, and I'd say one, it doesn't recognize what faculty are already doing, right? And faculty right now are being asked to do a lot more than they have historically. And so there's a lot of faculty fatigue of having them piling on more and more responsibilities, particularly if it's a tenure track faculty member, and in helping students with career embedding career success doesn't help them meet tenure and promotion. On some campuses, it does. Uh, but if we're trying to empower all faculty, then we're uh taking a one size fits all approach and we're gonna spend a lot of energy and not get much return. Um, there's also a lack of clarity around uh what faculty would be doing or how that's strategic. And what I mean by that is there's actually points. If I'm a faculty member and I teach second semester senior year, that that's not actually a great time to start thinking about career learning outcomes. There's there's other things that we want to be doing earlier on. Um, and if we're doing it for all faculty, we can inadvertently come up with an inconsistent student experience or overduplication. I remember when faculty unsolicited would say, Oh, I'm requiring my students to come in and have their resume reviewed. And one student could have three faculty in one semester requiring them to have their resume reviewed, right? So giving it that bigger strategy and prioritization uh is thinking about how do we actually map our milestones so that it's strategic in a way that it makes sure we're clear on what our priorities for students are. We actually helped the campus map their established milestones to what was already occurring. And a lot of the faculty were already doing great work. But when we mapped it across the four-year experience, most of it was occurring in the senior year and some was occurring in the freshman year, and almost nothing was occurring in the sophomore year. Yet that sophomore year is key, right? So if we just say, let's everybody or the coalition of the willing, even, we may inadvertently pile all of our uh milestones in one particular place, it creates an uneven experience for students. And when you actually ask uh faculty or department chairs or deans, um, there's generally four to six courses that hit 80% of students. Either because if you think about if we can embed even within psychology, for example, that's one of the largest majors on campus, and it's one of the largest minors, or one that's somebody's taking a gin ed experience. So we want to get more savvy about not only who are the faculty that are doing this well, but who do we want to build out these strategic partnerships in ways that ensure we're getting the maximum number of students, particularly in an opt-in environment.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, I love this. It's the best career ecosystems are totally strategic. Uh, and I want to mention your your comment about duplication as well, because I mean uh it comes up a lot when we're we're doing some of this work with campuses. And here's what I want everybody listening to do call me when you get to the problem of too much career learning so that there's duplication. Right. We're not, I I I look forward to that day. It's you know, it it we're not there yet. We're at the we're at the opposite problem. The opposite problem is uh there's large percentages of students who are not receiving the career learning that they need to succeed. And so might there be some tactical duplication that Nick talked about, sure, with a resume critique requirement here and there, but that's just tactical stuff. But broadly, this this career learning, career readiness that let's yeah, let's get to the point of that duplication problem.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

Yeah, and to your point, Jeremy, with that embedding of uh uh milestones that moves beyond the tactics, right? So we can have lots of stuff going on, but it's not actually helping us reach our goals of the embedded milestones nor the career learning outcomes from that strategic vantage point.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, and Nick and Jeremy, I just want to highlight one um element that I love to hear us reiterate, and that is you do not need 100% faculty participation to create transformational institutional momentum. I and I think one of the best examples that I always keep at the forefront of my mind, and may have even mentioned it on a podcast before, is I think about the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King did not get 100% of humanity to buy into um equality for all, but he certainly tackled issues at a systemic level that caused for the momentum to be transformational. So I think it's key to know you do not need 100% faculty participation, just the willing. Um, and I think that's really helpful. So let's talk a little bit about what actually gets embedded when we're at that point in this great blueprint for folks. So, Nick and Jeremy, what do you say to those who hear career readiness and immediately think a resume workshop? What actually belongs in embedded career milestones and how do the milestones help students realize career learning outcomes?

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Yeah, that's great, Monique. So, again, that idea of embedding, how are we embedding this workshop? So, a what I call a y'all come workshop where students may walk by or may sign up in advance, that is not strategically embedding. Now, if we can take some of the learnings from that and embed it in a student experience that is required along their journey, then that really becomes transformational. So just kind of zooming out, our milestones need to connect directly to our career learning outcomes. So if you have your career learning outcome number one, then you need a milestone 1A, 1B, and 1C, potentially two, three, or four, that you know then you can measure those, and students by the end of their journey will have realized that career learning outcome. So, in essence, you can develop your matrix and you're gonna repeat that next for career learning outcome too. And you have two A, two B, two C. And again, we can start to see how we're embedding these milestones, not just in a uh opt-in workshop, but really thinking about this strategic way of integrating into the student experience. Um, great ways to do this within the curriculum we think about are reflection and meaning making. So when a student takes a particular class, um, at the end of every class, asking, having faculty on their syllabus or have students actually have to write a reflection on, now that you take away your learning from this class, how might it potentially impact your future career plans or career goals? That doesn't require a career staff member to be there, right? It's a developmental speed bump that now we can start to measure how many students are actually doing that activity and where do we see them make meaning? You can even start to leverage tools like AI that assesses their learning at scale. Um, and we can start to think what are the other things we want to start embedding that again are tied back to high-impact practices? So, how can we connect classroom learning or even things outside of the classroom? Jeremy mentioned student employment around articulation. How are they articulating what they've learned and how it connects to their story and their future potential career goals? Um, how are they building out networking connections with alumni employers? How are they increasing awareness of opportunities as well? Um, and then some programs have some very hands on experiential learning. Right, where required internships or embedded projects with employers or community partners. So all of those can then be mapped as, for example, 1A, 1B, 1C, that they're able to realize that career uh learning outcome. Um, in just the example of developing a plan, something that we think a career plan, every student should have. One A could be in the first year experience, one B could be in their sophomore year advising appointment with uh academic advisors, one C could be in their uh entry-level class to their major, right? So we start to see how all of those start to really ensure all students are getting these career learning outcomes through the embedded milestones.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yep, and I love that it's about translating the degree into value. It's about helping students connect learning to future contributions. It is, I would almost say gone are the days where we need to have an argument about uh is this vocationalism or is this are we trying to professionalize every major program? And that's not the case, and I I love it. I love how uh this can be inserted into any academic environment to provide that layer of connection. It's a it's a real, it's a beautiful thing. And let's keep going on on faculty's role here and in embedded career learning and how the classroom clearly isn't the only place to embed, but it's often the most relevant. And I mean it's often the most relevant we it gets heightened in certain environments, even. So we've worked with campuses where large uh uh non-traditionally aged learners who are coming back to school, and their only interaction with the campus experience is in the classroom, and so then you you you have to really uh zero in on the role of faculty and how this plays out in the classroom. So, what have we seen work well with faculty partnerships?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah, I Jeremy, I'll hop in here because I feel like our podcasts are so well connected, and I absolutely loved when I had the chance to sit down with um some friends at Metro State University. And and if you are curious about a campus where all the learning really takes place in the classroom, that is one, as they have um mainly non-traditional students on their campuses. But a couple things rose to the top, and these were the top two when we talked about the faculty role when it comes to embedding learning, and that was the importance of starting with interested faculty. I think in every training, every conversation we have with the collective, there are always comments about, but there are just faculty that are not interested. And we love highlighting that you also have faculty that are interested. So we say start there. Um, and in the podcast with Metro State University, that was highlighted as well. As well as the second point, which is be sure to empower faculty as co-creators of career learning and milestones and not just byproducts to get insight from or advice from, but instead invite them to be a part of that authorship that's happening and taking place around career learning and the creation of the milestones.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Yeah, and that can be done, Monique, as you're talking. That can be done in a variety of ways, like uh faculty communities of practice. So many of our friends listening may have formalized career champions programs, but there's other faculty communities of practice on their campuses that they could either embed, empower, or even learn from. I know there's some campuses that have just done a semester or a year-long fellowship with a targeted group of faculty reading a book that's specifically around connecting career in the liberal arts, uh, for example. Um, and then other things that we've seen work well is how do faculty align with their existing course goals. So again, this isn't something new. A lot of time it's just a tweak, right? Or realignment. I think about going to the gym and you have a personal trainer and they say, hey, you're you're doing that exercise pretty good, but just make this small adjustment and it's going to transform your workout. That's similar with the faculty work. We don't need, they don't need to overhaul uh things to get that maximum uh buy-in, but it oftentimes it's just that realignments. Uh and then how do we think about giving plug and play learning modules for easy use, whether that's on Canvas or just tweaking assignments? And I know that got talked about um with our interview uh with Ball State, Jim Mackitee, Dave Huo, where they talked about how they're taking that approach of just these small adjustments and realignments that really have allowed them to embed career learning within the curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

I love it. Yeah, I think the bottom line here is the institutions that are succeeding with embedded career learning, they are not forcing faculty participation. They are cultivating it.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Absolutely. Um, and you know, I think we all get to see this done really well. And uh Nick, I know that you're embarking upon a couple road trips soon and you just have come off the road. So I'm just curious as far as what are some examples of integrated milestones you've seen that made you stop and say, wow, this campus really understands career ecosystem work.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

Yeah, too, and you know, I just mentioned earlier, but two come to mind is Ball State when they're doing this work and empowering faculty to embed milestones. Uh, the gym and the career team there, and then their faculty partners were very strategic on focusing in the first year experience. Now, some first year experiences classes on uh many campuses have been the kitchen sink where they try to come in and everything. Um, but ball state has curated theirs very well. Um, and they've aligned not all career, you know, learning outcomes and embedded milestones, but just key things as the first step along this journey of students. And when they've done that, they've actually been able to measure a significant impact on persistence and retention on students into the sophomore year. Uh, another one that comes to mind, we've been working with uh University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. They're doing awesome work there, actually being led out of their provost office. Um, they created their career learning outcomes, and then we worked with them as they actually developed a matrix to assess what was occurring, and they realized they had a strategic opportunity to do this through the general education requirements. Now, that can be hard if it's a career team doing this, but when it's led or in partnership with the provost office, they saw this opportunity to say, how can we start to align requirements in the Gen Ed to support this? And when they're doing that, they're scaffolding embedded milestones across the entire student experience. And they were able to start realigning some key courses within the curriculum, knowing that that was really going to reach and impact all students, not just those who opt into the career experience.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Yeah, that's great. And I think if you want a little hint at um the key aspects of embedding, it's almost like the magic just happens when students don't experience career readiness as separate from education. So um just kind of tuck that in as a keynote for you, yourselves and your campuses.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

No doubt, no doubt. And I think, you know, we I've actually had a couple campuses say to me recently before we started building a career ecosystem, we just thought we were behind because we had less resources toward our career center, a few less FTEs than other campuses, less technology tools. So we felt like we're behind in the career center era. But they leapfrog over all of it when they're fully embedding career learning outcomes and walking down the path to create milestones to make that happen because they move from thinking of attendance markers or number of full-time staff toward the volume of students that are receiving the career readiness they learn they and learning they need to succeed. So it's it's really neat to see this era change here. So Monique and Nick, if a campus wants to move forward and move toward integrated career milestones, where should they begin?

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Yeah, Jeremy, I think that there's the initial reaction of people just want to jump in and start embedding things. But the first step is to actually map the student life cycle. What is the student lifecycle? What is the student journey in the curriculum and co-curriculum? Meaning, what is already occurring before you start to try to design meaningful uh ways to embed career uh learning? Because there's a lot of great stuff already being done, and you'll be surprised you can unearth, um, share these stories of success of what's already occurring, and then then you know where to strategically deploy your resources to fill in the gaps from what's already um occurring.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah, and I would just add as another step, I would say identify three to five developmental moments every student should experience and form your career learning outcomes. And I love the the term of thinking about it in moments. So I have a one-year-old, and our days can feel mundane until I think about those moments that are like her milestones that she's reached. And that helps me sit, reflect, and say, oh, she's growing because I noted that moment. So I love that to think about those developmental moments for every student.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Fantastic. Well, let's come back to the what if that we started at the beginning. What is actually going to happen if every student engages with multiple career learning milestones? You know, I I have come to believe, and I I think now I fully believe, that there's plenty of data to back this up. There we're not we're not looking for well, if students spend more time learning how to articulate their their skills, if this is going to help them in interviews. We know this. We know this is a we know a lot about where we're at with all of this. It's actually just a matter of of putting it all together. So I I think that the future of career learning is not about adding more optional programming around the edges of the college experience. It's it's actually about redesigning the student experience itself. And the institutions that thrive in the career ecosystem era will be the ones that intentionally build career learning into the pathways students already travel every day. Well, Monique and Nick, it's been awesome to riff on this topic with you. So thanks for being back on the podcast. And to all the listeners, you can catch all the episodes and subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter at Career Leadership Collective.comslash 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 is working in your career ecosystem, and challenges you'd like for us to address to podcast at Career Leadership Collective.com. We are building a new era together. Bye for now.