2026 BREAKOUT SESSIONS
From Classroom to Career: Scaling Active Learning Through Institutional Integration and Digital Engagement Tracking
Dottie Catlin, Jennifer Gibb
Utah Tech University
April 21
1:30 - 2:15
Utah Tech University transformed its institutional tagline "active learning. active life." from a marketing phrase into a comprehensive, measurable ecosystem that bridges pedagogy and student engagement. Through extensive stakeholder input (115 faculty, 80 staff, 100 students), we developed the Personalized Active Learning Model (PALM)—a four-step instructional framework (acquire, expand, apply, evaluate) centered on real-world problem-solving—and paired it with a digital tracking system across eight impact areas (Career & Professional Development, Research, Community Engaged Learning, International & Cultural Experience, Campus Involvement, Service & Volunteerism, Wellness, and Leadership). Students earn badges, awards, and medallions as they progress toward 300 points per impact area, creating a verified university-endorsed scorecard aligned with NACE career-ready competencies. Implementation included faculty training, dedicated active learning classrooms with flexible furniture and technology, and a mobile app integration. Metrics revealed a 6% improvement in exam performance in STEM courses using PALM strategies, reduced achievement gaps for underrepresented students, and over 2,500 documented student engagements across impact areas in the first academic year. Unexpected outcomes included increased cross-departmental collaboration, with academic affairs and student affairs partnering to co-create activities, and students using their digital scorecards as portfolio evidence in job interviews and graduate school applications—demonstrating how intentional academic integration can create measurable pathways from active learning pedagogy to career readiness.
Don’t Sleep on Student Work: Leveraging Student Employment to Advance your Career Ecosystem
Marc Hunsaker, Phillip Edge, Hope Willoughby
Berry College
April 21
1:30 - 2:15
To build an effective campus career ecosystem, Career Services leaders must prioritize academic integration and faculty engagement; however, the reality of shared governance often means these efforts require longer timelines and may introduce roadblocks that demand patience and persistence. Meanwhile, student employment programs—often underutilized—offer a faster, complementary co-curricular path to advance career readiness across campus. This session presents a case study of how Berry College recalibrated its traditional student work program into LifeWorks to consistently deliver on its signature promise to “provide every student eight semesters of meaningful work and paid professional development,” ensuring that all Berry graduates are life- and career-ready. Berry’s recalibration of student employment was a multi-year, campus-wide initiative with over 90% of students voluntarily working across 900+ different jobs within 180+ campus departments. After years of effort (and some setbacks), LifeWorks has become more than a traditional student work program; it has become a core foundation of Berry’s career development ecosystem, embedding career learning and professional development throughout the student lifecycle. Today, 99% of student employees graduate with a LifeWorks-approved résumé, regularly practice job applications and interviews, and receive annual “Berry Career Ready 360” evaluations documenting their job performance and growth in career-readiness competencies. Results speak volumes: for five consecutive years, 99% of graduates have achieved positive career outcomes (~87% knowledge rate), and 85% of seniors now rank LifeWorks as a top learning experience that prepared them to achieve their post-graduation goals. Presenters will employ Podany’s (2025) Career Ecosystem framework to describe two critical changes we’ve made to elevate LifeWorks: systematically embedding career development into strategic milestones across the student employment lifecycle (see LifeWorks Cheat Sheet) and equipping 200+ staff and faculty supervisors to be effective career champions for their student employees. As a result of this presentation, attendees will: a) identify practical opportunities to embed career development experiences within their respective student employment programs (without requiring substantial new funding or additional staff), b) gain practical insights into how to strategically leverage supervisors as career development champions, and c) understand how student employment can be an important co-curricular component within a larger campus career ecosystem.
The Big 7: Creating an Actionable Path to a Paid Internship
Emily McCarthy, Stacy Burnett
University of Arizona
April 21
1:30 - 2:15
Graduating Senior Survey data shows that University of Arizona students who complete a paid internship are 1.5 times as likely to secure employment prior to graduation, with impacts even more significant for historically under-represented students. Yet according to a 2022 university Internship Survey, our First-generation, Pell recipients, female, Black/African American and American Indian students reported lower internship application rates compared to all students. In Fall 2022 the Center for Career Readiness (CCR) launched a comprehensive semester-by-semester career plan for every incoming student. Adoption was lower than anticipated. To simplify the plan we created the Big 7: the steps that were the most tangible and impactful to securing a paid internship. We entered into a strategic partnership with our university’s Marketing & Communications leadership to actively promote the Big 7 at the beginning of Academic Year 2025-2026, tied to interactive programming associated with each step. We also adopted the Big 7 as a framework around which to organize many of our services: including our website, workshops, and career courses. Our campus ecosystem became our partners in promoting the Big 7; we updated our Career Champions program, have trained many of the university’s academic advisors (required advisor training coming in Spring 2026), and are lobbying to introduce the concept via the university-wide 1st year experience course. The integration with multiple student touchpoints repeats and reinforces the message. We believe that the Big 7 unpacks what can be an overwhelming process for students into actionable steps that help them feel confident and empowered. Session participants will: Explore the differences in internship perception and participation between under-represented students and their peers; Learn approaches for partnering with university marketing teams, advisors, and others; and Identify concrete next steps for promoting their own internship preparation programs.
Two Models of Integrating Academic Advising and Career Development
Mary Beth Woodward, Amanda Tompkins
University of Tennessee, Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs
April 21
1:30 - 2:15
Over the past 2 to 4 years, both the centralized Center for Career Development and Academic Exploration and the college-specific Student Success office at the Baker School at University of Tennessee integrated career and academic advising functions. Each unit initiated the integration for different reasons and approached restructuring in distinct ways, yet outcomes, such as increased retention rates, improved career self-efficacy, and expanded experiential learning participation have resulted. Through the experiences of two different units, you will learn strategies and leave with tools that can be implemented at both a macro- and micro- level to integrate academic advising and career.
Better Together: Building Student Success Through a Comprehensive Coaching Model
Patrick Keebler, Shana Young, Melissa Young
Columbus State University
April 21
1:30 - 2:15
This session will highlight Columbus State University’s Better Together: 2030 initiative, a transformative approach to student success centered on a comprehensive academic and career coaching model. Through a $4 million institutional investment, CSU reimagined traditional advising by uniting academic and career support under one holistic framework that empowers every student to develop purpose, persistence, and professional readiness. Anchored in the new Center for Career Design, the model integrates individualized coaching, discipline-specific career guidance, and a required first-year course—Charting Your Course—which introduces all students to life design and career readiness competencies. By aligning academic progression with career outcomes, CSU ensures that every graduate leaves not only with a degree but with the skills, confidence, and connections to thrive in the workforce. This session will share CSU’s design process, implementation strategies, and practical insights for institutions seeking to embed coaching and career readiness into the core of the student experience.
The Other “Hidden Curriculum”: Innovative Job Search Courses at Metro State
Bill Baldus, Jose Santos
Metro State University
April 21
11:15 - 12:00
Unfamiliarity with “professional” work cultures and the job search create a “hidden curriculum” obstructing success and deepening social inequalities. Presenters from Metro State University share models and results from two innovative courses for addressing these deficits. Careers in Social Issues employs anthropological methods to help students network and produce job search portfolios. Reimagining Your Career works with employer partners to take a deep dive into job search strategies with an emphasis on the verbal elements of looking for work. Discussion will weigh the advantages and challenges of development and enrollment for courses like these. Outcomes include a clearer understanding of how the “hidden curriculum” of job search creates difficulties, learning about models from two courses for addressing these difficulties, and evaluating the advantages and challenges for career-course development and enrollment. You will leave with concrete tools and templates for implementation and some exciting ideas to take back to your campus.
100 Career Champions in 100 Days
Gabe Dunbar, Gabe Dunbar, Mitch Port
Bowling Green State University
April 21
11:15 - 12:00
This session is focused on the first 100 days of implementation of an ambitious, institution-wide Career Champion initiative at Bowling Green State University. It was designed to meaningfully elevate faculty & staff engagement in embedded career learning across all nine academic colleges. Leveraging strategic outreach, we launched targeted kick-off sessions within each college, in order to keep the conversation focused to specific disciplinary needs and existing curricular structures. Multiple open sessions were also provided to be accessible to any interested faculty or staff members. This phased approach enabled us to build momentum while also gathering real-time data to better understand faculty attitudes, readiness, and implementation barriers. Early success metrics will be shared along with lessons learned implementing a new Career Champion program. Looking ahead, we plan to refine our training model, expand resources, develop multiple levels of engagement, and integrate longitudinal assessments to sustain and scale this work. This session will share our progress, lessons learned, and next steps, offering a replicable framework for institutions seeking to embed career learning more deeply into the academic experience. This session would be beneficial for other campuses who are also considering taking their first steps with implementing a Career Champions program.
Designing a Scalable Career Ecosystem: Using Learning Outcomes and AI to Integrate Career Education Across Campus
Bradley Matthews, Sarita Soldz
University of Texas at Austin
April 21
11:15 - 12:00
This session highlights how the University of Texas at Austin shifted to a federated career ecosystem grounded in shared career learning outcomes and strategically enabled AI. Over the past year, Career Success elevated career across campus by aligning Career Services Offices (CSOs) around common career learning outcome pillars, establishing best practices in career coach onboarding, and coordinating enterprise career resources to ensure students across campus have access to high-quality career support. This work was driven through intentional relationship-building, engaging leadership, and campus-wide working groups that built trust and shared ownership of the career ecosystem, while leveraging AI and technology. Results included budgetary and time savings for career staff, while advancing a shared standard of career excellence. Participants will gain knowledge and models to align career learning outcomes, strengthen cross-campus partnerships, and implement AI enabled systems that advance career excellence.
Curating the Classroom to Cubicle Connection: A One-Day Intensive Model
Michael Webb
Miami University
April 21
11:15 - 12:00
This session will describe the process and impact of the Miami Farmer School of Business "ME (Major Exploration) Conference. This was developed through collaborative ideation between the Career Services department and Academic advising as a way to introduce first year students to potential career paths within their major through a one day conference syle event where professors and industry professionals were brought in to speak to students about their experiences, and what to expect in the related academic courses. I relied heavily on collaboration with academic personnel, alumni relationships, and our industry partnerships team to identify and connect interested panelists, and our advising team to map out academic coursework plans for students interested in certain professions. The outcomes associated with this were increased understanding in skills required for success in majors (94% student understanding), 70% of students being confident or very confident in their major choice, and 97% of students reporting that the conference was helpful or very helpful in making their major decision. The event also brought collaboration with 34 faculty members, 14 members of the Academic Advising department, and 67 working professionals who donated their time to participate.
Distinctly Harbert: Embedded Career Curriculum Across Four Years
Mandy Devereux, Marianne McCarley
Auburn University, Harbert College of Business
April 21
11:15 - 12:00
This session highlights the four-year career curriculum at Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business. From the first semester as a pre-business major, students begin making connections in the Harbert College to student clubs and orgs, exploring majors, and learning about careers. They gain an understanding of transferable skills, craft a resume, and practice interviewing skills. In our next required career course, students build self-awareness and confidence through CliftonStrengths, develop strong resumes, and engage in employer networking. They conduct deeper career research, and the course culminates in a capstone project Career Action Plan. In year three, students are in their declared majors, and our career course is taught by their Program Champion, a faculty career mentor with industry expertise who helps them define success in specific industries and build connections for internships and full-time roles. In the senior year, students complete a course in ethical leadership and advanced career readiness to ensure they graduate prepared to lead with integrity. Attendees will leave with a replicable framework and implementation strategies for scaling a four-year career curriculum that strengthens engagement and outcomes.
A Faculty–Career Center Partnership for Experiential Learning Reflection
Sarah Crose, Brittany Cord
Luther College
April 21
2:30 - 3:15
What if career learning wasn’t confined to the Career Center, but intentionally embedded across internships, research, and creative work through a shared reflective framework? This session explores how faculty and the Career Center at Luther College partnered to enhance our campus-wide career ecosystem through the Experiential Learning Reflection Seminar. Presenters will share how faculty expertise in curriculum and pedagogy and Career Center leadership in career readiness, reflection, and life design were integrated to support students in making meaning of experiential learning, articulating transferable skills, and connecting academic work to future pathways. The session will highlight how this collaborative model enabled the seminar to be embedded across the curriculum, offered in both synchronous and asynchronous formats, and sustained as a shared structure that supports career learning over time. Participants will explore lessons learned about cross-campus collaboration and distributed ownership, examine indicators of student growth, engagement, and faculty adoption used to guide iteration, and engage in a low-lift reflection activity—leaving with a practical starting point they can adapt to strengthen career learning within their own institutional ecosystems.
FDS - Moving Beyond Salary to Measure Outcomes & Impact
Nathan Hunsaker, Dr. Schernavia Hall, Angelique Crawford
The University of Alabama
April 21
2:30 - 3:15
The University of Alabama team has worked hard over the last year to move the needle on FDS response and knowledge rate. This last May (2025) we saw a 56% survey response rate, a 82% knowledge rate, and a 93% positive outcome rate, a substantial increase in all metrics from the previous year. We will discuss how this was accomplished without requiring responses as a prerequisite for graduation, and discuss how the UA team is working to reframe how they report outcomes out to campus partners to convey more than Average Salary as a marker for outcome success.
Beyond the Resume: A Blueprint for Embedding Career Readiness into Every Course
Brenda Mendez, Jennifer Henriquez
California State University Dominguez Hills-Career Center
April 21
2:30 - 3:15
This session introduces a career-readiness curriculum for faculty embedded within a university's learning management system (Canvas), designed to move beyond traditional activities like resume review. Framed around the NACE Career Readiness Competencies, this curriculum focuses on high-impact, experiential activities that help students intentionally reflect and refine their skills and make meaningful connections between their academic work, lived experiences, and future career goals (i.e., entering the workforce, graduate school, or entrepreneurship).
The strategic integration of this curriculum has yielded positive results in its first semester. Since implementation, 87% of participating faculty found the curriculum and resources helpful. This success highlights the effectiveness of moving toward embedded, competency-based learning to ensure students are prepared to articulate the value of their skills upon graduation. Attendees will learn how to design collaborative faculty-career services partnerships that emphasize student competency development and clearly articulate the value of their education.
Learning Outcomes
Attendees will be able to:
1. Describe high-impact, non-traditional activities that embed the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into course content, moving beyond basic career readiness tasks.
2. Design a framework for collaborative partnerships between career services and academic faculty to integrate competency-based learning into existing courses.
3. Develop a strategy for delivering a career development curriculum that is scalable and intentionally scaffolded across an academic program or college.
From Career Center to Institutional Priority: How Leaders Decide to Invest
Barbara Zerillo,
Post University
April 21
2:30 - 3:15
This session presents a leadership case study tracing how a traditional career center moved from acknowledged importance to funded, institutionally embedded priority. The work began with restraint rather than advocacy: listening to executive priorities, entering leadership decision spaces, and delaying solutions until decision logic was clear. A critical inflection point came when executive leaders engaged with The Career Ecosystem framework and participated in a campus convening with Jeremy Podany, which provided shared language and external validation for systems-level investment. The case details how benchmarking was used as competitive framing, how internal persistence and engagement data were paired with peer comparisons, and how a concise decision brief reframed career from a service function to an institutional risk and capacity issue. Outcomes included executive sponsorship, reporting line changes, funded staffing growth, and technology investment. The session focuses not on programs implemented, but on how leaders came to say yes.
A National Commitment to Career-Connected Learning: Scaling Work-Integrated Learning Across Higher Education
Amy Michalenko, Gabe Dunbar (Bowling Green State University)
Arizona State University
April 21
2:30 - 3:15
Imagine a higher-education ecosystem where every student—regardless of background, major, or institution—graduates with meaningful workplace experience. A higher -education experience where work-integrated learning is a standard – not a privilege. This panel features institutions currently participating in the National Work-Integrated Learning Accelerator. This cohort is piloting and testing models that are embedding WIL into academic programs and their institutions at scale. This open discussion will highlight the benefits of WIL for students, institutions, and employers while showcasing examples of models that diversify experiences and expand access across disciplines.
From Vision to Buy-In: A Replicable Strategic Planning Model for Career Services Leaders
Marissa Deitch, Jason Chan
Haverford College
April 21
3:30 - 4:15
This session shares an accessible, replicable approach to strategic planning in career services that aligns student outcomes and impact with institutional priorities and advancement goals. Presenters will briefly walk through how Haverford designed and implemented an inclusive strategic plan for our career center that aligned with the college’s overall new strategic plan. Success was measured through staff participation and investment in the process, adherence to the planning timeline, stakeholder engagement, and senior leadership’s adoption of the final plan. The presenters will share their structured timeline, planning process, a sample strategic planning framework, ideas for staff and campus stakeholder engagement, and lessons learned throughout the process. Presenters will use polling technology to engage participants in the session content, followed by a question-and-answer period. Participants will leave with clear learning outcomes, including how to (1) design a strategic planning process, (2) engage career services staff, faculty, campus partners, and senior leadership in plan development, and (3) communicate goals and outcomes to build institutional buy-in. With a focus on aligning the career center with institutional priorities, this session is highly relevant for career services leaders navigating institutional change.
From Building Slap Bracelets to Solving AI Ethics: Engaging Students in Case Competitions
Whitney Kuhnlenz, Dr. Jaime L Grillo
Mount Holyoke College
April 21
3:30 - 4:15
This session describes a creative, evidence-backed engagement model designed to help students step outside their comfort zones and build confidence in unfamiliar professional experiences like case competitions. Recognizing common challenges with self-efficacy at a liberal arts institution, we developed a scaffolded pathway that blended hands-on problem solving, low-stakes skill building, and strong faculty and employer partnerships. The experience began with an engineering-style light-up slap bracelet workshop, moved into an interactive “What Is a Case Competition?” session featuring mini-pitches, and culminated in a Generative AI business challenge in partnership with Amazon Web Services. A multi-round process from ideation to application helped interdisciplinary students recognize the transferability of their skills and reduced intimidation around participation, resulting in over 100 students engaged, 80 applicants, and 47 competitors. Students worked directly with AWS professionals, including assigned team coaches, and delivered 12-minute final presentations that highlighted the adaptability and value of a liberal arts education. As a gender-diverse women’s college, this work centers equity, inclusion, and campuswide collaboration, and the session equips attendees with practical strategies to replicate or adapt this model to broaden access, reduce self-doubt, and build essential career competencies across their own institutions.
Career Empowerment Faculty Innovators: A Cohort Model for Embedding Career Readiness Across Disciplines
Harshdeep Nanda
California State University, East Bay
April 21
3:30 - 4:15
Over a two-semester pilot, a cross-disciplinary cohort of five faculty from different colleges (e.g. STEM, humanities, business, health, and social sciences) participated in a structured Career Empowerment Faculty Innovators Program to embed career readiness concepts, assignments, assessments, and industry partnerships into their curriculum and co-curriculum. This session will guide participants through the program’s design, implementation, outcomes, and lessons learned, offering a replicable roadmap for building sustainable faculty innovation pipelines that scale embedded career learning across disciplines. Attendees will leave with a practical framework, implementation tools, and insights to launch or adapt a similar initiative on their own campuses. This project represents a focused component of a larger federal workforce development initiative, funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) by the California Employment Development Department (EDD).
From Zero to Hero: Power-Boosting a New Employer Brand on Your Campus
Ian Caullay
School of Business / Oakland University
April 21
3:30 - 4:15
This session is a mild adaptation of what was a very well received session at our MCEEA 2025 state conference. It describes the tactics employed in partnership with an accounting firm who had zero brand with our students, resulting in strong double-digit hiring success. My team and I worked with an employer who basically had zero brand and hires on our campus in the seven plus years I had been here at Oakland University. Together, we turned them into a top 5 employer, hiring double-digit candidates with triple digit applicants. We did this in multiple ways: a regular cadence/presence on campus, classroom, student organization engagements, professional development sessions, marketing including LinkedIN (employer, university, and students), broader employer engagement campus-wide for talent pipeline building while embedding career into social events, career treks, and more. It speaks to the importance of helping employers connect beyond career fairs, and even one's own school on a university campus. Certainly, the employer themselves are key to such a partnership, but this example can serve as a multi-faceted template for any university career team wanting to engage, educate, and fulfill both student and employer needs. We were able to include this employer as part of a 360 feedback lunch during our AACSB continued accreditation which did not hurt!
It’s in the Syllabus: Embedding Career Readiness Where Learning Already Happens
April Robles
Miami University
April 21
3:30 - 4:15
Career development doesn’t need to be an “extra”—it can live exactly where students already are: the syllabus. This session highlights a scalable, faculty-centered approach to embedding career readiness, experiential learning, and professional competencies directly into course syllabi across disciplines. Participants will learn how intentional syllabus design can normalize career conversations, reduce inequities in access to career support, and strengthen collaboration between academic and career teams.
Drawing from a campus-wide implementation, this session will walk attendees through practical strategies, templates, and partnership models that make academic integration achievable—without overburdening faculty or students.
Case Study: Embedded Career Design in a Required First-Year Undergraduate Course
Julia Lapan
University of Virginia
April 22
10:15 - 11:00
I developed a 4-module (5-hour) career design micro-course to help undergraduate Engineering students begin designing their careers in their first year at UVA. I successfully integrated the content and career learning outcomes into the required 2-semester Engineering Foundations course, which required obtaining buy-in from academic leadership, collaborating with faculty, and training career advising staff to deliver the content in 20 course sections across fall and spring semesters. The outcomes include the following for all 750 Engineering first-year students: all have a functioning resume, all have been introduced to principles of career design, all have spent time reflecting on their curiosities and values, all have conducted an informational interview with an alum, and all have created Odyssey plans (three different versions of the next 5 years - academic, career, and personal goals). The initiative was so successful that I was asked to partner with the academic departments to lead the integration of career education across all four undergraduate years, a project that is currently underway. This session will describe how I was able to design the micro-course, obtain institutional buy-in, collaborate with faculty, train my career staff, and evaluate the success of the initiative. I will share the lessons I have learned and my vision for the future of career design integration with the academic curriculum.
Answering the Call—Then Making One: How faculty and staff reflect on vocation to guide student discernment
Carolyn Serdar, Holly Hess
Carthage College
April 22
10:15 - 11:00
Carthage College, a NetVUE member, has spent the past three years developing and implementing Callings, a campus-wide vocation initiative funded by NetVUE and co-designed by a cross-functional committee of faculty and staff. Rather than locating vocational discernment solely within career services, Callings integrates vocation and career conversations into the academic experience by equipping faculty and staff across the institution to reflect on their own professional calling and then engage students in structured, intentional conversations about purpose and career development. To date, 75 faculty and staff participants have committed to at least two vocation-focused conversations with a minimum of 10 students annually, resulting in approximately 1,500 conversations across campus. This scalable and replicable model has generated strong interest from peer institutions and demonstrates a fresh, academically integrated approach to vocation work, with measurable outcomes including broad participation, increased faculty and staff confidence in vocation conversations, deeper cross-divisional collaboration, and unexpected cultural impacts on teaching, advising, and institutional sense of purpose.
Elevating Student Efficacy and Closing Industry Skills Gaps through Equitable Infusion of Career Readiness into the Student Experience
Susan Chappell, Dr. Bob Orndorff
Penn State
April 22
10:15 - 11:00
Penn State Career Services has been building a community of practice to identify and pilot scalable best practices for equitably infusing Career Decision-Making and Career Readiness into the student academic and co-curricular experience across the University. With the understanding that many students may never visit a Career Services office, this pilot has focused on identifying and reducing the pain points around infusing career readiness into other student experiences, including curriculum, co-curricular activities, and on-campus and federal work-study student employment. This session will share how partners from within the university and beyond came together to identify and launch several high impact practices across the college student life cycle. The team will share how they identified high impact practices to expand student access to and use of career resources, enhance student career decidedness, and advance student awareness of and proficiency within NACE’s Career Readiness Competencies.
From Pilot to Practice: Innovating Career Communities
Chaz Walters, Wil Preston, Rosemary Riel
Towson University
April 22
10:15 - 11:00
As demand for career readiness continues to grow, career services teams must scale up impact for today’s college students. This session examines how Towson University implemented a Career Communities framework to link creative employer engagement with academic spaces through faculty career champions, a Career Communities Micro-Grant program, and connecting employers as co-educators in the classroom. By providing small, targeted grants to faculty, staff and student organizations, career learning was integrated directly into coursework, workshops, and discipline-specific programming, while employers shifted from transactional recruiters to career educational partners aligned with learning outcomes. Session participants will gain practical skills to design and implement innovative strategies that increase student career learning across and engage multiple collaborators. Through case examples and guided reflection, attendees will learn how to launch a micro-grant model, prepare employers to act as career readiness mentors, and partner meaningfully with faculty champions. The session will also share how Career Communities’ success metrics were captured, specifically related to increased campus collaborations, student engagement, and employer partner capacity and retention.
Enhancing the New Student Experience Through Work-Integrated Learning: A Scalable, Course-Embedded Model
James DeVita, Christine Routzahn
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
April 22
10:15 - 11:00
This session will examine how the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is enhancing its New Student Experience by embedding a common, credit-bearing work-integrated learning (WIL) experience into UNIV first-year and transfer transition courses. As part of the national WIL Accelerator, UMBC designed a pilot launching in Spring 2026 that establishes a consistent and equitable entry point into WIL for new students. Through a partnership with Forage, UMBC embedded curated employer-designed virtual work experiences into required UNIV coursework and is co-developing a UMBC-branded simulation aligned with UNIV learning goals to support early career exploration while reducing platform fatigue. Presenters will share what was implemented, how faculty and campus partners were engaged, and how learning outcomes are embedded and assessed within UNIV courses. Expected outcomes include increased student awareness of WIL pathways, earlier connections between academic learning and career readiness, improved equity of access for first-year and transfer students, and a scalable framework for aligning academic onboarding with long-term student success and workforce readiness.
Start with the End in Mind: Using Career Markers to Guide the Student Journey
Beth Lee, Xiomara (Xio) Tapia
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
April 22
11:15 - 12:00
We created a milestone framework on a public-school campus to serve as a guide for over 25,000 students. We experienced a 209% increase in student touchpoints in the first semester pilot program with 450 students. (Although results are preliminary, after launching campus-wide this Fall, some digital resource groups are seeing a more than 100% increase in use year over year.) With the help of digital resources and campus collaborations, the Career Success Markers are helping us scale support and create equitable access to students. Join us as we share key tips and takeaways that can help you in developing similar programs on your campus.
Industry Intersections: A Place-Based Blueprint for Making Regional Economies the Classroom for High-Impact Career Education
Josh Taylor
Gatton College of Business and Economics, the University of Kentucky
April 22
11:15 - 12:00
Industry Intersections is Gatton’s signature applied-learning series that builds early industry fluency by immersing students in the business engines behind music, tourism, sports, and entertainment through sequenced workshops, employer-expert engagement, and travel-based experiential learning. Recent editions include 2024’s “Breaking the Big Machine: Taylor Swift, Industry Execs, and the Shifting Eras (and Economics) of the Modern Music Industry,” featuring partners such as Universal, Warner, Amazon Music, and iTunes and an embedded Nashville, TN trip to meet with executives at SONY and iHeart Media; and 2025’s “Branding the Bluegrass: Basketball, Bourbon, and the Business of Place-Based Tourism,” highlighting companies like The Mint Gaming Hall, Four Roses Distillery, JMI Sports, and Commerce Lexington with an Asheville, NC experiential visit to meet with management and marketing executives at The Biltmore Estate. Designed to integrate seamlessly with all five Gatton business majors and to promote both career exploration and career readiness, the model is intentionally replicable for institutions seeking to align curriculum with their region’s economic ecosystems. The presentation will outline how the framework strengthens employer partnerships, reinforces NACE competencies, and uses metrics such as student industry-knowledge gains, themed-sector internship placement, and employer re-engagement to evaluate impact, offering participants a blueprint for scalable, academically grounded, place-based career education.
It Takes a Campus: Building Career Champions One Partner at a Time
Nina Davis, Eboni Johnson
N.C. A&T State University
April 22
11:15 - 12:00
Students naturally seek guidance from the faculty and staff who teach, mentor, and support them daily—making classrooms and advising spaces key drivers of career confidence and real-world preparation. To activate this strength, North Carolina A&T State University created the Career Champions Program, equipping campus partners with practical tools to integrate NACE competencies, labor-market trends, and career-aligned activities throughout the student experience.
In less than one year, the program has secured over 60 faculty and staff Career Champions, representing more than 90% of academic advisers and 6 of the university’s 9 colleges—demonstrating both broad buy-in and institutional momentum. This growth was achieved through intentional collaboration with academic leaders to socialize the program early, align it with college priorities, and reduce barriers to participation. To support sustained engagement, the program offers flexible participation options, including virtual training sessions and informal lunch-and-learn experiences that accommodate varied roles, schedules, and workloads.
The program is further elevated through Bank of America’s Leader on Loan initiative, which provides executive-level insight to inform content development, toolkits, training design, and implementation strategy. This session shares how faculty-centered career integration expands access to employer expectations, strengthens student readiness, and ensures consistent career messaging across campus. Attendees will gain actionable frameworks to launch, scale, or reimagine similar initiatives—while fostering a campus-wide culture of shared responsibility for career preparedness. By the end, participants will be equipped to build a campus of Career Champions—one faculty and staff partner at a time.
Learning Outcomes
1. Identify key components of an effective Career Champions program that embeds career readiness into academic spaces.
2. Implement strategies to embed NACE competencies and career-aligned language into classroom instruction and advising.
3. Examine strategies for partnering across academic advising, faculty, and staff to create a coordinated, campus-wide network that supports career readiness for all students.
Intergenerational Intelligence: Preparing Students for People, Not Just Platforms
Kristina Markos
Lasell University
April 22
11:15 - 12:00
Gen Z is the first generation whose worldviews have been profoundly shaped by algorithms, curated feeds, and online communities that reinforce familiarity over friction. As a result, perspective-taking—once learned organically through shared experiences—has become a skill that must now be taught intentionally. This session presents a classroom-tested strategy and case study that reframes intergenerational workplaces as a strategic asset rather than a point of tension. Participants will explore how students can be effectively briefed on multigenerational career landscapes, guided to recognize the value of differing communication styles, expectations, and lived experiences, and coached to engage across generations with curiosity, adaptability, and professionalism. The session bridges higher education and workforce readiness by offering a practical framework for broadening student perspectives before they enter complex professional environments.