An engaged faculty, excited about integrating into their classes visits to an area law court or to a CDC laboratory, is a key ingredient to successful initiatives. Laura looks forward to devising more effective assessments of these kinds of co-curricular activities.

As a College to Career Faculty Fellow, Keisha is looking forward to mapping Perimeter College’s pathways into Portfolium. Students will have the opportunity to discover how what they learn in the classroom translates into their career field. By using Portfolium, they will have the ability to document their experiences as evidence to the skills they have mastered.

Susan is excited to work on a project focused on helping students realize the potential of their undergraduate experience to enhance not only their critical thinking and analytical skills but also their career preparation. Seeing and understanding these connections early on adds a layer of value to the college experience and serves to equip students for success after graduation.

The overarching goal of Christa’s QEP Plan is to create experiential activities to enrich student learning, enhance environmental health literacy and inspire future environmental health professionals. She plans on providing professional/career development, hands-on lab training including cell culture and toxicity assessments, along with lab activities designed to teach environmental health and nanoscience concepts.

I am convinced that designing, promoting, and leading an active learning curriculum will further enhance students’ career-readiness competencies and their self-reflected incorporation of academic skills and knowledge with real-world experiences.

My department chair and I plan to incorporate our certification programs of study, Personal Trainer and Health Coach, into Pathways to provide interested students an opportunity to become certified trainers before they complete their degrees. Additionally, I plan to develop content for students that will help them set goals that are aligned with N.A.C.E. competencies.

The College to Career Faculty Fellowship will enable Sahithya to develop Portfolium based modules that will guide students to recognize marketable skills that are developed through their course work. Further, students will be able to identify gaps in essential workplace skill sets and work towards bridging those gaps.

Engaging in original research is a transformative experience for STEM majors, and Paul will be broadening access to these Signature Experiences while building a pathway for undergraduates to effectively communicate career competencies linked to their research activities.

The Signature Experience modules she creates will ask students to articulate in a variety of forms what skills they have acquired in their signature experience courses that prepare them for the working world and how those skills prepare them for careers.

I believe strongly that the competencies we are focusing on in the CTC initiative are beneficial to all students, and I look forward to helping students further develop those skills so that they can successfully attain their goals.

This summer, Aakanksha, along with her graduate student, Gabriella Ryan, developed critical thinking modules with the primary focus on experimental design and quantitative skills. This Fall, they are piloting these modules in one section of introductory biology and hope to expand the implementation to multiple sections in the future.