Planning for Student Success Outside the Classroom
SMC’s Career Center is partnering with the American Association of Colleges and Universities on the Curriculum-to-Careers project, just one of 12 institutions participating in the new grant program.
Connecting the right dots between a liberal arts education and a viable career path for students can be a challenge for any higher education institution, but a new, two-year grant awarded to a select group of universities bolsters Saint Mary’s work in the right direction.
Saint Mary’s is one of just 12 colleges and universities nationwide to have been selected to participate in the Equitable and Inclusive Curriculum-to-Career Models project, a program conceived by The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).
The project aims to help campuses in designing and implementing equity-centered curricular models that connect student learning to career exploration, development of professional purpose, and acquisition of transferable skills. It builds off an earlier program in Fall 2022, the Curriculum-to-Careers Innovation Institute, an effort that SMC Career Center Executive Director Mary Beth Stadt says led to a three-year plan that the new grant will help to execute.
“The AAC&U and its funding partner [Lumina Foundation] recognized that it’s great to have a plan, but plans are only useful if you have the resources to implement them,” she says.
SMC’s Career Center, Stadt explains, looks for ways to work with faculty and others across campus to embed career-specific learning into academic curricula.
“One of the main reasons why students pursue a college degree in the first place is that they know it can help lead to career success,” she says. In this way, Stadt points out, the Career Center is well-aligned with the goals of both the AAC&U and the Lumina Foundation, which “works in partnership with education and business leaders, civil rights organizations, policymakers, and individuals who want to reimagine how and where learning occurs.”
Though the latest grant funding awarded to the Career Center is modest, it is earmarked to help with important tools to help Stadt and her colleagues implement their 3-year plan.
Stadt says the current grant funding will largely be used for professional development enhancement of SMC’s student worker population, particularly those involved in federal work-study programs. “We want to help make sure their paid training is applicable to other future work settings,” she says.
Some students, Stadt has observed, think they can set up their own internships and develop their own career path—but later they realize they actually could use some help from the Career Center. Stadt is currently teaching a pair of career development courses herself and, along with the broader work going on around campus, hopes to make student engagement at the Career Center a more frequent and common occurrence.
“This grant provides a great opportunity for the Career Center to build closer working relationships with faculty to reach students,” says Stadt. “It’s important to connect with our students where they are and help them build bridges between their classroom learning and career readiness. Grant funding like this can help us to achieve those goals.”
The Career Center is also focused on work-integrated learning and a reimagination of academic and career advising, two topics that Stadt believes are ripe for meaningful progress in the next two years.
"This grant provides a great opportunity for the Career Center to build closer working relationships with faculty to reach students."
With the new funding in hand, the Center plans on designing and implementing an equity-minded, sustainable curriculum focused on internships, experiential learning, and other high-impact practices. Center staff will also develop a collaborative and efficient organization of staff and faculty to include a career-focused curriculum and on-campus experiences.
Reimagined academic and career advising will now include more intentional partnering of career counselors with undergraduate seniors to develop individualized career plans. The Center continues to partner closely with staff, faculty, and peer coaches from the College’s Academic Success office to help guide students.
The Career Center’s three-year action plan also encompasses other ambitious goals, including the creation of a developmental student life-cycle plan for career and professional development; a college-wide, equity-minded internship initiative; credited curricular/co-curricular student experiences; and reorientation of Career Counselors to align with employment industries.
LEARN MORE about Saint Mary’s Career Center
READ MORE: The release from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) announcing the 12 institutions selected to participate in the Equitable and Inclusive Curriculum-to-Career Models project.
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