WOU participated in the American Council on Education’s transformational Learner Success Lab from Fall 2020 through Fall 2022. The process included site visits and evaluation by national educational leaders, focusing on improving career readiness and serving underrepresented students.
ACE’s Overarching Recommendation for WOU:
“Build career readiness and life design into curricular and
co-curricular programs to make social mobility available to
all WOU students.”
Come Learn About Next Steps and Share Your Thoughts at the Social Mobility Showcase!
11:00 Welcome
11:15 Pecha Kucha – See how WOU academic programs are implementing the ACE recommendations:
- English: Mapping the Future: Finding Career Competencies in Program Outcomes
Presenter: Dr. Lars Soderlund, English Department
Feeling under pressure to add “career-focused content” to your program? Maybe it’s already in there! This presentation will discuss the process of mapping career-focused outcomes from the National Association of Colleges and Employers onto existing program outcomes. Help students learn that our programs have not just holistic value, but also specific value in the job market. - Communication Studies: Career Readiness for Everyone: Using Mandatory Career Exploration to Close Disparities
Presenters: Dr. Dana Schowalter and Dr. Alex Curry, Communication Studies
This presentation will focus on our decision to add mandatory career exploration and career readiness courses to the Communication Studies curriculum. We will discuss the student-led initiative to add more career readiness coursework, as well as our decision to make this course series mandatory instead of optional for our students, a decision that is vital to our focus on equity and justice. - Social Science: Expand Your Classroom: Internships, Career Exploration and Skill Development
Presenters: Dr. Mary Pettenger, Social Sciences, and Justin Sunada, CPP
Learn about what internships offer our students and what we can do to add value to these already impactful experiences. - Health & Exercise Science: Who says you have to do it all?: HEXS + CPP = ProConnect
Presenters: Dr. Gay Timken, HEX, and Jennifer Hansen, CPP
We’re all busy and have limited resources for recruitment and career readiness. Find out how departments joined forces to engage students and provide social capital for career readiness. There was food! There was conversation! There was fun!
12:00 Listening Sessions and Lunch – Discuss further ideas for integrating and scaling social mobility into the curriculum
Lunch sponsored by WOU employer partners.
