Dream to Create Program Aimed at Sophomores Becomes Reality at Muhlenberg

During NACE’s 2024 Management Leadership Institute (MLI) in Chicago, attendees were asked if they could build anything, no questions asked, what it would be. Caitlin Bach, director of career coaching and education at Muhlenberg College, didn’t hesitate.

“My dream was to develop a program intentionally designed for sophomores, a group whose career development needs are often overlooked but incredibly distinct,” Bach explains.

“When I returned from MLI, our office was navigating a leadership transition, so I paused my idea for the program, recognizing that true innovation requires alignment, timing, and team buy-in.”

In May 2025, during a strategic planning retreat focused on designing the academic year with thoughtfulness, career center staff engaged in an “even better if” exercise to identify transformative opportunities that could elevate the center’s impact. Bach took the opportunity to reintroduce her concept of a development program specifically intended for sophomores.

“Without hesitation,” she recalls, “my team responded with an enthusiastic, collective ‘yes.’ That affirmation shifted a conceptual spark into a departmental priority. By January 2026, the Sophomore Career Accelerator launched as a signature initiative within our career ecosystem.”

Bach says that the “why” was clear as the Muhlenberg Career Center’s engagement data revealed a critical gap: Sophomores were its least-engaged class cohort.

“At the same time, they are at one of the most pivotal inflection points of the undergraduate journey: declaring majors, pressure-testing interests, and beginning to explore internships,” Bach adds.

She explains that, while first-year students benefit from structured onboarding, juniors engage in important internship searching and recruiting, and seniors receive intensive job search support, second-year students often exist in a developmental gray space: no longer new but not yet recruiting.

“I saw an opportunity gap. Sophomores are navigating identity formation, academic commitment, and emerging professional aspirations, yet many lack clarity, confidence, labor market fluency, and networking capital,” Bach points out.

“Without a scaffolded intervention, they risk making reactive rather than strategic decisions about majors, internships, and experiential learning.”

Embedding Career Readiness in the Sophomore Experience

Muhlenberg’s Sophomore Career Accelerator was intentionally designed as a high-impact, equity-centered initiative that reduces barriers to access and embeds career readiness directly into the sophomore experience, Bach explains.

“Grounded in data-informed decision-making and aligned with evolving workforce trends, the program integrates career exploration, employer engagement, and competency development in an immersive, cohort-based model,” she notes.

The program, Bach continues, is also fully funded for students thanks to the generosity of an alumni donor, making it so that students do not need to pay anything to participate, including early-return housing costs or meals.

“Rather than offering disconnected workshops, the accelerator serves as a cohesive touchpoint within our broader career integration, bridging academic identity, professional skill-building, and market realities,” she says.

“It increases students’ career capital, strengthens NACE competency fluency, and positions them for early experiential learning pipelines. Ultimately, the Sophomore Career Accelerator was developed to close a strategic engagement gap, respond to a developmental need, and ensure that no student drifts through their second year without intentional career momentum.”

Muhlenberg’s Sophomore Career Accelerator is a two-day immersive career development experience that equips sophomores with the clarity, confidence, and career competencies needed to navigate major declaration, internship exploration, and early professional decision-making.

The program integrates targeted career exploration, applied skill-building, and meaningful networking into a cohesive, purposefully sequenced experience.

Five alumni representing different industries facilitated interactive sessions centered on four NACE competencies: Communication, Professionalism, Leadership, and Career & Self Development.

“[The alumni] guided students through hands-on activities that translated theory into practice,” Bach says.

“Rather than passively learning about competencies, students actively applied them in real time, strengthening their ability to articulate and demonstrate career readiness skills.”

She adds that the experience also included site visits to B. Braun and United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, which offered participants behind-the-scenes industry exposure, organizational tours, and structured networking with professionals.

“These visits helped students contextualize potential career pathways while building their network in authentic workplace environments,” Bach says.

In alignment with Muhlenberg’s institutional values, the campus chaplain led a session on vocation and values, and career center staff facilitated sessions on strategic goal-setting, networking practice, and self-assessment, ensuring students left with both reflective insight and actionable next steps.

“Collectively, the Sophomore Career Accelerator functions as a transformative bridge between academic identity and professional aspiration, embedding career readiness into the sophomore experience in a way that is intentional, experiential, and deeply student-centered,” Bach notes.

Muhlenberg career center staff held meetings with each employer, explaining the desired outcomes of the program, how their organization could be a key aspect of achieving those goals, and the structure of the Sophomore Career Accelerator program.

“They were willing and eager to engage with our students and share information about their companies,” Bach says.

“In addition to our employer partners, we carefully selected alumni facilitators and presenters to represent a wide range of industries, career paths, and experience levels, from entry-level professionals to senior executives and CEOs.”

She explains that each alum was intentionally paired with a specific NACE competency aligned with their area of expertise, allowing students to see how career readiness skills are applied in real-world contexts.

“Whether discussing leadership approaches, communication in the workplace, or professionalism, alumni connected their lived experiences directly to competency development,” Bach says.

“This intentional curation not only showcased diverse career trajectories but also helped students envision multiple pathways for success while building meaningful connections with professionals who once stood in their shoes.”

As this was the first year of the program, Bach and her team decided to take a pilot approach.

“Doing so kept our numbers deliberately small to explore all the possibilities for the program, assure impact and efficiency, and provide a fully-funded experience to students to eliminate any potential barriers,” she points out.

“All student participants elected to return to campus prior to the end of winter break to prioritize their career exploration and development.”

Securing Campus Buy-in

Bach reports that internal alignment for Muhlenberg’s Sophomore Career Accelerator was strong from the outset. After her team endorsed the concept, Bach shifted into strategy and design mode, conducting a deeper analysis of the developmental milestones most critical to second-year students.

“I examined which career readiness competencies, experiential touchpoints, and decision-making skills are foundational at this stage, particularly as students prepare to declare majors, pursue internships, and translate academic interests into professional direction,” she recalls.

From there, she developed a comprehensive program proposal grounded in student engagement data and competency development frameworks.

Bach partnered with the career center’s executive director and director of employer and alumni relations to refine the vision and ensure alignment with institutional and employer engagement strategy.

“Once finalized,” she says, “we presented the proposal to the provost, who enthusiastically endorsed the initiative. From approval to execution, the rollout was deliberately collaborative. We reengaged the full career center team to operationalize the experience, ensuring cross-functional ownership, seamless event delivery, and a student-centered experience that reflected the collective expertise of our office.”

Overcoming Two Main Challenges

Developing and launching the Sophomore Career Accelerator came with two primary challenges: strategic timing and student engagement.

• Timing required thoughtful calibration—Bach and her team needed to design a program immersive enough to be transformational, yet scheduled in a way that did not compete with academic obligations or institutional priorities

  “Because the Accelerator includes employer site visits and facilitation from alumni, we also had to align with organizational availability and operational calendars,” she says.

  “To address this, we conducted informal polling with students to better understand when they would be most likely to participate without feeling academically overextended. This student-informed approach allowed us to select dates that balanced academic rhythms, employer access, and overall feasibility.”

• Engagement presented another important consideration—As the career center’s data indicated, sophomores were historically its least-engaged class year. 

  “Rather than attempting a large-scale launch, we consciously piloted the program with a limited cohort,” Bach explains. 

  “Capping participation allowed us to create a high-touch, cohort-based experience while testing content, pacing, and logistics. This smaller model also created a sense of exclusivity and momentum, which helped drive interest and word-of-mouth marketing.”

She says that by leveraging student feedback, grounding decisions in engagement data, and piloting strategically before scaling, the career center was able to mitigate risk, refine the experience in real time, and build a strong foundation for future iterations of the Sophomore Career Accelerator.

Measuring Success, Sharing Lessons Learned

The Muhlenberg Career Center defines success in the Sophomore Career Accelerator through measurable progress and a clear bias toward action.

“From the outset, we implemented a pre- and post-program assessment strategy aligned with specific learning outcomes to evaluate both mindset shifts and skill development,” Bach says.

“Our goal was not simply satisfaction; It was forward momentum.”

She says the results were clear: 100% of respondents reported leaving the program with specific, actionable next steps for the upcoming semester to advance their career development.

“That level of clarity and activation was a critical success metric for us,” she says.  

“Additionally, every respondent indicated growth across key developmental indicators.” 

Bach points out that student participants reported increased confidence in:

• Exploring career options;
• Engaging in professional conversations;
• Articulating transferable skills; and
• Navigating their next career steps.

“They also gained clearer insight into potential career pathways and strengthened their confidence in networking and professional interactions,” she continues.

Qualitative feedback further reinforced these outcomes and provided meaningful insight into the program’s impact on students’ self-perception and decision-making.

“In short, the data reflected what we designed the Accelerator to achieve: movement from uncertainty to intentionality, from awareness to action, and from passive participation to proactive career ownership,” Bach notes.

For her colleagues looking to design a similar initiative, Bach recommends that they:  

• Start with a needs assessment—Disaggregate your engagement data and identify where the opportunity gaps truly exist, whether by class year, academic discipline, identity group, or experiential readiness. Let the data clarify where students are disengaged, underserved, or navigating key developmental inflection points without structured support. A targeted intervention will always have greater impact than a broad, one-size-fits-all program.
• Are strategic and entrepreneurial with funding—Immersive programs can scale in cost quickly (transportation, meals, materials, speaker honoraria). Consider leveraging alumni, employer partners, and campus colleagues as thought partners and facilitators. This not only offsets costs but deepens institutional buy-in and enhances the authenticity of the experience. Community-sourced expertise is both cost-effective and high-impact.
• Ensure that their career center’s work is already embedded within the broader campus ecosystem—Student engagement does not begin with a single program. It is built through trust, visibility, and consistent value delivery. When career development is integrated across academic departments, student organizations, athletics, and co-curricular touchpoints, students are far more likely to opt into signature initiatives. A strong career ecosystem creates readiness for participation.
• Design with outcomes in mind—Establish clear, measurable learning objectives aligned with competency frameworks and institutional priorities. Define what success looks like before building the curriculum. A clearly articulated purpose allows you to create an intentional, scaffolded experience that meets the nuanced needs of a specific student population while still honoring that each student’s pathway is individualized.

“In short,” Bach stresses, “let data drive direction, build collaboratively, integrate systemically, and design with measurable impact at the forefront.”

Student feedback confirms the value of Muhlenberg’s Sophomore Career Accelerator, with comments from participants indicating a shift not only in strategy but in confidence; the power of exposure, storytelling, and applied reflection; and other decidedly positive outcomes.

“Together, these narratives illustrate that the Sophomore Career Accelerator does more than build skills,” Bach says.

“It builds clarity, confidence, and a stronger sense of career ownership.”