NACE’s 2024 Competency Symposium

Hear how employers are using the NACE Competencies to connect to college talent, align with higher education partners, and upskill their early career employees.

These sessions will highlight employers, faculty members, and/or career services professionals who have an outstanding program, assignment, or initiative that develops one particular NACE competency in an innovative and effective way across areas, divisions, or organizations.

Hear from faculty, or faculty and career services pairs, who have developed innovative curricular integrations of NACE competency development and related career thinking into the classroom.

The Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) Experiential Education office administers the Queens College Service Corps (QCSC), a yearlong career-readiness program open to all majors, and connected to the QC mission of service. During the 2024-25 academic year, 30 students will participate in the QCSC, which includes a 220-hour paid internship, monthly professional development, and a required community service component. Students are matched to internship roles at mission-driven community-based nonprofit organizations that help improve the lives of individuals, families, and local communities in New York City.

As part of the QCSC orientation, students learn about the importance of the eight NACE career competencies for their internship and lifelong career success. They take a pre-program self-assessment using the NACE Competency Assessment Tool and then identify three SMART goals, one in each category: academic, civic, and professional. Students reflect on their goals monthly and identify their growth over the year by taking a post-program self-assessment using the NACE Competency Assessment Tool and creating at least one STAR story aligned to the competencies. Internship supervisors use the NACE Competency Assessment Tool to evaluate students at the midpoint and end of the program.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Identify practical applications of the NACE Competency Assessment Tool as a pre- and post-internship program assessment for both students and employers.
• Develop student learning outcome measures for your internship program based on the NACE Competency Assessment Tool.

Presenters

• Cristina Di Meo, Director, Experiential Education, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)
• Ashlee Sinnerine, Student, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)
• Olivia Tcholakian, Academic Program Coordinator, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)

While sometimes it’s difficult to know how a movement begins, it is easy to recognize when it picks up momentum. This session will show how William & Mary has started and expanded a career readiness movement leading to student requests for more by flipping our competency-based workshop from a focus on articulation to goal-setting. By doing so, we are focusing the Career & Self-Development competency as a vehicle for teaching, implementing, and assessing the full complement of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies.

Through multiple strategic partnerships, including a student club centered on design thinking and innovation and student volunteer roles, the Office of Career Development & Professional Engagement at William & Mary is sought out by new groups requesting the “same workshop my friend told me about with the career competencies.” Tribe Innovation is a club that provides a student-led design thinking workshop for their peers around a given topic. We have seen the value of students guiding each other through the definitions of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies in order to ideate and make recommendations for more students to learn about and use the competencies effectively for their own experiences. Through these sessions we received requests from student volunteer organizations, student employment supervisors, and faculty members to introduce their groups to the competencies and learn how to use them for goal setting, confidence building, and articulation development.

During this working session, participants will draft their own strategies to identify influential student groups on their campuses to build their outreach plans. Additionally, participants will learn the value of setting their career competency workshops around goals and moving professional development to the beginning of a student experience rather than the end. Attendees will leave the session with materials and resources to facilitate their own adaptations of the competency workshop that has lead to the best ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Understand the value of using NACE data and institutional outcomes data as a successful strategy for getting support from students and other stakeholders.
• Identify resources and materials to begin drafting your own competency-based goal-setting workshop for student experiences with a focus on the Career & Self-Development competency.
• Take away adaptable materials and solid next steps to pilot a collaborative approach to getting career readiness integrated in the all student experiences.

Presenter

• Kelly O'Shaughnessy, Director of Career Readiness Pathways, Office of Career Development & Engagement, William & Mary

In this session, we explain why and how we leveraged international institutional strategic partnerships with universities and alumni abroad to develop a work-integrated academic course to develop career readiness in engineering and technology students.

This program follows a simple COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) model and can be adapted for any major or any country in building bridges to quality and meaningful, practical, work-integrated learning to develop Critical Thinking, Teamwork, Professionalism, Communications, Career & Self Development, Equity & Inclusion, Leadership, and Technology competencies.

We will share our Canvas course, learning outcomes, and featured activities to demonstrate how the eight NACE Career Readiness Competencies can be integrated into nearly any curriculum. Whether you are creating a course, workshop, or one-time project as a faculty or staff member using international or local community partners/collaborators, this session is for you!

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Explain how a COIL model can be adapted for any major or any country.
• Demonstrate how to integrate the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into curriculum design and delivery.
• Create a community of practice with participants to act as a resource in future course level career-readiness integration.

Presenters

• Nadia Ibrahim-Taney, Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati
• Gwen Roemer, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, College of Cooperative Education and Professional Studies, University of Cincinnati

In today’s rapidly evolving job market, students and professionals must develop more than just academic knowledge to succeed—they need real-world experience and essential career competencies. This presentation will explore how LaGuardia Community College’s SOAR Experiential Learning Program provides work-based learning opportunities such as internships, service learning, and professional development, which is pivotal in bridging the gap between education and employment for students. Attendees will gain insights into the critical skills required for career readiness, including communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and collaboration, and how these competencies are fostered through hands-on learning experiences.

The session will highlight the importance of partnerships between career services and faculty, employers, and students in creating compelling work-based learning opportunities that prepare the workforce of tomorrow. Join us to learn how work-based learning empowers individuals to thrive in their careers and equips them with the skills to confidently navigate the future of work.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Highlight the critical skills (such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and adaptability) cultivated through work-based learning.
• Explain how work-based learning bridges the gap between academic theory and real-world application.
• Describe how work-based learning enhances career readiness and employability for students.

Presenter

• Jessica Perez, Director, Center for Career & Professional Development, LaGuardia Community College-CUNY

In today's rapidly evolving workforce, universities must align their academic programs with career-readiness initiatives that prepare students for post-graduation success. This roundtable discussion will explore innovative strategies for integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies both within and beyond the classroom. Activities discussed will include fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and strengthening partnerships between academic departments, career services, alumni, and employers to enhance student employability.

Discussion will include best practices for helping students identify, recognize, and develop NACE Career Readiness Competencies, not only through traditional coursework but also through co-curricular activities, internships, and other high-impact, experiential learning opportunities. Additionally, the conversation will highlight ways to enhance collaboration among key stakeholders (academic departments, career services, alumni, and employers), sharing insights on how these groups can work together to create a more cohesive, career-focused education that prepares students for the workforce.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Explore strategies for helping students to recognize and develop NACE Career Readiness Competencies inside and beyond the classroom.
• Describe interdisciplinary methods for incorporating NACE Career Readiness Competencies across academic departments.
• Describe collaboration efforts between academic departments, career services, alumni, and employers to enhance student preparedness for post-graduation success.

Presenters

• Denise Ogden, Professor of Marketing, Penn State, Lehigh Valley
• Mark M. Capofari, Lecturer and Project and Supply Chain and Business Internship Coordinator, Penn State, Lehigh Valley
• Lauren Schwartz, Career Strategist, Career Strategy and Advising, Penn State, Lehigh Valley

What can students do to stand out in first conversations with career fair recruiters? While communication, professionalism, and critical-thinking competencies lay the foundation of many current career fair trainings for students, students can learn to create truly memorable conversations with recruiters by leveraging other key competency behaviors, including those from teamwork, leadership, and technology.

In this session, members of Verizon’s University Relations and Recruiting team describe the qualities of truly outstanding career-fair interactions, offer real examples of strong student conversations from career fairs nationwide, and answer your questions about how you can use NACE’s Career Readiness Competencies to help your students differentiate themselves.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Help students differentiate themselves in career-fair conversations by infusing the hallmarks of teamwork into career-fair preparation.
• Coach students to create memorable moments with career-fair recruiters by leveraging key elements of leadership in career-fair preparation.
• Teach students to build bridges between technical and nontechnical parties at career fairs by preparing students to successfully translate the value of their expertise in technology.

Presenters

• Liz Langemak, Ph.D., Associate Director of University Relations, Verizon
• Kyla Dickson, University Relations Lead, Verizon

Hear from Dr. Bob Orndorff, Senior Director, Penn State Career Services Center and Emerald Hames, Director of Career Education at the University of Arkansas as they discuss how the NACE Career Readiness(+) Inventory is propelling their success for measuring the NACE 8 competencies across their campuses and supporting their overall efforts to ensure every student is ready for career when they exit the institution.

Penn State University has launched an ambitious “all-in” plan to implement the NACE Career Readiness Inventory across all 26 campuses, bringing together multiple key stakeholders across student affairs, academic affairs, athletics and student employment. By gathering real-time data, they are assessing students' areas for improvement and identifying paths to upskill.

University of Arkansas is successfully implementing the NACE Career Readiness+ Inventory into their First Year Experience courses and gaining insights beyond the NACE 8 competencies by also assessing students on career-aligned social capital, life design mindsets and career mobility best practices that influence the trajectory of student success.

Capturing career readiness data effectively can be used to garner on-campus partnerships and increase a “career everywhere” ethos.

Presenters

• Lori Brown
• Marieli Rubio
• Bob Michael Orndorff
• Emerald Hames

Join Randy Bitting (prior SkillSurvey and Handshake exec) to Suitable and hear about his vision for the NACE Competency Assessment Tool. Plus, Randy will dive into how this tool was developed and provide updates on how exclusive partnership is providing unprecedented access to student competency development data. In addition, we are joined by Allison Otto, Assistant Director of Badging & Skills at Vanderbilt University's Career Center, and Laura Naylor, Manager of University Success at Suitable to dive into Vanderbilt Pathways Achieving Skills and Success (VandyPASS). VandyPASS is a non-required career readiness platform designed to empower and prepare students at Vanderbilt. Powered by Suitable, VandyPASS is an immersive digital badging program that tracks, builds, and awards specific career readiness skills gained outside of the classroom and connects students to various career pathways. Students progress through the program and earn valuable micro-credentials that are shareable to LinkedIn. In addition to learning how Suitable is transforming career readiness + Student Engagement at over 150+ universities, you'll learn more about Suitable’s mobile solutions.

This session will provide:

• Key strategies behind the VandyPASS initiative and its competency framework.
• A look at how VandyPASS embeds career readiness into the Vanderbilt student experience.
• A brief walkthrough of key Suitable capabilities.
• An inside look at The NACE Competency Assessment Tool.
• Live Q&A portion with the speakers.

This presentation focuses on a new platform to help students develop competency in the skills needed for academic and workplace success. The benefits of using simulations and videos to teach these skills will be discussed, and strategies to monitor performance will be reviewed.

Presenter

• Clint Johnson, Vice President of Simucase Education, Simucase, LLC

Landit: AI-Enhanced Interview Prep, an innovative solution designed to help career seekers and students align their interview preparation with the critical competencies outlined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Leveraging cutting-edge artificial intelligence, Landit offers personalized, data-driven interview guidance tailored to each user’s unique career goals and strengths, enabling them to showcase skills that match today’s hiring expectations.

Presenter

• Dr. Paul Bailo, PhD., MBA, MSW, Chief Executive Officer, Landit

As educators and career development professionals, we have a unique opportunity to equip students with the career-readiness skills they need for long-term professional success. This session will explore practical ways to implement career development best practices into classroom curriculum for all academic fields and levels.

Attendees will learn how to seamlessly weave career exploration, skill-building, and real-world applications into daily lessons, projects, and assessments. By the end of the session, participants will have concrete strategies and activities to bring career development into their classrooms and help students connect their education to meaningful careers opportunities and professional networks.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Identify and articulate the essential career-readiness skills that are critical for students' success in the workforce.
• Design and implement curriculum frameworks that seamlessly integrate career-readiness components into existing educational goals.
• Develop the ability to evaluate and assess the effectiveness of career-conscious curriculums through various methods, including feedback mechanisms, student-performance metrics, and industry partnerships.

Presenters

• Madi Hiddie, Senior Student Employment and Career Development Coordintor, SUNY Brockport
• Kathleen Cramer, Senior Career Development and Internship Specialist, SUNY Brockport

Teaching students how to source industry-relevant job descriptions, read them, identify skills and competencies that are both strengths and areas-for-improvement, and developing a strategic action plan professional improvement is the class routine. Cultivating self-assessment skills toward understanding self and career expectations is key for developing independent students who make informed choices about electives, concentrations, and minors that enhance their ability to go after their career aspirations.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Identify tactics for using job descriptions as an instructional tool.
• Create opportunities for student learning outcomes to include skill and competency self-evaluation in an introductory level, content-specific course.
• Synthesize tactics for integrating into your own classroom.

Presenter

• Tracy Trachsler, Asociate Professor and Graduate Coordinator of Sport Management, SUNY Cortland

Our Professional Development Days are strategically designed to align with NACE's Career and Self-Development Competency. Join us to learn about our innovative approach and the impactful activities we offer to foster continual personal and professional growth among our interns. The presentation provides an in-depth look at our Professional Development Days, detailing the structure, key components, and outcomes. We will demonstrate how each element of our program contributes to the development of essential career competencies and supports interns in their career journeys. In this session we will highlight the positive impact on our interns' career readiness and overall professional growth, supported by data and feedback from participants.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Understand how NACE’s Career and Self-Development Competency aligns with our Professional Development Days and learn about the specific activities and sessions that contribute to the development of this competency.
• Identify key components and understand how each supports interns' career growth and self-development.
• Apply best practices and practical strategies for implementing similar professional development programs in your own organization to foster career and self-development among your interns...and your employees.

Presenter

• Jill Chapman, Director, Early Talent Programs, Insperity

In effort to ensure that all students have the tools and resources needed for post-graduation success, UConn’s Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills designed and implemented a Faculty Fellow Summer Institute to provide faculty with the tools, resources, and partnership to think strategically about how they connect their curriculum and instruction to career readiness. 

Led by Kaitlyn Anderson, Career Readiness Program Designer, the program’s main objective was to connect career competencies within course curriculum by integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies into at least one classroom assignment and create opportunities for students to articulate their competency development. To build the framework for this program, Danielle DeRosa, a faculty member and 2024 Spring Faculty Fellow, collaborated with Kaitlyn to design a series of workshops that supported faculty from varied academic departments in developing assignments and activities that transparently and intentionally infused career-readiness strategies.

Additional input and feedback were gathered from faculty partners within the Faculty Subcommittee, a subset of faculty Career Champions, and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to establish an agenda that explored resources, teaching pedagogy and assessment tools that would enhance student career competency articulation. This presentation will set the stage with what led to the development of the institute, how it was structured, and how it was implemented.

A panel comprised of Faculty Fellow Summer Institute participants will engage the audience on how they each incorporated career-readiness strategies within their curriculum from syllabi language, classroom presentations, and career-readiness modules to providing ample opportunities for students to reflect on their career competency development through reflections, journaling, and self- or peer- assessment.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Interact with faculty who will share their approach to incorporating career readiness within various academic disciplines at the University of Connecticut.
• Explore opportunities to partner with faculty to intentionally infuse career readiness with curriculum.
• Discuss opportunities and barriers in supporting faculty in highlighting and integrating career readiness within their curricula.

Presenters

• Kaitlyn Anderson, Career Readiness Program Designer, Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, University of Connecticut
• Danielle DeRosa, Ed.D., Assistant Professor in Residence, Educational Leadership, University of Connecticut
• Manish Roy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Residence, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut

CSU Fullerton and Belmont University have been focused on integrating the eight NACE Career Readiness Competencies into curricula aimed at empowering first-generation students to increase their social capital with professionals in roles/industries where the student may have a career interest. Both schools have built their programs to address the ways students can actively increase their skill level along the NACE Career Readiness Competencies spectrum. Activities have been aligned with various competencies to ensure that students understand and can effectively articulate each competency and know how to increase their skill level.

CSU Fullerton, an Hispanic-Serving Institution, designed the I Am First Program in which first-generation students are taught how to create social capital from scratch through a high-impact, scaffolded curriculum that empowers students to cultivate agency in their career search. The I Am First program aims to address and change the narrative that first-generation college students are at a disadvantage. Instead, the program focuses on helping students adapt an asset-based mindset by using the NACE Career Readiness Competencies to recognize their strengths and also their gaps, and to equip students with lifelong tools to be successful in their career and academic experiences. Teaching first-generation Latinx students how to intentionally and proactively develop professional relationships from scratch to land internships and jobs is a life-enhancing skill that improves student post-college outcomes, self-confidence, social mobility, and return on investment.

Belmont University launched the My Career Plan initiative to encourage students to take four action steps to discover their purpose and achieve their career goals. My Career Plan: Explore– Begin your journey; Prepare– Rehearsing and taking your first steps; Connect– Bringing it all together and forming meaningful relationships; and Flourish– Striving in Occupational Wellness. By completing specific activities for their career plan, students will graduate, ready for a career. Belmont strategically increases the awareness and proficiency of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies – the most in-demand skills – by embedding career readiness most notably in their Bell Tower Scholarship program, which is committed and designed to enroll high-potential students from Metro Nashville Public Schools and provides four-year scholarships that finance the student’s complete education. Bell Tower Scholars participate in a first-year cohort and engage with Bell Tower Faculty Mentors to develop their career plans and build relationships to ultimately increase their social capital. Using a strategic social capital–building curriculum as guiding framework, students are introduced to the NACE Career Readiness Competencies in the first step as they discern possible career paths of interest. In each session, students are guided through practical strategies in a supportive learning environment that encourages skill building in communication, critical thinking, professionalism, and many more. As a result, 100% of first-year scholars report greater confidence in understanding how to create relationships with professionals from scratch. Additionally, 10 cohorts of faculty have participated in the Career Readiness Academy to identify ways to highlight and incorporate the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into their classrooms. Presenters will share data, best practices for implementation, and why this curriculum increases equity.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Integrate the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into programs designed to increase students’ social capital.
• Integrate the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into current curriculum, and help faculty to better understand how and why these competencies can be significantly aligned with classroom learning outcomes.
• Adopt a scaffolded, step-by-step method to provide first-generation students permission, guidance, motivation, and accountability to create and increase social capital from scratch.

Presenters

• Stephanie Reyes, Senior Associate Director, Career Center, California State University Fullerton
• Mary Claire Dismukes, Director, Belmont University Office of Career & Professional Development, California State University Fullerton
• Jozef Lukey, Assistant Director of Student Success and Flourishing, California State University Fullerton

Developing resources for sophomores and alleviating sophomore slump can be seen in literature from as early as 1956 with studies completed by Mervin Freeman. The work is still continuing as scholars and student-affairs practitioners develop programming and resources to retain second-year students. One small liberal arts institution is doing this through a sophomore career-readiness course that integrates NACE Career Readiness Competencies into its curriculum. Through collaboration with Academic Affairs and Career Services, which is housed in Student Life, a for-credit sophomore career-readiness course launched in Spring 2024. The syllabus was created by the Assistant Director of Career Development integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies into each week of the course. This program will walk attendees through how the course was formalized and marketed toward students, syllabus development, and assessment of the course. Small group discussion will be integrated into the presentation giving opportunities for attendees to begin developing a career-readiness course for their institution.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Identify group, academic program, or classification that could benefit from competency integration.
• Identify campus and community partners to help initiate course and enhance classroom experience and competency integration for students.
• Compose course summary that can be presented to body that develops institutional curriculum as a form of proposal for course development.

Presenter

• Rachelle Brown, Assistant Director of Career Development, Rhodes College

Learning & Development, in collaboration with Campus Recruitment, has created a comprehensive Professional Development Program. This program is designed to help interns and graduates build essential skills, gain valuable experience, and prepare for successful future careers.

This annual program is designed to help early career professionalsquickly transition from the narrow training of an academic field into the wonderfully ambiguous milieu of undefined problems, real-world constraints, a truly Arup multidisciplinary way of thinking, a client-conscious service orientation, and the need to persuasively articulate the value we bring. With five generations in the workplace, which could be challenging, however, it also offers a unique opportunity to work and collaborate on diverse perspectives and skills through generational differences, open communication, leveraging strengths, and creating flexible work options. Our goal is to help emerging consulting professionals become effective as fully contributing members of Arup as quickly as professionally possible with this graduate experience jumpstart.

Program Components:

1. Orientation and Onboarding
2. Training Workshops
3. Mentoring
4. Career Development Sessions
5. Networking Opportunities
6. Community Development
7. Project Assignments
8. Soft Skills Development
9. Driving Your Own Career

This Professional Development Program is designed to create a supportive and enriching environment for early-career professionals, helping them to develop the skills and confidence needed to succeed in their careers. By participating in this program, interns and grads will be well prepared to navigate their professional journeys and make meaningful contributions to the workforce.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Demostrate Professionalism.
• Demostrate Career & Self-Development.
• Demostrate Equity and Inclusion.

Presenter

• Jamia Scranton, Region Campus Lead, Arup

In today's evolving job market, the need for practical, career-ready skills is more critical than ever. This employer insights panel brings together industry leaders to explore how experiential learning—through internships, service learning, and hands-on projects—equips students with the competencies needed for success in the workforce.

Panelists will share insights on the most valued skills, emerging industry expectations, and how experiential learning prepares candidates for real-world challenges. Join us to gain actionable strategies for bridging academic education and career readiness, empowering students to thrive professionally.

Presenters

• Sierra Brown, Director, Marketing and Communications, Long Island City Partnership
• Victor Fuhrman, Certified Welding Inspector & Consultant, Juniper Industries
• Amanda McCune, Senior Associate of Human Resources, Make-A-Wish Metro New York and Western New York
• Valerie Nolasco, Senior Manager, Community Engagement, DEI, Make-A-Wish Metro New York and Western New York

In today’s evolving higher-education landscape, student staff play a critical role in supporting institutional goals, fostering student engagement, and promoting a positive campus experience. This presentation will explore innovative strategies for integrating the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into student staff training and evaluation processes within a Division of Student Affairs. The presenters will introduce their approach to embedding the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into their divisional online student staff training course, developed through Canvas. A portion of the course is dedicated to introducing the NACE Career Readiness Competencies and incorporates relevant scenarios where student staff might apply one or more of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies in their everyday roles. A major aim of the course is to help students value their student employment as a high impact practice and articulate how their time as divisional student staff employees can position them to be more career ready.

Additionally, presenters will discuss how they have infused NACE Career Readiness Competencies into their student staff evaluation process. This includes the development of a comprehensive rubric that uses the NACE framework as the foundation for setting expectations, fostering growth, and providing targeted feedback to ensure continuous development. Both the online training course and the competency-based evaluation process are pilot programs currently in their first cycle of implementation. These initiatives were created in response to an increased need for consistent training and evaluation approaches across the division of student affairs to more adequately support student staff in their growth and development.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Explore practical tools and strategies to enhance your student staff training and evaluation models using the NACE Career Readiness Competencies framework.
• Apply insights from the pilot programs to enhance or develop your own student staff training and evaluation processes.

Presenters

• Sam Squyars, Assistant Director for Career Advising, James Madison University
• Sarah LaFrance, Assessment Specialist, Division of Student Affairs, James Madison University

In 2019 Beloit College adopted the Integrated Learning Outcomes as part of its strategic plan, integrating career-readiness skills into all curricular and cocurricular activities. These outcomes aim to develop students into effective communicators, productive collaborators, creative problem-solvers, and intellectually and professionally agile lifelong learners. The Integrated Learning Outcomes create a shared language on campus for skills employers seek, overlapping with the career-readiness competencies defined by NACE. This presentation explores how the Integrated Learning Outcomes are incorporated into the curriculum and projects of the Community Fellows, a year-long community-based learning program. The presentation will also discuss evaluation of these skills by faculty and community partners who supervise student learning. Program staff aim to build upon previous work and adapt parts of the NACE Competency Assessment Tool into future student evaluation tools.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Learn how community-based learning programs at Beloit College support career-ready skill development.
• Share real-world examples of how employers and community partners have used Beloit’s Integrated Learning Outcomes to evaluate competencies such as problem solving, communication, collaboration, and professional/intellectual agility.

Presenter

• Suzanne Goebel, Community Partner & Employer Relations Manager, Beloit College

As a career coach, have you ever grown tired of repeating the same advice over and over, even to the same student? Why aren’t they listening? We fall into the trap of simply telling them what is important; however, more impactful learning happens through experiential learning where they can apply concepts in real time. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior and various research on the power of emotion and empathy during the learning process, HireU 2.0 is an interactive simulation where students experience what life is like as a recruiter using AI and technology. HireU 2.0 allows students to review an Applicant Tracking System and interviews. While students review candidates to make a hiring selection, they see the power of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies firsthand, ultimately leading to learning outcomes that change their behavior. Our pre- andpost-data from over 500 students strongly demonstrate how students will change their search strategy as a result of the simulation.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Reflect on your own career coaching practices and how they map to impactful learning.
• Identify the benefits of shifting from traditional advising to facilitated experiential learning.
• Understand the foundational components for how to create recruiting simulations for students using AI, making their coaching more dynamic and effective.

Presenter

• Cheryl Rotyliano, Senior Associate Director, Market Readiness & Employment, Wake Forest University

Driven by a shared interest in integrating career competencies into the curriculum, Brookdale Community College and the Community College of Rhode Island introduced the NACE Competency Workshop for Faculty in the fall semester. In this presentation, the two colleges will discuss their shared vision for offering this opportunity to faculty, unique approaches to identifying stakeholders and building coalitions to drive this work, experiences in the NACE trainings, and case studies on how faculty and other college partners are planning to incorporate NACE Career Readiness Competencies in and outside of the classroom. This session will include a large-group presentation where the schools will share similarities in process and experiences, as well as their unique approaches to this initiative and lessons learned along the way. Participants will then break out into small-group discussions to review case studies and brainstorm ways to begin this work at their schools.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Understand strategies to identify stakeholders and build a coalition to support career competencies.
• Increase awareness of how to implement a NACE training or faculty professional development on your own campus.
• Identify courses that are incorporating career competencies and brainstorm ways to integrate at your school.

Presenters

• Jill Donovan, Director of the Career Center, Brookdale Community College
• Liz Giordano, Director of Career Services and Experiential Learning, Community College of Rhode Island
• Anne La Porta, Assistant Director of the Career Center, Brookdale Community College; Advisor to Brookdale’s Chapter of the National Society of Leadership & Success
• Samantha (Sam) Sgourakes, Work-Based Learning Manager, Community College of Rhode Island

Discover how Dominican University, a private Catholic liberal arts Hispanic-Serving Institution, has effectively integrated NACE Career Readiness Competencies into its first-year student experience to build a robust foundation for career readiness. By leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration and coalition building, Dominican University has cultivated a campus-wide culture where students, faculty, and staff collaboratively enhance career development. Participants will gain valuable insights into the practical steps the University took to implement these competencies, including strategies for fostering cross-campus partnerships and addressing challenges. The session will highlight key successes and lessons learned, providing actionable ideas for integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies at other institutions.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Discover how Dominican University integrated NACE Career Readiness Competencies into the first-year student experience through required credit bearing First-Year Seminar and Career and Vocation 100 classes.
• Understand how Dominican University fostered interdisciplinary NACE Competency collaboration across the curriculum and student-facing departments.
• Learn from Dominican University's NACE Competency coalition building successes and challenges.

Presenters

• Kathy Meisinger, Director, Career Curriculum & Employer Relations, Dominican University
• Tina Taylor-Ritzler, Ph.D., Executive Director, Career Programs and Employer Relations, Dominican University

Since 2021, the Career Services team at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) has been dedicated to making career readiness a top priority at the institution. In response to the low national engagement rates with career centers, the PLNU team implemented a "career everywhere" strategy designed to meet students where they are. The core of this approach is academic integration, involving close collaboration with faculty and advocacy with administrators to embed career readiness into the curriculum for 100% of our students.

The strategic efforts by the Career Services team have resulted in three key curricular interventions that have allowed the Career Services team to integrate career competency development into the academic experience:

1. Increased student engagement with Career Services in academic and cocurricular settings.
2. Development of a one-unit Career Readiness course.
3. Revision of a senior seminar sociology course to focus explicitly on competency development.

This engaging presentation is designed for all career-focused audiences, with specific learning objectives tailored for career staff, faculty, and administrators. Faculty will learn how to integrate career competency understanding and articulation into their academic courses. Career staff and faculty will discover how to build a course centered on career competency development. Career staff and administrators will gain practical strategies for embedding career competency understanding and articulation into students' academic and cocurricular experiences.

By leveraging our current momentum and the strong foundation we've established, we are setting our sights on several initiatives that will enhance both academic and cocurricular engagement across campus. These include: Developing online learning modules to provide scalable career-readiness resources for students, replicating the successful sociology senior seminar model in other academic departments, introducing competency badges in syllabi and curricula campus-wide to standardize career readiness across disciplines, And increasing our involvement in the First-Year Experience to ensure that students engage with career competencies from the start of their academic journey.

Following this session, you will be able to:

• Integrate career competency understanding and articulation into your academic courses.
• Build a course centered on career competency development.
• Apply practical strategies for embedding career competency understanding and articulation into students' academic and co-curricular experiences.

Presenter

• Tré Watkins, Ph.D., Director of Talent Development, Career Services, Point Loma Nazarene University

Through a partnership facilitated by the New York Jobs CEO Council, LaGuardia Community College and Mastercard collaboratively designed and launched a two-semester apprenticeship program for students pursuing an AAS degree in Cybersecurity. In this presentation, we will explore how the program’s design and activities have fostered the development of NACE Career Readiness competencies among student apprentices. Additionally, we will discuss the challenges encountered during the three years of the program, and the key metrics that highlight its success and positive impact.

Presenters

• Dionne Miller, PhD, Associate Provost – LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Doyel Pal, PhD, Professor of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Program Director, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Susan Warner, Vice President of Community Engagement, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

The question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is no longer serving students. For too long, we’ve encouraged them to prepare for their future by choosing a job title. This approach is causing anxiety and not preparing them for a complex, rapidly changing world. Career services can change the world by helping young people look beyond job titles to find important challenges to solve. This new approach is called the Challenge mindset, and it is igniting a sense of purpose in youth. Come discover the difference it can make on your campus.

Presenter

• JP Michel, Founder, SparkPath

As AI becomes more integral in the job search process, students increasingly need guidance on how to use these tools ethically and effectively. This session explores the best practices for incorporating AI in resume writing, focusing on how Career Services professionals can meet to student demand while adapting to shifts in employer behavior. Attendees will gain insights into ethical AI usage, tools available to guide students, and real-time hiring practices that are reshaping resume evaluation.

Presenter

• Isaac Taylor, Head of B2B, Jobscan