Lessons & Strategies for Developing a Short-Term Career Management Course

Career Level: Basic-, intermediate-, and advanced-level career services professionals
Competency: Program design, implementation, and evaluation
Fee: $69 (member); $89 (nonmember);

Summary
The purpose of this session is to expose career services professionals to strategies that can be useful to create pedagogically sound, relevant, and successful short-term career development courses. Questions related to career development courses are frequently asked via the NACE Community, particularly as institutions identify models of presenting these courses in a post-pandemic world and employers identify ways in which they can engage institutions to support their efforts. Thus, we believe that this topic is both timely and important. Both presenters have approximately 10 years’ experience teaching undergraduate and graduate students, with at least three+ years in career development instruction. They have spearheaded continuous development and revision of their current required, undergraduate career development course, offered in-person, online, and in three-, five-, and 10-week formats. Improvements are regularly made based on employer partner feedback and emergent instructional best practices.

The key elements involved in this presentation are based on published and recognized literature related to Quality Matters course design standards, rapport building between teachers and students (Glazier, 2021), and even online course development (Darby & Lang, 2019).

Using a required undergraduate career development course at the University of Louisville’s College of Business as a model, we intend to share lessons we learned about how we improved the course and identified effective strategies.

We also plan to engage audience members in reflecting on key elements that go into designing a good course, such as human, time, and tech resources, course objectives vis-à-vis term length, available internal and external partners who can support course development efforts, and elements related to diversity and inclusion (e.g., accessibility, diverse content and examples, assignment choice, etc.). Our goal is to model different ways of engaging audience members so they can use such strategies as they develop their own courses.

Following this program, you will be able to:
- Use state-tested and trusted strategies on their own campuses to develop/improve career management courses;
- Identify elements to consider, based on their own campus missions and goals, as well as internal/external resources, when putting their course together; and
- Connect with colleagues with similar interests who they can interact with in these endeavors after the conference.
Presenters

Thomas Teague Jr., Career Coach, [ARCHIVES]
Thomas Teague brings 12+ years of professional experience across several areas of higher education to the University of Louisville. Passionate about working with students, his personal philosophy is to equip individuals with the necessary tools and empower them to achieve the goals that are important to them. Prior to his current role as clinical assistant professor in UofL’s Organizational Leadership & Learning program, Teague was a career coach in the Ulmer Career Center and adjunct instructor for both UofL MBA and MA in Higher Education Administration programs.

Paige Hincker Erhart, Associate Director, University of Louisville - College of Business
Paige Hincker Erhart started her career in nonprofit management before returning to higher education and spending the past 11 years in career services. As a nationally certified career coach (CCSP and GCDF), she provides career guidance to undergraduate and graduate business students as well as alumni. Through her current role as an assistant director of the Ulmer Career Center at the University of Louisville College of Business, she focuses on career coaching, career education and experiential learning programs for primarily undergraduate business students.