University Business - July/August 2012 - (Page 22)

viewpoint applicant are on the menu of almost every college’s career services office. They are less frequently made mandatory or taught for college credit. There aren’t many schools in which these career imperatives are woven into the curriculum. In fact, many colleges run the risk of ignoring career readiness. Their challenge, whether they are turning out English, political science, or sociology majors, is balancing student readiness for life with preparation for a job. Besides their major areas of study, college graduates must be able to articulate the value—in terms of skills, abilities, and attitudes—they bring to the table when they apply for a job. This approach is especially important when there is a gap between the job and the applicant’s degree, such as a philosophy major applying for a position in events management at a hotel. With the current economic climate and unemployment rate, it is clearly a buyer’s market, so graduates must be able to sell themselves and articulate why they are the best candidates for the position. In this way, students need to think of themselves as a product with unique characteristics and special functions and abilities. Their cover letters and resumes should scream, “I can do this job!” To do so requires flawless and specific application materials. If you send 50 identical resumes and cover letters to 50 different positions, odds are you won’t get any interviews. In one PDS class for juniors this past semester, a marketing director for a major retail chain (who also addressed a larger audience on campus that evening) spent the hour enlightening students on how to make their resumes stand out, in everything from using the right keywords to including effective graphics. Enhancing thE LargEr curricuLum According to a recent National Association of Colleges and Employers survey for the publication “Job Outlook 2012,” the top five attributes valued most by employers included the ability to work in a team, leadership, written communication skills, problem solving, and a strong work ethic. It is notable that the technical knowledge related to the job ranked lower on the list. Those findings argue that job readiness involves more than content-based learning—and more than what a onehour, weekly career skills seminar can provide over a four-year span. Professors negotiate with companies as to what students will be doing during internships. At Nichols, we are taking a next step to ensure that abilities such as critical thinking, quantitative analysis, effective communication, leadership and teamwork, and ethics and personal accountability appear across the curriculum. Besides formalizing these skills into the college’s official statement of Educational Goals and Outcomes, we have begun mapping our entire curriculum, and determining where they are taught and how they can be measured. We are also developing a syllabus template on which faculty identify particular skills and outcomes up front. These so-called 21st century skills reside, at least in part, in many a college syllabus. To identify them, practice them, and then teach students to map them to a set of job requirements are steps that will better equip prospective graduates for 21st century jobs without substantively changing the way courses have always been offered. Prospective college grads need to specifically map their skills and abilities to the job descriptions at hand, a process that can be easier said than done, and in some places is not done. making morE of intErnships While there’s been some debate lately over the value of unpaid internships after graduating college (a New York Times article last May cautioned that such work may not pay off), there’s not much dispute over students getting unpaid experience in their field during college. In fact, northeastern university, our neighbor in Boston, has built a national reputation for their Cooperative Education program, which stretches the average college career to five years so it can include extended work experiences before graduation. Well-designed internships within the structure of a traditional four-year career can provide much of the same real-life job experience. At Nichols, many students complete internships early and often. Even though they may count only one for course credit, the experiential value of additional internships has proved a real attraction. At a panel of recent graduates from our sport management program, one young alumna noted that she had interned four times during her Nichols career—from the local minor league hockey team to the Boston Red Sox. While the settings for our student internships have ranged from small companies and organizations to Fortune 500 corporations and big league teams, they share some common outcomes. Often, our students report they have been able to see a wide swath of how the organization or business functions and they comment that they are given important work to do and problems to solve. That’s no accident. Our professors, from accounting to sport management, make sure the internships posted are meaningful, and they negotiate with the companies or organizations as to what our students will be doing. That approach is one more way in which we combine our academic integrity with an awareness of what the immediate and long-range future will demand of our graduates. 22 | July/August 2012 universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - July/August 2012

University Business - July/August 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
Ad Index
College Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Admissions
Models of Efficiency
Floor Plans
Consulting Guide
Limited Liability
Touch to Begin
A Sound Investment
Voluntary Retirement
Human Resources
Money Matters
What’s New
End Note

University Business - July/August 2012