Goal: Foster stronger alignment with UWG’s Quality Enhancement Plan by increasing collaboration between career services and academic programs.
Rationale: UWG’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP)—Career Readiness through Experiential Learning—seeks to strengthen the connection between experiential learning and the development of career readiness competencies for undergraduate students, beginning in their very first semester and continuing through their senior-level courses as they transition to their careers. The QEP will focus on two specific types of experiential learning: undergraduate research and work-based learning. To support the QEP, UWG’s Momentum plan will focus on action items that support students through fostering collaboration between career services and academic programs. This collaboration is embedded in two specific action items described above: Pathway Transitions (Majors & Career Fair) and Connect & Engage (Retention from Year II to Year III).
Actions related to this goal have been implemented to prepare for UWG’s new Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), which is scheduled for final review and approval by SACSCOC in spring 2024. UWG’s proposed QEP—Career Readiness through Experiential Learning—seeks to strengthen the connection between experiential learning and the development of career readiness competencies for undergraduate students, beginning in their very first semester and continuing through their senior-level courses as they transition to their careers. The QEP will focus on two specific types of experiential learning: undergraduate research and work-based learning.
This proposed QEP directly supports the institution’s 2021-2026 Strategic Plan—Becoming UWG. A goal of the Strategic Plan is to “launch or advance each student’s career before graduation” by providing students with access to high-quality experiential learning opportunities. The Strategic Plan further states that UWG will “define pathways to post-graduation through an institutional commitment to elevating and advancing internships, experiential learning, intentional mentorship, and professional and community-based networking for all students.” The proposed QEP will bolster the institutional commitment referenced in the Strategic Plan while helping faculty, staff, and, most importantly, UWG’s undergraduate students to recognize and value the connections between career readiness and experiential learning.
UWG currently offers students an array of experiential learning opportunities in areas including, but not limited to, undergraduate research and creative inquiry, internships and work-based learning, and study abroad and study away. In recent years, UWG under the guidance of the University System of Georgia has developed methods for tagging courses that allow the institution to track the integration of experiential learning opportunities into the undergraduate curriculum. Further, UWG has implemented first-year seminar courses and capstone courses or other culminating experiences as part of its extensive work on High Impact Practices (HIPs) since 2015.
The proposed QEP strategically builds upon UWG’s existing frameworks for experiential learning. For that reason, its purpose is not to significantly increase the number of experiential learning opportunities that are available to students, though the addition of new opportunities may be one effect. Rather, the QEP aims to increase undergraduate student access to existing opportunities and, crucially, to enhance those opportunities by more explicitly connecting them to the development of career readiness competencies as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). The QEP will ensure that students reflect on the career readiness competencies that they develop through participating in experiential learning. Some current experiential learning opportunities at UWG include this sort of reflection, but others lack this step or have only an implicit connection to career readiness. This QEP aims to fill that gap by helping students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders to identify and value clear connections between experiential learning and the development of career readiness competencies.
UWG’s proposed QEP sets forth the following goals and outcomes that will direct the plan’s work. Each goal or outcome is summarized by an action verb :
Institutional Goal 1 – ACCESS: Increase student access to experiential learning opportunities.
Institutional Goal 2 – CONNECT: Improve teaching and learning effectiveness by explicitly connecting experiential learning opportunities to the development of career readiness competencies as defined by National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Student Learning Outcome 1 – ENVISION: Within their first year, students will identify experiential learning opportunities and career readiness competencies relevant to their professional goals.
Student Learning Outcome 2 – ENACT: Students will describe the career readiness competencies cultivated through their participation in experiential learning opportunities.
Student Learning Outcome 3 – SHOWCASE: Before graduation, students will be able to present evidence to potential employers, graduate schools, or professional schools that their participation in experiential learning enhanced their career readiness.
Student Success Outcome – ACHIEVE: Increase the percentage of graduates who pursue employment, additional education, or other experiences that make use of career readiness competencies.
The plan below identifies baseline data, target goals, and actions needed to assess UWG’s progress towards the institutional goals and student success outcome. Additionally, it identifies key points for collecting and evaluating data to assess progress towards the student learning outcomes (SLOs)—namely, the first-year seminar courses, experiential learning opportunities available to students throughout their undergraduate career, and capstone courses or other required 4000-level courses typically taken by students close to the time of graduation. The instruments and rubrics detailed below will furnish UWG with quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate student achievement of the SLOs while offering opportunities for formative and summative assessment.
UWG will commit resources to make Career Readiness through Experiential Learning a transformative QEP for the institution and our students. The QEP’s design reflects a realistic, pragmatic understanding of the resources available to us and the resources that will be required to make this QEP meaningful and sustainable even in the face of changing budgetary circumstances. As part of a larger reorganization in 2021-2022, UWG created and filled the executive director of accreditation and quality enhancement position to direct proposal development and implementation. In addition to existing offices, positions, and resources that will contribute to the QEP’s success, the plan proposes the creation of an institution-wide QEP Faculty Fellow and of six QEP Champions affiliated with each of the university’s colleges and schools. UWG took care to solicit substantive contributions from across the institution during the topic selection and development process. The identification of a QEP Champions from each degree-granting college/school will further ensure broad-based representation and support throughout implementation and assessment.
