Facilitated by the Career Center and the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning, this working group aimed to support faculty in integrating vocational discernment, career readiness skill-building, and formation into innovative class assignments, offering students a deeper understanding of how their classroom learning directly relates to their lives and futures. It ran through the 2023-2024 academic year. 

Rationale

The Boston College liberal arts experience is uniquely positioned to help students engage with a rapidly changing world in a way that’s guided by both their intellect and their values. As we have experienced, the recent release of Open AI’s Chat GPT has accelerated and made urgent discussions about how to integrate new technologies and new ways of working into the classroom. As well, in this technology-driven society, the value of a liberal arts education has come under increasing scrutiny as students seek economic security and ‘future-proof’ learning. In other words, while students come to college to learn, they are also thinking about how their learning translates to a post-college career. 

While this new era increases the importance of the ways of thinking and understanding the world that a liberal arts education provides, students often don’t see the connection between their learning in the classroom and their future lives and career path. With this working group, BC’s Career Center and Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) invited faculty to navigate and respond to this challenge with guidance, space, and support. 

Furthermore, because students arrive at Boston College with differing levels of career exposure and knowledge, and because data shows that students from more marginalized backgrounds are less likely to proactively seek career services on their own, integrating career discernment and preparation into the academic experience is a critical ingredient to equitable student success. 

Format

Participants in this group were supported in developing innovative classroom projects and assessments that will guide students in discerning and integrating academic content knowledge, career readiness and skill-building, and personal values and interests. We hope was that the work in this group would directly impact the culture of your department with regard to making explicit for students the connections between learning inside the classroom and their post-graduate lives.

The working group met roughly once per month over lunch and faculty participants received a stipend for their involvement. 

Guiding Questions

Faculty were asked to consider such questions as:

• What are the particular ways students learn in my class and in my academic discipline?
• How can my class help students reflect on both their learning and their lives?
• How do students build skills in my class and my academic discipline that translate to other environments, including their careers?
• How can I develop activities in my class that translate to other environments, including their careers?
• How does my class experience play a role in identity formation and career discernment? 
• How can I weave the Jesuit Pedagogical focus on attention, reflection, and action into my course and daily classroom activities?
• How can we develop an ethical orientation to our use of digital technology in the classroom?
• What are the experiences that students bring with them to my class that can enhance the overall learning experience? 

This project was a partnership between the Boston College Career Center, which is situated within the Division of Student Affairs, and the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning, a department under the Office of the Provost.

Participant Projects

Matthew Rutledge: Real-World Economics Connections

Associate Professor of the Practice of Economics at the Morrisey College of Arts and Sciences

Prof. Rutledge joined the working group as he began changing his lower-level economics course, Public Policy in an Aging Society, to an upper-level elective course, The Economics of Aging. 

“As much as students need to see the connections across their liberal arts education, we faculty can use reminders about the benefits we draw from our exposure to colleagues in diverse fields. Members of the working group suggested that in order for my students to find an interesting question to pursue in the dataset they would be analyzing, The Health and Retirement Study, they should first chat with an actual retiree. Students’ term paper proposals cited these interviews as inspiration for their research questions—which was exactly the intention. Even more, we’ve continually referred back to these interviews throughout the semester—in our discussions of institutions like Social Security and disability insurance, as well as in conversations about the complexities of financial literacy and retirement saving.“

“Those other faculty members are also great resources for when we want to try new things. I had a crazy idea to meet students where they are: they’re watching TikTok all day, so why not create videos, the kind they’d want to watch, that explain their term papers? Thankfully, Chris Citorik from the Creative Communications Lab, a fellow member of the group, was able to guide the students and I through what made a good video and how to do the technical part of putting one together. In the end, their end products were funny, personal, and informative – and they had fun watching each other’s videos!“

“I’ve learned that as faculty, we really don’t have to change much about what we already do to more closely connect our courses with career readiness, especially in a field like economics, where so many students have chosen to study it because of career aspirations. If we create opportunities for them to stop and think about how the different elements of the syllabus apply in the real world– as workers or job seekers, as voters, in running a household, relating to friends, dating, or dealing with parents– they quickly realize how useful what they are learning is to their lives outside of school.“

Christina Matz: Interdisciplinary Palliative Care

Associate Professor, Chair of the Older Adults and Families Department, Director of the Center on Aging and Work at the School of Social Work

Prof. Matz’s project aims to overcome barriers in interprofessional learning by developing a course that unites graduate students in social work, nursing, and theology and ministry. This course is designed to equip students with the necessary skills to become effective palliative care professionals, with the long-term goal of it becoming the capstone for a redesigned palliative care certificate at the university. Interdisciplinary curriculum development involves merging knowledge, methods, and perspectives from various fields to foster a comprehensive learning environment that encourages critical thinking, collaboration, and the ability to address complex problems. This type of curriculum is designed not merely to pool together different disciplines but to create a transformative educational experience that equips students to tackle contemporary challenges. However, designing such a curriculum presents substantial content and practical challenges, which Prof. Matz addresses through her involvement in the ILWG, leading her to propose a hybrid course structure. This includes didactic online modules, critical reflective writing linked to practical experiences, and interdisciplinary case management, where students collaborate on real-world scenarios.

If Prof. Matz had to choose one piece of advice to share with faculty, it is that “issues of promoting a learning mindset rather than a performance mindset and fostering a whole-person approach to learning are not just issues that I feel are important from my stance as a social work professional, but that these should be core elements of formative education that we need to prioritize and teach students.“

Belle Liang: True North Implementation

Professor of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development and Ascione Faculty Formation Fellow at Boston College.

Prof. Liang strategized and shared ideas for implementing True North at Boston College. 

Paula Mathieu: Sharing Your Why

Associate Professor of English and Director of the First-Year Writing Program at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences.

When Prof. Mathieu first joined the group, she had planned to create a digital archive of FWS assignments. While that is still ongoing, her teaching assignment changed to Literature Core, and she used her time in the group to rethink her course assessments in light of AI. This included developing a group project called Book Club, where students read and discuss a book of their choice on their own and present it to the class. Another addition to her course assessments is for students to frame a creative project to turn a “have to” into a “get to” using the career center’s infographic to show the skills employers desire. 

Prof. Mathieu would like other faculty to know that “sharing your WHY (of the class, of specific assignments, specific readings) more than once is useful in helping students find meaning in required courses that they might not otherwise choose.“

Brian Gareau: Showcasing Formative Education

Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Academic Planning and Professor of Sociology at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

Senior Associate Dean Gareau’s role in the group differed from some of the other participants. His initial goal as a senior administrator was to learn more about how faculty were thinking about and implementing formative education projects in the classroom. He had hoped to find a way to showcase some of the best examples. Instead, he now plans to articulate how CDIL and CTE programming are available to new faculty during the dean’s interview with new faculty to help them better educate students at Boston College.

Elizabeth Shlala: Cross-Campus Core Collaborations

Associate Dean for the Core and Professor of the Practice at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

Associate Dean Shlala’s participation in the working group has generated four additional projects in the Core that collaborate with different programs and departments on campus, including the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning, First-Year Writing, True North, the Office of Global Education, and the Career Center. 

Associate Dean Shlala wants faculty to know that experts in the Career Center and CDIL are always ready to help! 

Alicia LaPolla: Messina College Integration

Associate Dean of Messina College.

Associate Dean LaPolla began working with the group intending to develop a single assignment for the inaugural class of Messina College. However, the group inspired her to think more broadly about the ways in which the overall Messina experience benefits from integrated learning practices. CDIL and CTE have been integral in the launch of Messina College, reimagining how existing structures can best serve first-generation, low-income college students. Participating in this group allowed for meaningful collaboration across disciplines. 

Elizabeth Kensinger: Integration Through Story and Memory

Professor and Chair of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

At first, Prof. Kensinger’s primary focus was on better connecting students’ coursework with their extracurricular endeavors. After participating in the group, Elizabeth decided to implement two new modules on storytelling and metamemory, with the metamemory module directly tied to career readiness. She also plans to incorporate break-out groups to help foster more honest discussion and encourage face-to-face time with her and other students. 

What Prof. Kensinger wants faculty to know about integrative learning is that 

“Faculty know that we are teaching students the key competencies that will help them in various future careers; but we don’t always know the right way to convey this to students.  The Career Center can partner with faculty – by visiting a class, or by brainstorming assignments or reflection opportunities – to bring career readiness to the forefront of classroom discussion.“

Regan Bernhard: Non-Profit Research Methods

Lecturer of Psychology at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

Prof. Bernhard initially joined the group hoping to add a service work component of some sort to an existing course. Her project has changed completely. Instead, she is designing a psychological research methods class focusing on non-profit program evaluation and outcomes measurement. The goal of this class will be to teach psychological research methods in a domain that might be more applicable to the students’ future careers and to develop the types of skills they might actually use once they have graduated from BC. 

Prof. Bernhard wants faculty to recognize that “we don’t realize how much we integrate many of these things into the work we do with students already. But I was surprised at how rarely I make it explicit to the students that what they are doing in my class will help them with career readiness. It is a very small change to merely say out loud what skills students are developing by doing the work you are asking them to do in class.“

Gene Heyman: Large-Course Research Assignments

Senior Lecturer of Psychology at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

Prof. Heyman’s initial idea was to produce a research assignment for a large introductory course of 250 students requiring students to find out something new on their own, supply evidence supporting an answer to a scientific question, and practice writing according to professional (APA) guidelines. 

He also hoped to encourage self-reflection by including a final paragraph in the assignment where students were asked to compare features of their writing with ChatGPT-generated responses to a research question related to their project. The graders’ initial impression of these essays was that students produced quality essays that skillfully marshaled research findings in support of answers to the questions they asked. Prof. Heyman and his team will continue to review the essays in detail and modify the assignment according to trends they notice in students’ performance.

Marcus Breen: Humanities-Focused AI Course

Associate Professor of Communications at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences

When Prof. Breen joined the group, he had a summary of concerns about teaching and collaborating with the Career Center at BC. His project has refined the objectives of (re) teaching a course on Artificial Intelligence to Communication Majors and other students as an elective. He has been able to think through how a humanities focus in the liberal arts will accommodate a range of concerns and then apply this to his course design.

Prof. Breen would like to encourage other faculty to “reflect on the Core Competencies that students may take away from the course, [and] to encourage reflection about them, such as notions of formation in the Jesuit context.“