Our reputation as America’s Career University in an age when hands-on learning grows increasingly popular is a primary reason for our remarkable success with students and employers. As others seek to imitate our model, it is incumbent upon us to set the bar higher with regard to career-focused education. Vice President of Career Development Donna Yena and her team will, “promote the career success of our students by continuing to find the best ways to connect employers to our graduates and curriculum development process.”
With employers using new and varied methods to recruit and communicate with our students and graduates and requiring new skills in many industries, we need to constantly measure the effectiveness of our unique Career Management System and refine messaging in career management education.
We will develop programs centered on enhancing student and employer satisfaction and aggressively recruit employers that meet the career interests of our students in every degree program. Donna notes, “The decision to eliminate A.S. degrees in business and hospitality as of 2008 was based on direct input from industry, and allows us to focus even more on strengthening the number and quality of career opportunities for our B.S. graduates.” Enhanced employer relations and participation in academics and recruitment will position us to stay ahead of the curve. In the spring of 2006, a newly configured employer development team began work to attract a select list of new employers to recruit at all of our campuses.
For almost 30 years the Career Development Office (CDO) has achieved the 98% employment benchmark. (Within 60 days of graduation, 98% of JWU students actively seeking employment, from the 50 states are employed in their chosen career field.) We are already challenging ourselves to go beyond this measure. Building on the philosophy of Best Fit Employment—a commitment that career-focused graduates are prepared with the right skills to enter the right field and are matched with the right employers—we will ensure our graduates have professionally enviable and personally satisfying careers, and work towards measuring aspects of career progression.
Based on the work of an experiential education taskforce formed in April 2005, I asked Larry Rice, dean of academic affairs at the North Miami Campus in June 2006, to chair a universitywide committee and conduct a national search for a new university dean of experiential education. With a goal of filling this role by early 2007, this new leader will establish the ExEd entity and pull together the various elements throughout JWU which have responsibilities for co-op, practicum, internships, externships, site identification, student placement, success evaluation, employer relations and more.
Once the new dean of experiential education is in place, CDO and Academics will jointly re-engineer experiential education programming to ensure that every student participates in a meaningful opportunity that allows them to develop hands-on skills that will make them successful in their careers.
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