Career Tools

Many adults go back to college to gain the knowledge and skills that will help them advance in their current career or start a new one. As students engage in their program of study at Excelsior College, requirements in the majors focus on helping students acquire the career-specific skills necessary to work in a chosen profession.

Career-specific skills, however, are no longer enough for working professionals.

To meet the needs of a rapidly changing workplace, professionals today are required to constantly update their skills and adapt to a changing landscape. To ensure graduates are prepared for the future of work, Excelsior College community members, including faculty, academic support staff, and students, developed general education career competencies. These competencies define cross-cutting skills in areas such as communication, problem solving, and ethical reasoning. By focusing on these transferable skills, the general education curriculum ensures graduates are lifelong learners positioned to meet the needs of a constantly changing workplace and environment.

There is uncertainty among employees and employers about what the future of work will look like, but the increased use of automation technology will continually impact the workforce. Jobs will not disappear but will instead shift, requiring workers to possess new sets of skills. In “The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market,” authors Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane argue that workers of the future will need to be able to quickly process new information, solve unstructured problems, or perform non-routine manual tasks. The general education career competencies will help prepare learners to meet these kinds of challenges.

The general education career competencies encompass seven areas: oral and written communication; mathematical and scientific problem solving; information literacy; cultural diversity and expression; global understanding; ethical reasoning; and professional presence and self-awareness. These areas reflect the most important soft skills employers seek in employees. In an article in Nurse Education Today, Andrew McKrie, faculty of nursing and midwifery at Robert Gordon University, emphasizes the importance of this foundational learning for nurses, stating that this liberal arts curriculum “can influence student nurses’ sense of discernment, enhance their own responsibility for learning, support ethical regard for others, provide different perspectives on human experience and contribute to a balanced curriculum.” Today’s graduates — regardless of their area of study — need career-specific skills to enter the workplace and transferable skills to adapt to change and uncertainty in their professions and lives.

Increasingly, these foundational skills are incorporated into coursework at Excelsior College. Written communication skills, for instance, are embedded across the Excelsior curriculum, including in the core requirements for a major. However, it is not possible for courses in the majors to cover all of the necessary foundational skills when the specialized abilities needed by students to enter and advance in these professions keeps increasing. By directly exposing students to these intellectually demanding competencies, students will be able to better learn them. By integrating these requirements in a way that complements majors, Excelsior faculty members will be able to best prepare students to transfer their knowledge across courses and to their future careers.

Focus on Professional Presence and Self-Awareness

One unique component of the new competencies is the focus on professional presence and self-awareness. Surveys of employers confirm these traits are important in the people they hire. For instance, Hart Research Associates conducts a survey for the American Association of Colleges and Universities on the extent to which graduates are prepared on key skills and abilities. In the 2018 survey, skills associated with professional presence and self-awareness were identified as some of the most important traits sought by employers.

Excelsior community members defined two specific competencies in the professional presence and self-awareness category that are most appropriate for our working adult students. One competency requires students to articulate the norms and conventions of their ideal career field. By requiring students to explain and reflect on these norms, the curriculum is designed to prepare them with the skills and attitudes needed for success in their specific fields. The other competency requires students to develop a career planning strategy that incorporates their strengths, interests, abilities, and values. Through creating individual strategies, students identify the next step in their development as professionals. The revised curriculum also makes students aware of the resources available to assist them on their journey.

Competencies Present from the Start

Undergraduate students will first encounter the general education career competencies in a new component of the curriculum — the Cornerstone course. The Cornerstone is an opportunity for students to chart their career trajectory and to reflect on their mindsets and ambitions. The course was created to help students begin with a strong start as online learners at Excelsior College, and it positions students to be lifelong learners, critical thinkers, and problem solvers. Throughout the course, students learn through responding to questions without a clear right or wrong answer. Through engaging with these questions, students challenge their prior assumptions, consider society’s future dilemmas, and propose solutions to complex problems.

The Cornerstone is oriented thematically around questions about the future, says Mary Berkery, faculty program director for the Cornerstone course. “As part of that focus, the course looks at how the skills learned through general education prepare students for their academic and career futures and can positively impact society, she says. For example, one discussion asks students to consider the future value of higher education and the necessity of teaching concepts like cultural expression and global understanding.”

Once undergraduate students complete the Cornerstone course, they continue into other courses aligned with the general education career competencies and discipline-specific learning outcomes.

At the graduate level, there are nine competency areas incorporated into all programs and these competencies are steeped in general education. “We expect students to focus on their: 1) ethical decision-making; 2) ability to lead and influence; 3) oral and written communication; 4) strategic and analytical thinking; 5) technological literacy and aptitude; 6) innovativeness and entrepreneurial spirt; 7) professional-identity and presence; 8) financial acumen; and 9) awareness of global diversity and inclusion,” says Scott Dolan, dean of the School of Graduate Studies.

Near the end of their undergraduate or graduate studies, students complete a capstone experience. Capstones require students to apply their learning from earlier in their studies or lives. Students demonstrate their mastery of program learning goals and general education career competencies through the integration of what they have learned. Capstone experiences vary by program. In some programs, Capstones involve research projects requiring students to draw upon key skills related to critical thinking, oral and written communication, information literacy, and professional presence and self-awareness. In other programs, Capstones may consist of clinical experiences, requiring them to demonstrate clinical, technological, inter- and intra-personal communication skills, and the ability to integrate professional standards in this work. Regardless of the type of experience, Capstones are intended to foster deep learning and skill mastery.

Both the Cornerstone course and Capstone experiences provide students with the opportunities to engage in deep learning. The mix of general education and program-specific curriculum helps to ensure each of Excelsior’s academic programs effectively prepares students for career entry and advancement in a rapidly changing environment.