Career Connections

Strategy  •  Background  •  Career Pathways  •  Available Resources

 

strategy

Bonner Alumni Panel at 2024 Summer Leadership Institute, Oberlin College

Many institutions are exploring how students may find pathways that best prepare them for post-graduate opportunities, including employment and graduate school. With high costs of a college education and increasing critiques from students and their families, institutions must clearly demonstrate the value of their students’ educational experiences compared to more affordable and easier options. 

For centers of civic and community engagement, creating visible pathways tied to career preparation and readiness is a strategic move. Many centers can collaborate with other campus units, especially Career Services and Internships, to showcase these pathways. Such pathways often leverage both co-curricular and curricular experiences, often involving internships and applied learning opportunities. These pathways mesh with students’ personal and vocational interests, which for youth today often include the desire to make a difference and work on issues of concern. Such pathways often build in key high-impact practices (HIPs) that have been found to be tied to graduates’ success in the workplace.

Intended for students, staff, faculty, and other career services professionals, we have compiled resources around eight intersectional career pathways to aid students in articulation and development of their career journey, find opportunities, and network with field professionals.

background

Research involving graduates' success in the workplace and other post-graduate opportunities has further punctuated the connection with experiential learning and community engagement. A 2014 large-scale study of graduates in the U.S. conducted by Gallup Inc. and Purdue University found six factors most correlated to graduates success. As the Great Jobs, Great Lives report states:

“If employed graduates feel their college prepared them well for life outside of it, the odds that they are engaged at work rise nearly three times. Experiences in college that contribute to feeling prepared for life after college, such as internships or jobs where students are able to apply what they are learning in the classroom, active involvement in extracurricular activities and organizations, and working on a project that took a semester or more to complete are part of this preparation.” 

Unfortunately, though, most college students are not having these experiences. The report also found that, “Only 14% of all college graduates strongly agree that they had support in all three areas. College graduates are most likely to strongly agree that they had a professor who excited them about learning (63%), while 27% strongly agree that they had a professor who cared about them personally, and 22% strongly agree that they had a mentor who encouraged them. Unfortunately, those who strongly agree to having experienced all six elements of support and experiential and deep learning during their college time are rare: just 3% of all college graduates. This suggests that colleges can give students the knowledge and experiences that help make them engagement-ready and savvy enough to identify and seek out workplaces that foster engagement.

Another key partner in the effort to expand and deepen integrative pathways are higher education associations. For Career Pathways, NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, is a key contributor in this space. Many institutions’ Career Services offices (including at institutions that are part of the Bonner Network) have adopted the set of NACE competencies which include many that overlap with the Bonner Student Learning Outcomes, such as communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, and teamwork.

Essentially, institutions are using a combination of communication strategies (such as videos and webpages), technology (such as e-portfolios), advising, and other components to create and make more visible examples of career preparation pathways.

career pathways

Arts, Entertainment, and Creative Professions

Careers in the arts and entertainment industry encompass various creative fields such as music, film, visual arts, and performing arts. Professionals in this field can be musicians, journalists, filmmakers, graphic designers, or museum curators.

Healthcare

Careers in healthcare involve providing medical care, promoting wellness, and improving the overall health of individuals and communities. Professionals in this field may work as nurses, therapist, midwife, counselor, health researcher, epidemiologist, or health organizations.

Non-profit, Social Impact, and Human Services

This category includes careers that focus on helping and supporting individuals and communities in areas such as counseling, social work, and advocacy. Professionals in this field can be counselors, social workers, community organizers, or nonprofit directors.

Business, Finance, and economics

This category includes careers related to managing organizations, financial planning, investment, and other aspects of the business world. Jobs in this field can range from financial analysts and accountants to marketing managers and business consultants.

K-12 and Higher Education

Education careers involve teaching, training, and guiding individuals in acquiring knowledge and skills. This includes roles such as teachers, professors, instructional designers, education administrators, student affairs professionals, and community engagement professionals.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

This category includes careers that involve conducting experiments, analyzing data, designing, building, and maintaining structures, systems, and technologies, and advancing knowledge in various scientific fields. Professionals in this field may work as biologists, civil engineers, chemists, research scientists, data analysts, and IT project managers.

Environment and Sustainability

This category includes careers related to promoting conservation, protecting natural resources, and addressing environmental issues. This can include roles such as environmental scientists, conservationists, sustainability coordinators, or renewable energy engineers.

Law, Public Policy, and International Affairs

This category encompasses careers related to the legal system, public policy, human rights, international affairs, and social justice. This includes roles such as lawyer, policy analyst, refugee aid worker, field consultant, politician, and civil service.

available resources

guides

Higher education has shifted to make career readiness a strategic priority across many campuses. Additionally, some colleges and universities have made explicit the linkage between how civic and community engagement directly contributes to students’ career readiness. Some institutions are building on existing courses, collaborating with career services, and designing and implementing innovative programs to guide students in identifying and articulating how their high impact practices like service learning, internships, collaborative projects contribute to their career preparation, development, and readiness.

In response to these emerging priorities, in the summer of 2024, The Bonner Foundation developed a new resource: Career Connections: A Best Practice Guide for Strengthening Career Development and Community Engagement to serve as a tool and inspiration for institutions to explore and develop innovative approaches to address the career readiness challenges facing higher education.

request for proposals

The Bonner Foundation is pleased to share this Career Connections Initiative Request for Proposals for 2024-26. Through it, institutions in the Bonner Network apply for grants of up to $15,000 to work on innovative strategies that bolster students’ career readiness through community engagement. An interested institution should prepare a draft proposal and discuss it with their Foundation Staff liaison.  

Bonner curriculum

The following career-focused guides train participants strategies for developing key professional skills to bolster their service experiences in conjunction with their career objectives. 

supporting research


The Career-Ready Graduate: What Employers Say About The Difference College Makes

This report from the American Association of College and Universities (AAC&U) survey was developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in collaboration with our research partner, Morning Consult. The survey is part of AAC&U’s longitudinal efforts to examine the ways in which employers value dimensions of a college education in light of evolving workforce needs. The findings reflect employer perspectives on the outcomes and experiences that matter for career success and the degree to which recent college graduates are prepared to succeed. Employers were also queried on their thoughts regarding recent trends affecting higher education, specifically the emergence of micro-credentials and legislative efforts to limit what can be taught and discussed in college courses. Click here to access the full report.  

Great Jobs Great Lives

This section draws on research and scholarship related to how community and civic engagement has been found to be both a High-Impact Practice (HIP) and closely linked with the skills, aptitudes, and habits that are frequently desired by employers and workplaces. 

The Gallup-Purdue Index, a 2014 survey of more than 30,000 U.S. college graduates, found that those who were emotionally supported during college, and who had experiential and deep learning, were more likely to have high well-being. These findings held true regardless of the type of four-year institution—public or private not-for-profit college; a highly selective institution or a less selective institution; or a top 100-ranked school in the U.S. News & World Report vs. other schools. it's Not “Where” You Go to College, but how you go to college that matters, the report states. It points to experiential learning, relationships with mentors, out-of-class activities that are substantive, and project-based experiences as important. The report also looks the the negative effects of some aspects of college, like too much debt. It examines what factors contribute to post-graduate thriving. Thirty-nine percent of U.S. graduates are engaged at work without distinction between public vs. private not-for-profit colleges, but there was a substantial difference between graduates of for-profit institutions and the rest. While most graduates are thriving in one or more key dimensions of well-being – purpose, social, financial, community, and physical – only 11% are thriving in all five. Find the full report here.

Additional NACE Resources for Career Development and Pathways

According to NACE, career readiness is a foundation from which to demonstrate requisite core competencies that broadly prepare the college educated for success in the workplace and lifelong career management. For new college graduates, career readiness is key to ensuring successful entrance into the workforce. Career readiness is the foundation upon which a successful career is launched. Career readiness is, quite simply, the new career currency. For higher education, career readiness provides a framework for addressing career-related goals and outcomes of curricular and extracurricular activities, regardless of the student’s field of study. For employers, career readiness plays an important role in sourcing talent, providing a means of identifying key skills and abilities across all job functions; similarly, career readiness offers employers a framework for developing talent through internship and other experiential education programs.

NACE offers other resources that may be useful to share with colleagues, including administrators, faculty, and students. Mapping curricular and co-curricular pathways to inventory courses, programs, and degree requirements that are components of such pathways may be an important strategy for campus change leaders. Through doing so, teams may identify gaps which may be addressed through adding community engaged learning projects to courses, developing fellowship and internship opportunities, mentoring and advising, and other connections. This handout of the NACE competencies may be useful. This report on the Development and Validation of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies may be interesting to deans and institutional research staff. 

Articles & Resources