The Power of Integration – Integrated Learning Working Group Reflections

The Career Center has been thrilled to collaborate with faculty and staff across the university this past year to actively integrate career readiness into the BC curriculum. We have been partnering with the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) to offer a faculty working group to support participants in integrating vocational discernment, career readiness skills, and formation into the classroom in order to offer students a deeper understanding of how their classroom learning directly relates to their lives and futures. Here are some reflections from Integrated Learning Working Group (ILWG) participants:

What’s one specific thing that you’ve learned in this working group that you’d like to share with others?

“I really knew nothing about integrative learning before joining this working group (I confess that I spent the first several workshop meetings just trying to identify a definition of IL). So nearly everything was new to me. However, I think the one thing that was really solidified for me is how much student buy-in can be generated by creating opportunities for them to develop skills they find useful for their future careers.”
~ Regan Bernhard, Lecturer, Psychology

“One huge theme that we return to in many different contexts within the working group is ‘reflection.’ Getting students to ponder the WHY of our syllabi is too rare: why do they think we have this particular assignment, or this reading, or this in-class discussion? It’s worth making them explicitly draw the connection to their knowledge and experiences gained from other courses, or from their extracurricular activities or personal lives… I plan to integrate more explicit reflection opportunities in all of my courses.”
~ Matt Rutledge, Associate Professor of the Practice, Economics

“This working group has broadened my thinking about the various ways that faculty can encourage students to discern their values and strengths in ways that can inform their future career choices, and it has also provided me time to think about how I can build assignments that showcase the career readiness skills that students are learning.“
~ Elizabeth Kensinger, Professor, Chair Psychology

“The consistency of the challenges associated with teaching undergraduates who are frequently motivated to succeed yet need improved direction from faculty in developing their academic skills and post-graduation lives.“
~ Marcus Breen, Associate Professor of the Practice, Communication

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What’s one piece of advice you would provide to your faculty peers on how to incorporate career readiness and formation in your work?

“I think 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.“
~ Regan Bernhard, Lecturer, Psychology

“We really don’t have to change much about what we do to draw a closer connection to career readiness… All we have to do is remind them about how the different elements of the syllabus apply in the real world: as workers or job seekers, as voters, in running a household or relating to friends or in dating or dealing with your parents.”
~ Matt Rutledge, Associate Professor of the Practice, Economics

“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.”
~ Elizabeth Kensinger, Professor, Chair Psychology

“Reflect on the Core Competencies that students may take away from the course, to encourage reflection about them, such as notions of formation in the Jesuit context.”
~ Marcus Breen, Associate Professor of the Practice, Communication