Career-Engaged Departments Program

Cal State LA Career-Engaged Departments Program

2024 - 2025

Career Engaged Departments

Introduction

The Career-Engaged Departments Program—one of the first of its kind in the country—is a yearlong faculty learning community that supports departments to embed career readiness into their curriculum.

The program takes an equity-minded, critical look at the professional abilities that the workplace will demand from graduates, including problem solving, working in a world where AI is increasingly pervasive, communication with technology, problem diagnosis, and critical reading/writing. Working collaboratively in department teams, faculty modify their courses to meet student-centered learning outcomes aligned with National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career readiness competencies.

Program Overview

What is Career Engagement?

Program Workshops

Faculty Showcase

FAQ's

Program Overview

Over the course of the two-semester program, a team of department faculty will work together to embed career readiness into their curriculum and to submit modified courses that meet student-centered, career-engaged learning outcomes. 

Department teams consisting of at least six faculty members work together to build “career-engaged” content into three nominated courses, two of which must be lower-division and at least one of which must be a General Education (GE) course. 

Teams will consist of 3 Lead Designers (one per nominated course) who must be Tenure-Track faculty who regularly teach the course, along with at least 3 additional Team Members, who must regularly teach at least one of the nominated courses. Lecturers are invited to participate.

Teams will work together to participate in six workshops and six department team meetings, and to create/embed four team-created career-relevant deliverables into each of their three nominated courses. 

What is Career Engagement?

In the past decade, many stakeholders, including campuses and employers, have tried codifying career-relevant outcomes (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2022; National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2021). These sets of knowledge, skills, and dispositions manifest themselves differently in how they apply to student learning. Broadly speaking, career relevant learning cuts across any single discipline and can be developed through intentional curricular experiences, regardless of the content being taught. These competencies anticipate the changing world of work. Moreover, many of these are already being featured in the classroom—but there may be a lack of awareness by students as to how these skills, as they are currently taught, explicitly relate to community and workplace settings.

In the wake of the pandemic, the national discussion on professional learning has intensified. The Cal State LA Career-Engaged Departments program uses the NACE 2021 competencies as a framework for career learning at Cal State LA. The 2021 NACE competencies include:

  • Career and Self-Development
  • Communication
  • Critical Thinking
  • Equity and Inclusion
  • Leadership
  • Professionalism
  • Teamwork
  • Technology

Faculty participating in the series will learn to integrate NACE competencies into their courses in ways that honor the spirit of the discipline while making the connection between college and work explicit.

Career-Engaged Departments Workshops

Over the course of the program, department teams will participate in six workshops in the Career Engaged Teaching series. Following live workshop sessions, faculty teams will hold team meetings and collaborate to complete four program deliverables. The workshops include: 

  1. Introduction to Career Ready Learning 
  2. Group Work is Professional Practice 
  3. Teaching using Disciplinary Values 
  4. Problem-solving in the Discipline 
  5. Reading and Writing for Careers 
  6. Career Readiness for Equitable Learning 

Career-Engaged Departments Showcase

Over 100 faculty and 15 Departments have completed the Career-Engaged Departments Program.

The 2023-23 cohort: Child and Family Studies, Communication, Criminal Justice-Criminalistics, Technology, Liberal Studies, and Sociology.

The 2023-24 cohort: Accounting, Biological Sciences, Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies, English, Management, Marketing, Mathematics, Music, Public Health, and faculty in our Prison Graduation Initiative.

Communication

  • Faculty:
    • Sierra Bray
    • Melissa Deleon
    • Kimberli Samuel
    • Elaine Wittenberg

English

  • Faculty:
    • Josh Adachi
    • Emily Baird
    • Megan Bowe
    • Ronnese Kirton Glover
    • Miljan Rahman

Liberal Studies

  • Faculty:
    • Claudia Diera
    • Jamila Guerrero-Cantor
    • Alexis Riley
    • Mike Willard, Department Chair

Music

  • Faculty:
    • Linda Rose Hembreiker
    • Beverly Stein

Accounting

  • Faculty:
    • Rui (Shelly) Hu
    • Dong-Woo Lee, Department Chair
    • Gretchen Lawrie
    • Nika Qiao
    • Xiangge (Angela) Wang

Management

  • Faculty:
    • Ramzan Amiri
    • Jannine Mongeon (Schaaf)
    • Tara O'Callaghan
    • Belarmina Richards

Marketing

  • Faculty:
    • Sharmin Attaran
    • Karen Blackwell
    • Kipenzi Chidinma
    • Mine Ucok Hughes, Department Chair
    • Silvia Martin (Lozano)
    • Joe Otto, Department Chair
    • Tara Petrin
    • Anita Ravani
    • Irem Yoruk

Technology

  • Faculty:
    • Ali Adabzadeh
    • Yilin Feng
    • Pono (John) Van Gieson
    • Ankit Gupta
    • Rupa Purasinghe, Department Chair
    • Josef Velten

Chicana(o) & Latina(o) Studies

  • Faculty:
    • Sonny Richard Espinoza
    • Joanna Flores
    • Michelle Lopez
    • Claudia Mercado

Child & Family Studies

  • Faculty:
    • Sosseh Didarloo
    • Allison Fuligni
    • Brie Kohrt
    • Yafen Lo
    • Jessica Morales-Chicas
    • Ashley Munger
    • Christine Park
    • Su-Jeong Wee
    • Wook Yang

Criminal Justice-Criminalistics

  • Faculty:
    • Margaret Finnegan
    • Gabriel Ferreyra-Orozco
    • Xiaohan Mei
    • Carlena Orosco
    • Joshua Ruffin
    • Bill Sanders
    • Nicole Smolter
    • Elizabeth Alvarez (Velazquez)
    • Tracy Webb

Public Health

  • Faculty:
    • Evelyn Alvarez
    • Ana-Alicia Carr
    • Ndifreke Etim
    • Wai Ping (Athena) Foong
    • Beth Hoffman
    • Kimberly Kisler
    • Marisa Marcarello
    • Stephanie McGuire
    • Melanie Sebado-Liwag
    • Gregory Stevens

Biological Sciences

  • Faculty:
    • Serj Danielian
    • Kirsten Fisher, Department Chair
    • Tina Givrad
    • Lisa Lugo
    • Tina Salmassi
    • Elizabeth (Lisa) Torres
    • Valerie Wong

Mathematics

  • Faculty:
    • Tina Givrad
    • Sharona Krinsky
    • Daphne Liu, Department Chair
    • Jennica Melendez
    • Bao Ngo
    • Jason O'Neill
    • Tuyetdong Phan-Yamada
    • Grant Robinson
    • Jie Zhong
    • Dong Zhou

Sociology

  • Faculty:
    • Dinur Blum
    • Kristen Discola
    • Ruzanna Karmiryan
    • Ted Manley
    • Luis Nuno
    • Melanie Stagnaro
    • Dmitri Seals
    • Vanessa Stout

  • Faculty:
    • Cynthia Blake
    • John Dennem
    • Dion McKenzie
    • Oscar Mejia
    • Bidhan Roy
    • Marcos Santos
    • David Thorne
    • Matthew Tasaka-Mejia
    • Mike Willard

Career-Engaged Departments Program FAQ

Yes! The chair should be involved as this is a department initiative. Chairs are highly encouraged to be a part of the team.

The team will consist of 3 Lead Designers (one for each nominated course) and additional Team Members.  Lead Designers must be Tenured/Tenure-Track faculty who regularly teach their nominated course. We encourage teams to consist of a mix of Full, Associate, and Assistant Professors, as well as lecturers involved in teaching all levels of the undergraduate curriculum. A minimum of 6 and up to 10 faculty from a department may participate—including those who teach multi-section GE courses. 

 

Small departments are absolutely encouraged to apply to the program. We will consider a proportional number of faculty relative to department size.

One goal of the program is to work on the courses that will reach the greatest numbers of students—commonly taught, lower division courses as well as those required of the major. Faculty must nominate three courses, two of which must be lower-division and one of which must be a General Education (GE) course. Although the work in the program is focused on specific courses, the broader goal of the initiative is to facilitate conversations that may result in more broader changes that can help students understand how their coursework prepares them for their future. 

Yes! Members of the team must regularly teach at least one of the nominated courses, and there will be a Lead Designer assigned to each course. Faculty will work on the course that they regularly teach. Faculty will work together to create four career-engaged deliverables for each of the three nominated courses, and these deliverables can serve as templates for faculty to incorporate into other courses that they teach.  

Participation in the Career-Engaged Departments Program requires a department team of a minimum of six (maximum of ten) faculty members, which includes 3 Lead Designers. If individual faculty members apply to the program, then the program team will follow-up with the Department Chair 

(Forward thinking) instructors who participated in the 2022 spring pilot have two options: they may join the department team and complete the series OR they may earn a certificate on their own. Only faculty who participate with a department team are eligible to earn the team payment.

Faculty who completed Workshops 1 and 2 piloted during AY 2021-2022 do not need to take the workshops again. However, we highly encourage faculty to attend the workshops again so that they receive updated workshop content and so that the material is fresh in their minds as they collaborate with their department team. 

The Department team earns the stipend. Lead Designers earn $1500 each, and team members earn $750 each at the end of the program for completing all program requirements. 

The program is facilitated by Faculty Fellows Dr. Devika Hazra, Associate Professor of Economics, and Dr. Tanya Sanabria, Assistant Professor of Sociology. Faculty can schedule appointments with the Faculty Fellows and can also email us at cetl@calstatela.edu.  

The Career-Engaged Departments Program requires attendance at six workshops and completion of all deliverable assignments post-workshop. The workshops are each offered multiple times, at a variety of dates, during the program's duration. Because workshops feature active learning, faculty must attend workshops when they are offered, are not able to make up missed workshops, and must complete all workshops in order to submit deliverables. Department teams are highly encouraged to schedule their workshops upon acceptance into the program so that all team members know when they are able to attend the workshop offerings. Current workshop times are found in the Qualtrics application survey.

Faculty will collaborate with their colleagues to create four team deliverables for each of their three nominated courses they selected to receive payment: 1) A course map that shows how the NACE competencies are embedded in their course- and module-learning objectives, classroom activities, and classroom assignments; 2) A course description that articulates how the course embeds career readiness to meet student-centered, career-engaged learning outcomes; 3) a short, classroom routine students will practice regularly that will develop a habit of mind relevant to course outcomes; and, 4) a transparent course assignment that helps students build their job crafting skills. 

Program Sponsorship

Career-Engaged Departments programming is funded by Éxito! Building Student Support and Faculty Quality, a US Department of Education Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions (DHSI) grant. The goal of the grant is to improve student outcomes by taking an asset-based and equity-focused approach to student success. The Career-Engaged Departments program is offered through AY 2024-25. For more information about the by Éxito! Building Student Support and Faculty Quality DHSI grant, see the homepage.

Contact

The Career-Engaged Departments program runs September through May of each year. Look for the call via CETL email. For more information about the Career-Engaged Departments Program, please contact CETL Equity Programs Senior Designer and Coordinator, Dr. Carl Schottmiller at cschott@calstatela.edu.

References