Connect Curriculum to Careers and Outcomes

• Critically evaluate and restructure the general education curriculum in a way that emphasizes transferable skills (e.g., written communication, information literacy).
  • Seek funding to support a thoughtful and thorough initiative not entirely dependent on faculty service commitments (e.g., The Teagle Foundation: Call for Proposals).
  • Leverage the flexibility of a skill-based model to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and learning in general education courses (e.g., a team-taught course on science writing instructed by faculty from chemistry and English).
  • Highlight the utility of the skills learned in each general education course because they contribute to the public affairs mission:
    • Prepare students to be ethical, culturally competent, engaged citizens;
    • Prepare students for advanced courses in a wide range of majors; and
    • Prepare students for a variety of careers.
      
• Build curricular pathways that integrate a public affairs certificate into general education for most or all students (incorporate the recently approved certificate or a similar program).
• Build a curriculum not guided by the cost-center model, which incentivizes each program to create general education courses within as many categories as possible.
• Ensure that the general education curriculum can be aligned with the constraints imposed by Core 42, which emphasizes traditional disciplinary boundaries.
• Reduce the proportion of general education courses taught by per- course faculty to foster increased connections to programs and the campus community.
• Review first-year courses and IDS 120: Exploring Majors and Careers to ensure relevant content and early exposure to potential careers paths.
• Include major and career exploration in general education courses and curriculum.

• Develop a program for longitudinal monitoring of student outcomes.
  • Increase interactions with alumni to facilitate community building, interactions with current students, data collection and fundraising.
  • Connect alumni with programs to expand mentoring and other opportunities for current students.
• Generate representative data on student outcomes at one, two, five and 10 years post-graduation.
  • Data will be communicated to programs for use in curricular evaluations and marketing. 
  • Use outcomes data to develop processes to evaluate the readiness of our graduates for the workforce, for example through surveys of employers.
• Utilize tools such as Gray DI and EAB Insights to evaluate curriculum and align it with current and projected workforce demands.
• Evaluate needs at local, regional and national scales.
• Ensure that evaluations capture the value provided by education in areas not traditionally viewed as career preparatory (e.g., soft skills and creativity fostered by the arts and humanities).

Provide effective proactive personalized advising

• Provide professional advising for students with fewer than 60 hours; each college identifies an appropriate advising and mentoring model for students with more than 60 hours.
• Assign advisors to programs and train them as needed.
• Evaluate the need for and increase the number of advisors; then, reduce the number of students per advisor as appropriate.
  • With an appropriate number of students per advisor, leverage Brightspace tools (e.g., automated notifications when students miss assignments) to identify struggling students and to provide resources to increase the likelihood of academic success and retention.
• Develop targeted advising sessions:
  • Focus on majors and potential career paths for undecided students (end of first year, beginning of second year).
  • Focus on undergraduate-to-graduate programs with an emphasis on accelerated programs.
• Use AI to complement faculty and staff advising.

Help students make informed academic and career choices

• Incorporate information about discipline relevance into core courses.
• Develop career maps for majors and graduate programs, with suggested coursework and professional development milestones during degree completion and connections to a range of post-graduation career options (e.g., Inside Higher Ed: Degree and Career Map Improves Student Outcomes; Map the Future of Anthropology: A Guide for Optimizing Your Degree).
• Include information about student outcomes on program websites.
• Provide support to programs for ongoing website updates and maintenance.
• Request that the Career Center establish a database of staff and alumni for mentorship opportunities and guest speakers.
• Utilize Boomer Bot to ask sophomores if they have declared a major, and provide resources if they respond “no.”
• Review and update the website with resources for choosing a major: Missouri State University Academic Advising and Transfer Center: Undeclared Students.
• Identify majors, programs and career paths unfamiliar to beginning students and devote resources to enhancing awareness of those opportunities.
• Incorporate discussion of majors into SOAR and ensure relevant education for SOAR staff.
• Promote major and career exploration through the Career Center and the Office of Citizenship and Service- Learning.