Career Ready Fellows: Using Course Learning Experiences to Prepare Students for Careers
Although students regularly engage in curricular and co-curricular experiences that help prepare them for their future endeavors, they are often unable to articulate the connections between their college experiences and the skills and competencies that will help them succeed on the job market and in their chosen careers. We are continuing to build a multi-disciplinary cohort of teaching faculty and staff instructors who are working together to explore methods for supporting students in making connections between their Geneseo experiences and their career readiness, vis-脿-vis course activities. No prior experience integrating career competencies into coursework is necessary to become a fellow. Supported by the Career Design Center and the Center for Integrative Learning, our second cohort of Career Ready Fellows will be working together over the course of the 2026-2027 academic year and will receive a $600 stipend for their participation.
Interested in participating as a fellow during the 2027-2028 year? Please read the detailed information below and reach out to Melanie Medeiros (medeiros@geneseo.edu) to be notified when the application period opens.
Esther Baker, Performing Arts
“Graduates in the performing arts face an extremely diverse landscape for utilizing their training in the real world yet rarely will find a posting for a job in their field. A successful artist carefully curates a delicate balance between employee, contractor, free-lancer, and self-employment to create a fulfilling career. I am interested in developing ways we can help support our students to begin building this path while still in school so there is a clear next step after graduation. I am also very interested in how we can capitalize on the arts collaborative training our non-majors receive to make them more hirable as so many fields become increasingly project based and interdisciplinary.”
Susana Castillo-Rodr铆guez, Global Languages & Cultures
“In this period of uncertainty regarding the economy, the job market, and international relations鈥攖o name a few鈥攊t is essential to provide students with the resources and strategies they need for their professional careers. Through this fellowship, I aim to develop assignments and internship opportunities that enable our students to serve more effectively as sociocultural mediators, applying their academic experience to our linguistically and socially diverse community. For me, the collaboration with colleagues from other fields will be instrumental in building an interdisciplinary body of knowledge. I look forward to working together and fostering strong interdepartmental relations.”
Shuo Chen, Economics
“It is important for students to develop critical thinking skills to make informed judgments and decisions in business and their careers in an evolving workplace. I look forward to learning alongside colleagues and exploring new approaches in my teaching to help students connect their coursework to real-world skills.”
Emrys Donaldson, Creative Writing
“Studying creative writing can lead to a variety of rewarding careers across industry sectors: publishing, librarianship, education, law, communications and more. I am delighted to be one of the Career Ready Fellows this academic year to continue colleagues’ work connecting our students’ senior seminar experiences to their career goals. We have brilliant, talented students here at Geneseo and I feel lucky to be one of the people helping prepare them for what comes next.”
Andrew Herman, Communication
“I have taught a career preparation class for juniors and seniors for many years. There is significant value having a dedicated class that prepares students for the transition to a career. Over time, though, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of thinking about these critical questions across all of a student鈥檚 undergraduate journey, helping them see the connections between their curricular and co-curricular experiences and the professional skills and attitudes they need to be successful. This is especially true of the professional qualities that transcend any specific discipline. I am excited for the opportunity to be part of a team to help make this process more effective for every student at Geneseo.”
Md Nazmul Islam, Accounting
“Hearing a student say, ‘I learned it from Professor Islam鈥檚 class,’ is one of those moments that makes me truly proud. This reflection also inspires me to help equip my students for the job market. The job market is a challenging and dynamic platform where students can showcase what they have learned from their personal and academic experiences. Through the Career Ready Fellowship program, I hope to gain new skills, strategies, and resources from various fields and my peers to help my students turn their coursework, learning experiences, and other skills into a clear, compelling career story that encompasses both academia and practice. Participating in this program will help me learn new ways to integrate career-readiness activities for students into my courses and mentoring. I look forward to learning from other faculty and designing creative course activities that will prepare my students for their careers.”
Jim Kernan, Geography & Sustainability Studies
“I began my career as a professional geographer working in consulting and management. I found that hiring, supervising, and mentoring interns and recent college graduates was extremely rewarding. This realization inspired me to complete my doctoral studies and enter academia, and my early professional experiences have had a powerful impact on my teaching. I value high-impact learning practices and community engagement, and have integrated field work, skills development, and resume-building opportunities into many of my courses. I look forward to collaborating with the 2026-2027 Career Ready Fellows as an opportunity to gain experience from talented people, refresh my perspective on career-readiness, and better prepare students for success.”
Sedar Ngoma, Mathematics
“I am excited to be part of a community that is rethinking how we connect classroom learning to real-world impact. In mathematics and other quantitative fields, students develop powerful analytical and problem-solving skills, yet they often struggle to articulate their value beyond the classroom. This fellowship creates an opportunity to intentionally connect academic experiences with the competencies students will carry into their careers, helping them not only learn deeply, but also clearly communicate the relevance of their education.”
Jeffrey Peterson, Chemistry & Biochemistry
“I鈥檓 excited to help connect the classroom, the research lab, and real鈥憌orld skills that prepare students for meaningful lives and careers. These areas are too often siloed, when integrating all three actually makes each one stronger.”
Alex Rouse, Office of Advising
“I am excited to be a Career Ready Fellow because it aligns closely with my commitment to holistic advising, supporting students not just academically, but in exploring their identities, interests, and long-term goals. This opportunity allows me to collaborate with colleagues across campus to better integrate career readiness into the overall student experience. Together, we can more intentionally guide students in making meaningful connections between their education and future aspirations.”
Michael Tenalio, Business
“To be successful in business, and specifically international business, student/learners must understand the application of theory in real world settings. My goal is to align classroom theory, company business cases, and my own international business experience to foster critical thinking and translate theory into practical applications of business situations. The world is a fascinating classroom of countries, cultures, communication, cuisines, and currencies. Building confidence in these areas encourages embracing and adapting to global change albeit technological, cultural, or anything else in an evolving global business environment.”
Allison Thomashefski, Performing Arts
“I am thrilled to be part of the Career Ready Fellows Program at 黑料网. As a member of the Performing Arts faculty, I have the unique opportunity to not only hone essential skills for aspiring performing artists, but also invite a somatic awareness for ALL of my students, regardless of what career field they pursue. We all have a body, and understanding the importance of movement can enhance how we exist in any context. Exploring movement/dance through this lens can prepare people for interviews, public speaking, creative collaboration, and a lifetime of exploring their changing movement preferences and needs. I encourage opportunities for students to deepen their self awareness by honoring personal uniqueness as movers and thinkers. Through highlighting connections between mind and body, I support students in noticing how this integration can support anything they do. I look forward to collaborating with this vibrant and multidisciplinary group of faculty fellows to best support Geneseo students in their career transition journey.”
Jeonghwa Yang, Political Science & International Relations
“I believe students benefit most when they can connect what they learn in the classroom with real-world challenges. I鈥檓 excited to be part of the Career Ready Fellows program because it allows me to further integrate career readiness into my public administration and policy courses and help students see how their skills translate to a wide range of professional paths.”
- Opportunity to develop new course materials that support student needs and interests
- Work with a cohort of faculty and professionals who are interested in connecting course activities with career readiness competencies
- $600 stipend
- Incorporating a new activity that directly connects critical thinking done in a course activity with how the students would use that skill after they leave college.
- A syllabus reorganization or redesign that emphasizes and highlights teamwork and leadership skills that are necessary for successful employment and already a part of your course.
- Designing a mock interview in which students prepare statements on how their coursework prepared them to be more capable in using technology and being more professional.
- Incorporating regular reflections throughout the semester that ask students to make connections between equity and inclusion topics in your coursework and how students could talk about these in job applications and job settings.
- A project that serves a local community or simulates a task someone in a professional career would do that includes a reflection on how the students would talk about this project during an interview.
- A series of guest presentations that explore and connect your course material with professional practice and communication.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is a professional association of college career service professionals. They use a framework of eight competencies and behaviors for addressing career-related goals, which they define as 鈥渁 foundation from which to demonstrate requisite core competencies that broadly prepare the college educated for success in the workplace and lifelong career management.鈥� The eight career readiness competencies identified by NACE are:
- Professionalism
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Teamwork
- Technology
- Leadership
- Equity & Inclusion
- Career & Self Development
As our campus endeavors to expand student access to experiential learning opportunities, aligning these experiences with the NACE Competencies gives us a framework and uniform language to empower students to talk about their experiences.
A recently released report called, 鈥淚ntegrating Academic and Career Development: Strategies to Scale Experiential Learning and Reflection Across the Curriculum,鈥� identified practices that encourage ongoing reflection and narration for students. This helps them transition from 鈥淚 took鈥� and 鈥淚 learned鈥� statements towards 鈥淚 did” and “I can do鈥� assertions. Faculty members in this cohort will be integrating teaching practices that encourage students to reflect and assist them with incorporating course competencies into the development of their professional persona. Throughout students鈥� 黑料网 experience they collect assignments, experiences, and new competencies; one of the goals of this project is to help students articulate how they will be able to leverage their experience to themselves and others. Students could be saving class assignments in a portfolio to share later, taking time in the moment to reflect on growth and goals, or doing mock interviews and practicing how they will talk about connecting their classwork with skills for a potential job.
Applications for the 2027-2028 academic year will open in January 2027.
Please email Melanie Medeiros (medeiros@geneseo.edu), Director of the Center for Integrative Learning, if you have any questions.