Career Champions is a professional development program designed for faculty and instructors to learn tangible ways to add career connection in the classroom, while advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and examining the barriers to access for first generation students, students of color, and low-income students.

Our curriculum was developed collaboratively with a cross-campus group of teaching and professional faculty. Career Champions is run in partnership with the Office of Academic Affairs and the Career Development Center.

Why Career Champions?

Career Champions began as part of Oregon State's participation in the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of public research universities committed to increasing the number and diversity of college graduates. Students interviewed by the UIA stated overwhelmingly that they wanted to learn more about career pathways from their faculty members. 

  • Currently, many universities' career services operate on an opt-in basis, and many first-generation, low income, and students of color face a variety of barriers in proactively accessing these services.
  • Career Champions gives participants the tools to integrate career development into their unique classrooms, democratizing access to career readiness across the university.

 

Learn more about the UIA College to Career project

Become a Career Champion

Oregon State offers the Career Champions professional development program in a cohort-based model, with a new cohort each term.

  • Each cohort consists of approximately 5-15 faculty and instructors.
  • The program is six weeks long, with one synchronous course session per week and approximately two hours of asynchronous work.
  • The Career Champions program looks at issues of career readiness through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. Participants should have some familiarity with DEI concepts but need not be experts; ideally, they will have completed some form of diversity, equity and inclusion training at Oregon State or elsewhere.

 

Join the next Career Champions Cohort

What to expect in Career Champions

Program goals and participant insights

  

 

Working alongside colleagues from different disciplines to learn and discuss topics on how to best support first-generation students, students of color, and students with high-financial need on their pathway to career is an enriching process and crucial to the success of our students and institution.

 

Career Champions is an important reminder of the roles and impact we have as educators in and out of the classroom.

 

  

- Summer 2020 program participant

Goals of Career Champions

Oregon State's Career Champions program tackles issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, and also provides educators with tangible ways to incorporate career education into their work with students.

  • Perceive student needs and barriers. Participants will be able to understand the unique strengths, needs and barriers to engagement of first-generation, low-income and students of color, and respond with empathy to these students.
  • Acknowledge cultural inequities. After completing the course, participants will be able to understand and acknowledge white supremacist culture related to institutional barriers, inequities, and disparities in education and other systems, while recognizing individuals' and groups' historical and contemporary experiences with power, privilege, and oppression.
  • Understand career competencies. Those who have taken the course will understand the career competencies identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, and how these competencies can assist students in connecting what happens in the classroom to their future careers.
  • Update course content. Participants will analyze and revise course content for areas where NACE career competencies and other career resources could be incorporated, in ways that center first-gen students with marginalized identities, through inclusive and affirming language and cultural humility.
  • Apply career education plans and practices. By the end of the course, participants will complete the following:
    • create a syllabus statement that address NACE career readiness competencies
    • apply career-related and inclusive teaching practices to a class lecture, assignment, or activity
    • create an individual action plan that reflects changes made to the course.
Already taken Career Champions?

   

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