Helping graduate students find alternative careers

Posted on January 20, 2015September 30, 2015

Career Development Organization for physicists and astronomers (CDO)

“There are three things I know I like: research, mentoring people and the Northwest. I’m looking to find a career path that combines those. I think I have plenty of options that will use my skill sets appropriately and they’ll all be good ones.”

**Andrew Laszlo ‘14**
2013-14 Coordinator, CDO; Ph.D., Physics; Postdoctoral Researcher, UW Nanopore Physics Lab

Several years ago, physics and astronomy graduate students co-founded an organization to support students looking for jobs outside of academia. They met a growing need to connect graduating Ph.D. students to employers. “The reality is that most people don’t go into a tenure-track position,” says Andrew Laszlo, who was a 2013-14 coordinator of the Career Development Organization for physicists and astronomers (CDO). “A lot of people are going on to do other things. Our goal is to get people thinking about other options and to see what’s out there.”

Connecting alumni, employers and current students: The CDO’s primary focus is an annual networking event. Student organizers invite local and international employers, many of whom are also alumni. On the first day, employers present to students. On the second day, students present their own work to employers. “The idea is to get people talking,” says Laszlo. The visiting professionals represent the range of opportunities open to graduating scientists. Recent graduate Amit Misra notes, “It was interesting to see their career paths. They’re not your professors; they are people who branched off and did what I’ve been hoping to do—find a career outside of academia.”

Creating well-rounded scientists: CDO aims to help science graduate students become better job candidates. Laszlo summarizes the challenge: “I think employers are happy to hire candidates who are good at working with other people and have skills beyond just being intelligent.” As a result, CDO’s programming highlights the value of ‘soft skills.’ The organization’s mission statement contends: “To remain competitive in the job market, physicists, mathematicians and astronomers need to augment their analytic and problem-solving skills with flexibility, leadership, and cross-disciplinary aptitude.”

UW neuroscience graduate student Liza Shoenfeld (sidebar) mapped out possible alternative career choices and sought out informational interviews to explore those options. She now works for a management consulting firm in New York.

*Image courtesy of Liza Shoenfeld and branchingpoints.com.*

Partnering with the Career Center: To prepare for its fall employer event, CDO holds two workshops with the Career Center: one on effective résumés and another called Networking for Shy People. Laszlo says CDO members have found these events and the Career Center overall “to be incredibly useful. It’s not the norm for physics people to be social, actively engaging with other people and selling themselves,” he says. “That’s what you do when you’re networking. So it’s a bit of social coaching.”

Seminars with guest speakers inform students about career paths: In addition to the annual networking event, CDO organizes a variety of other workshops and seminars, many of which feature guest speakers (often alumni) talking about their fields. Recent presentation topics include working in rocket science and employment opportunities at NASA, and landing a faculty job at a small college. CDO also recently arranged a tour of Boeing linear accelerator labs and a chance to meet the scientists who work there.

“I just got a job at Microsoft as a data scientist. I was asked to give a presentation on my research to start off my interview day, and I was able to re-use a lot of the presentation I gave at the CDO event last year. It was one of the few talks I’d given that was geared towards a technical audience, but one that didn’t have much astronomy experience.”

**Amit Misra ‘14**
Ph.D., Astronomy

For students, by students: For ten years, “the CDO has been passed down grad student to grad student,” says Laszlo, the third generation of coordinators from his research lab. Leading CDO was a core part of his UW experience. “Mentoring other students was an important part of feeling like I belonged in the department and was contributing to the community,” says Laszlo. “And, on my résumé, it demonstrates leadership and organization skills.”

For networking, practice makes perfect: Some CDO participants find jobs directly through the organization, such as Nathan Kurz ‘10, who was recruited by the electron microscope firm Nion after a senior engineer saw his presentation at the fall employer event. For students who don’t get a job offer right away, the event provides “good practice for how to present yourself,” says Laszlo. Misra agrees. “Just interacting with people, seeing what they were doing and how my skills from graduate school could transfer was really helpful,” he says, adding, “Learning to talk about my research to a non-astronomy audience was a good experience. At academic conferences you’re talking to the 10 or 20 people in your field who already pretty much know what you did anyway.”

Student groups complement Graduate School offerings: The Graduate School has a formal program for introducing graduate students to career options. In collaboration with the Career Center and the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, the Graduate School’s Core Programs offer workshops, seminars and online content geared toward career fulfillment, whether in academia, nonprofits or private industry.

Lessons Learned

Tapping recent alumni to participate in professional networking and mentorship opportunities helps students recognize transferable skills and explore a wider range of career options.
Graduate students are most competitive in the job market when they have both deep disciplinary expertise and practice communicating their knowledge and skills to people outside their field.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Supporting success through an integrated core curriculum

Posted on January 20, 2015September 30, 2015

Discovery Core for first-year and pre-major students at UW Bothell

*“The Discovery Core is one the most high-impact, revolutionary attributes of the Bothell campus.”*

**Ismaila Maidadi ‘12**
Program Manager, CUSP; B.A., Global Studies and Policy Studies, UW Bothell

First-year students at UW Bothell are immersed in a curriculum designed both to inspire creativity and to bridge the transition to the rigor of college-level academic work. When the Bothell campus added freshmen and sophomore students in 2006, the campus also created the Center for University Studies and Programs (CUSP) to house support services for first-year and pre-major students. Then CUSP launched the Discovery Core, an innovative core curriculum that welcomes students into small seminars and gets them academically engaged through creative course offerings such as “The Biography of a Commodity,” “Utopias and Dystopias,” “Food and Social Justice” and “Dreaming.”

Bringing resources to students, rather than sending students to resources: While the Discovery Core classes are innovative, so is the curriculum’s approach to bringing student success strategies and support into the classroom. The faculty who teach first-year seminars break the ice between new students and the people dedicated to supporting them by, for example, asking the director of the writing center to spend an hour in their classroom modeling how to do a deep read of a scholarly article. “The literature suggests that this student body doesn’t do ‘optional’ very much,” says CUSP Program Manager Ismaila Maidadi. “They were in second or third grade when ‘No Child Left Behind’ was passed, and they’ve been taught to the test. Because most resources are optional, those things we think are crucial we are moving into the classroom. We want students to be able to easily and quickly access any resources they need.”

A curriculum that engages both students and faculty: The Discovery Core offers new students a way to have fun, make friends and learn how to navigate the challenges of college life while also fulfilling general education requirements. But the program is designed to inspire its instructors, too. “We like to think the Discovery Core seminars are not just a rich opportunity for students, but also for faculty,” says CUSP director Leslie Ashbaugh. In a competitive selection process, faculty from across campus apply to teach in the Discovery Core. Lecturer Kristy Leissle says, “The openness CUSP has had to my proposals for content—which range from chocolate to science fiction—really spurs my pedagogical creativity. In the Discovery Core, I am teaching in an open and welcoming environment where innovation is encouraged.”

The Discovery Core’s interdisciplinary team teaching introduces students to a range of disciplines in their first year of college, which helps them discover what kind of degree they might be interested in pursuing.

**Jennifer Atkinson**
Faculty Coordinator, Discovery Core; Lecturer, IAS, UW Bothell

High-impact experiences make learning meaningful and memorable: The Discovery Core curriculum deliberately and explicitly incorporates what the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) calls “high-impact practices,” educational experiences with a demonstrated effect on student retention and engagement. Faculty coordinator Jennifer Atkinson, a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS), sees this as a hallmark of the Discovery Core. “Students aren’t shut away in their classrooms,” she says. “They go out into the community for field trips, service learning, research in the wetlands or North Creek Forest; they interview workers in local industries or activists in the streets; and we regularly host guest speakers from the community in our classes.”

Collaboration is the key: CUSP is a team effort from the location of staff offices to the development of curricula. In order to help students find what they’re looking for and foster collaboration, the Bothell campus brought partners such as CUSP, academic advising, veterans services, study abroad, disability support services and career services into one Student Success Center. The Discovery Core is also a joint effort. When faculty and staff met last summer to revamp the curriculum, they were joined by leaders from the Teaching and Learning Center, the Quantitative Skills Center, Career Services, Institutional Research and several other units. “It’s important to have all the key stakeholders in the room,” says Ashbaugh. As faculty coordinator, Atkinson ensures collaboration continues throughout the academic year, and that the Discovery Core faculty meet regularly to discuss teaching best practices.

Student success in three stages: The Discovery Core is designed to help students transition from a top-down high school model of learning to a student-centered, inquiry-based model of learning, says Ashbaugh. The curriculum tackles this challenge in three phases:

Discovery (fall): Students learn about campus resources and college-level academic skills, from interpreting written sources to reading a syllabus
Research (winter): Students build on discovery skills while focusing on developing new research skills, such as critical analysis and facility with academic citation standards
Reflection (spring): Students write about their intellectual development, reevaluate which majors best suit their skills and interests, and curate a portfolio of their work to present at a spring showcase

Overall, the Discovery Core sequence is designed to prepare first-year and pre-major students to take full advantage of their college

“I would not have known about resources like the writing center or librarians had it not been for Discovery Core classes. They told us early on about campus resources so we felt like we knew how to seek out help and where to seek out help. College can be hard to figure out and navigate.”

**Shauniece Drayton ‘14**
B.A., Community Psychology, UW Bothell

education. “Most students will change their minds about what they want to focus on,” says Ashbaugh. “The whole point is to expose them to a rich environment and a diverse set of ideas and experiences, and hopefully by second year they’re finding a pathway for themselves that includes study abroad, service learning, undergraduate research and other high-impact opportunities we offer on campus.”

Wrapping resources into assignments: The faculty and student services staff who design the Discovery Core curriculum intentionally integrate learning outside of the classroom into class assignments. For example, one early low-stakes writing assignment puts students in touch with a variety of resources while emphasizing the value of drafting and revising. After reviewing first drafts, their instructor uses class time to schedule one-on-one meetings with each student to offer feedback. “Approaching a faculty member can be intimidating,” says Ashbaugh. “This breaks that barrier.” Students are then sent to the writing center, and asked to fill out a form reflecting on their experience—“Not only about using the service, but also imagining how it could be useful to them going forward,” says Ashbaugh. Students then go through a round of peer review before submitting the paper again for a final grade.

The ePortfolio is a communication tool, workspace and archive: Throughout the Discovery Core, students build an ePortfolio that is more than an academic archive—it’s designed to become a snapshot of their curricular and co-curricular life throughout four years.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Independent Study Plans in Community, Environment & Planning (CEP)

Posted on January 20, 2015September 30, 2015

Helpling undergraduates direct their own learning

*“Helping students prepare for their next steps has always been part of our philosophy. There shouldn’t be a wall between academics and what we often call ‘the real world.’”*

**Caitlin Dean ‘06 ‘10**
Program Manager, CEP, 2010-2014; B.A., CEP; M.Ed.; MPA

In 1994 a group of faculty and students in the College of Built Environments used principles of the new community-based planning movement to create their version of the ideal major. Caitlin Dean recalls, “They asked questions like, ‘How can we prepare students for the real world?’ and, ‘What does a holistic education mean?’ ” Their work resulted in the Community, Environment & Planning (CEP) program. As program manager from 2010 to 2014, Dean worked with Director Christopher Campbell to grow the program while preserving the founders’ mission: helping undergraduates direct their own learning.

Students approach the interdisciplinary curriculum with a goal and a plan: To help students structure their education, CEP requires each incoming student to create an Independent Study Plan (ISP). Students make revisions as their interests evolve. Margot Malarkey ‘12 began the program focusing on environmental studies, but exposure to graduate-level urban studies classes sparked her interest in the intersection of housing, politics and academics, and she altered her ISP to reflect that. “The cyclical process of planning, acting, reflecting and changing your plan—the iterative cycle of learning—is important not just for academics but also for life,” says Dean. “We hope students will adopt that mode of thinking and take it out into their careers and personal lives.”

Graduate Jen Hamblin has done just that. Remembering her own ISP, she says, “It was the first time in my entire life I was forced to sit down and be intentional about something that hadn’t happened yet. CEP requires you to come up with a strategy—’You say you want to get to the moon by Thursday… so, where is your map?’ ” Hamblin now uses these skills regularly in her career as a consultant aiding companies and institutions in diversifying their workforces. “I just developed a growth model for my CEO with a three-year projection and a risk assessment for each phase. Long-term planning is a major, critical skill for the professional world.”

Independence, but with structure: “The first generation of the program was seen as an experiment,” says Dean. The program philosophy still emphasizes learning by doing, including the value of making mistakes. However, the program team has also made changes to the curriculum, such as establishing required classes for students working on capstone projects. “In the past, students were expected to work mostly independently,” says Dean, “but we learned we needed to build in more structure to support all of them, not just the top 25 percent who know how to draw on the resources available to them. The majority of undergraduates still need modeling, coaching and guidance.”

“I think the first time I realized how much CEP mimics the real world was not my first job but my second. It required a lot of strategic planning. In CEP it’s called ‘governance.’ In the real world it’s called ‘boardroom meetings.’”

**Jen Hamblin ‘07**
B.A., CEP, minor in disability studies

Shared governance builds student leadership skills: CEP advertises itself as “built for and by its students,” and this shared governance model permeates the entire program. Students take the lead on the majority of decisions about the major and its curriculum. Final decisions require full consensus of current students, which can be a challenging exercise in patience, negotiation and building buy-in. Campbell says, “In CEP, students are not only responsible for themselves, they are responsible for the whole CEP community. This means they must learn how to make decisions together, resolve disputes and respect individual differences as they work towards common goals. For many students, the skills they learn through governing the major are the skills that prove most important to them in their careers and civic lives.”

Students gain confidence from the confidence shown in them: “CEP not only taught me, it also empowered me to contribute to the learning process,” says Dan Fitting ‘14, who returned to college after his military service. “Until I found CEP, I felt like I was only going to school to learn what other people already knew.”

*“CEP’s flexibility allowed me to take risks and test my ideas in a safe setting. It also pushed me to take ownership of my decisions—both the successes and the failures.”*

**Margot Malarkey ‘12**
B.A., CEP, minor in urban design and planning

Through his capstone project he created new knowledge, helping local residents inventory historically significant architecture in their community and develop a plan for its preservation, refining skills he now uses as Sustainability and Facilities Coordinator for Skagit County.

Flexibility is challenging but pays off in the long run: “I would sometimes have an identity crisis,” says Malarkey. “I would look at my friends in business school with a clear path forward and say, ‘What am I doing?!’ ” Campbell notes, “Being responsible for your education is hard.” He adds, “It can be frustrating at times but when students come back after they graduate, they say, ‘Ah, now I get it.’ ” Malarkey agrees that work experience helped her gain perspective on the value of her major. As a research associate at an environmental consulting firm she frequently draws on the meeting facilitation, planning, presentation and analytical skills she gained from the program.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Students step up to collaborate as a professional research team

Posted on January 20, 2015September 30, 2015

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Newbook Digital Texts in the Humanities

“We basically structured the project like a business. We have various departments, and we do everything from marketing to publishing. So the students that hang with us and do the work get a pretty good picture of what professional life is like.”

**Walter Andrews**
Research Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Under the direction of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) faculty, undergraduate and graduate students hone skills in historical research and computer programming as they digitize, transcribe, translate and edit century-old texts from Ottoman Iraq and Egypt. As these students advance the growing field of digital humanities, they also experience how diverse teams work in the professional world. A key example is the independent, web-based publishing house Newbook Digital Texts in the Humanities led by Walter Andrews.

Collaboration is the future of research and of work: The project has drawn together an interdisciplinary team to solve complex research puzzles and give students experience working in diverse professional teams. The team includes:

Undergraduate and graduate students from an array of UW departments, including Biology, Math, History, Computer Science & Engineering and the Jackson School of International Studies
UW faculty, including visiting scholar and Egyptologist Sarah Ketchley
Iraq-based researcher and dialect expert Nowf Allawi, project co-founder

Project leaders and participants see such interdisciplinary, international collaboration and open-access digital publishing as the future of research. “Having digitized primary sources has opened up research in ways that were simply impossible even twenty years ago,” says Kearby Chess ‘14, whose master’s thesis relied on Newbook Digital Texts sources. For example, the Svoboda Diaries, a detailed first-person chronicle of trade and travel in one of the world’s last multi-ethnic empires, were scattered among libraries and personal collections. Access to many of the original diaries was lost after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Thanks to the work of UW students and their collaborators, copies of the diaries are becoming available online both as annotated transcriptions and through the “Svobodapedia” wiki.

Students work with primary sources, such as photographs and handwritten diaries, to illuminate life in Ottoman Iraq. Above, steamships arriving in Baghdad, captured by Alexander Svoboda, ca. 1900. Image courtesy of the Svoboda Diaries Project and Newbook Digital Texts. — Students work with primary sources, such as photographs and handwritten diaries, to illuminate life in Ottoman Iraq. Above, steamships arriving in Baghdad, captured by Alexander Svoboda, ca. 1900.
Image courtesy of the Svoboda Diaries Project and Newbook Digital Texts.

*“I didn’t know how history and computer science could work together prior to this.”*

**Kelsie Haakenson**
UW senior double majoring in History and Computer Science & Engineering

History students learn to code; computer science majors learn to work in interdisciplinary teams: Unexpected cross-pollination can happen when students from different disciplines work together towards a shared goal.

Kelsie Haakenson came to the UW planning to study history with an eye towards preserving historical buildings and artifacts. Last spring, after working with the Svoboda Diaries team for a year and teaching herself the Python programming language, she was accepted to the UW Computer Science & Engineering program. Now she envisions a career in the digital humanities, blending her passions and professional goals. “I want to focus on online publishing of primary sources and user-friendly ways to display information rather than fixing artifacts and leaving them in a museum or an archive somewhere,” Haakenson says. “In digital form, sources are more accessible and hopefully have more longevity.”
Undergraduate intern Sarah Johnson also developed an interest in programming through the project. “I would never have taken a computer science class, but now that I see the content it’s creating and that it’s a necessary step in making this historical research available, it’s more interesting to me,” she says.
Students on the technical team have also explored new territory. Intern Tori Wellington, an undergraduate Informatics student, learned to facilitate communication between the programmers and historians on the team. Ketchley notes, “Tori has been able to take the technical jargon and present it to less technical teammates in a palatable way. That’s a real skill.” Wellington adds, “It’s a challenge, but it’s fun to make it less intimidating.”

*“The project is full of invaluable people, both students and teachers. I try to learn as much from each of them as possible and to emulate their skills.”*

**Rachel Elizabeth Brown**
Graduate student, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Project Manager, Newbook Digital Texts

A student-driven project fosters leadership skills: “Walter has a knack for seeing things in students they don’t see in themselves,” says graduate student Rachel Elizabeth Brown. “He spots potential really quickly.” And Brown should know. She grew from an undergraduate intern who doubted her ability to contribute, to the lab’s project manager. Faculty leaders envisioned an organizational structure for the project that put students in leadership and management roles, and Brown made it happen. Although Andrews describes her as a “whiz” at project management, Brown recalls she had a lot to learn. “I was convinced he was crazy for accepting me, that I didn’t have the skills needed to work on the project,” she says. “Walter is really good at letting students find their niche. It turns out that organizing is my thing. I love helping students figure out what their skills are and find a place in our organization that will make them happy and proud to work with us.”

Through scholarly research, students learn practical problem-solving skills: Student interns and employees on the Newbook Digital Texts team learn to push the boundaries of scholarly research through digital publishing. They also learn how a professional team works to solve complex problems beyond any one person’s expertise. As Haakenson discovered, it is often necessary to identify and fill gaps in one’s own skills and to reach out to peer experts for help. “I found an online tutorial on starting with Python and worked through the different lessons,” she says. “Whenever I came in contact with a problem I couldn’t figure out, I would use the group email list to send out questions for more experienced people to answer. The tech team is really supportive when you’re learning new things.”

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to link academic passion to life and careers.

Guiding students in identifying their strengths, passions and goals

Posted on May 1, 2014May 15, 2016

Holly Barker: Mentoring undergraduates in research

“Everybody arrives at the UW with different abilities, needs and intelligences. Part of our job is to recognize what students’ assets are and to help them shape those into discernible, tangible pieces that they can take with them for their own professional development.”

**Holly Barker**
Curator, Pacific and Asian Ethnology, Burke Museum; Lecturer, Anthropology, UW Seattle

If current projections hold, recent graduates may change jobs ten times or more in their lives, and may work in careers that don’t yet exist.^1,2Experience in academic research will help students meet these challenges, because the ability to reinvent oneself is essentially a research skill. Faculty throughout the UW’s three campuses are working to involve not just graduate students, but also undergraduates in academic research projects that can help them build critical skills, such as the ability to gather, analyze, and synthesize complex information on a new topic; to determine needs for new knowledge; and then to help create that knowledge. Working on real-world problems with faculty mentors also helps students build the confidence that they, too, can make an impact. UW faculty such as Holly Barker treat their undergraduate students as emerging professionals, supporting them as they experience what it means to contribute to a scholarly field and to the community.

Often faculty struggle to find time to support undergraduate researchers. Through structured office hours and group projects, Holly Barker not only mentors students in a wide range of disciplines herself, but helps her students mentor each other. This support helps her students succeed in individual and group research, with many presenting at the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. Here are some of the techniques she uses to mentor undergraduate researchers:

Help students identify and build on prior knowledge: Barker views every student as an expert. She helps students examine their experiences through an academic lens and share those insights with other students. In a recent introductory class, “Culture of the Bomb,” international students translated and presented summaries of news from their home countries. “Korean students talked about tensions between North and South Korea over nuclear issues, and students from Taiwan described the country’s challenges with nuclear waste,” she says. In her “Anthropology of Sports” course, student-athletes share their first-hand knowledge of the opportunities and challenges of being dedicated to both sports and their studies at an institution that excels in both realms.

Guide students to research topics of personal relevance and to research methods that best suit their strengths and goals: Barker has organized independent studies at the Burke Museum where she is a curator, including a study of Pacific Island objects by UW students from the Pacific Islands. “The Burke is a place where students who benefit from hands-on, communal learning thrive,“ says Barker.

Trust that students can rise to a challenge: “I now see I can give students more leadership and more freedom academically to demonstrate their learning, that I can trust them to be professional and to do a good job,” Barker says, reflecting on a recent upper-division class that culminated in a public open house on environmental health issues related to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (“Public Policy and Environmental Health: Hanford,” ANTH 479). When the students were dividing up tasks, such as marketing, emceeing, and leading table discussions, all were eager to contribute. “There was one hundred percent participation in that class, and students were elated with the outcome,” says Barker.

Set clear limits so you still have time for your own research: Barker has clearly delineated office hours for each group of her students. She says, “I try to be very transparent with my students about what my time obligations are when I’m not with them. Letting them know when I have deadlines and other professional obligations also helps them understand the life of an academic, if they’re thinking about graduate school. This way they know that if I don’t have more time for them, it’s not because I don’t care. Rather, time is limited.”

Help students mentor each other: “At the start of every class, as a community-building opportunity, I allow time for student announcements,” says Barker. “Someone might say, ‘I’m working at this place and they’re hiring so if anybody wants a job, let me know.’ Or, ‘My department has a résumé workshop and there’s free pizza.’ Through that kind of sharing, students see each other as resources and mentors, which can reduce the pressure on professors.”

Resources: Seattle Times coverage of Barker’s students working on an independent study at the Burke Museum: Adam Jude, “Three Huskies football players explore their heritage with Burke Museum,” 14 November 2013.

¹Bridgstock, Ruth. “The Graduate Attributes We’ve Overlooked: Enhancing Graduate Employability Through Career Management Skills.” Higher Education Research & Development 28, no. 1 (March 2009): 31–44. doi:10.1080/07294360802444347.

²Stacey, Robert. “From the Dean: Changing Enrollments Reflect the Times.” Perspectives Newsletter: College of Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, May 2013. http://www.artsci.washington.edu/newsletter/May13/DeanLetter.asp.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation.

Focusing on real-world research

Posted on May 1, 2014May 15, 2016

Jim Gawel: Mentoring undergraduates in research

“I feel like it’s a major part of what I’m supposed to be doing—involving students in my research not just to get research done but so they actually learn how to do science and how to work with people outside of the classroom.”

**Jim Gawel**
Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Tacoma

If current projections hold, recent graduates may change jobs ten times or more in their lives, and may work in careers that don’t yet exist.^1,2Experience in academic research will help students meet these challenges, because the ability to reinvent oneself is essentially a research skill. Faculty throughout the UW’s three campuses are working to involve not just graduate students, but also undergraduates in academic research projects that can help them build critical skills, such as the ability to gather, analyze, and synthesize complex information on a new topic; to determine needs for new knowledge; and then to help create that knowledge. Working on real-world problems with faculty mentors also helps students build the confidence that they, too, can make an impact. UW faculty such as Jim Gawel treat their undergraduate students as emerging professionals, supporting them as they experience what it means to contribute to a scholarly field and to the community.

Jim Gawel engages his students in research at UW Tacoma by explicitly linking academic work to the world outside the classroom. In addition to providing opportunities for study abroad and service learning, Gawel also creates assignments in his environmental science classes that result in real-world products with clear benefits for residents of Washington state. Here are some of his suggestions for class assignments:

Structure assignments to produce real-world results: Gawel sets up projects for end users who need the data students can provide, such as a report on possible green projects for UW Tacoma’s Facilities Services team, or a study for the local parks department. “Amazingly, even though students care about their grade, they couldn’t care less what I think about their project,” he says. “I find that if they know that it’s going to somebody outside the university, or even someone in another department of the university, they end up paying a lot more attention to what they’re doing, and in the process, they actually learn the material better.”

Show undergraduate researchers that they can make an impact: Students not only contribute to Gawel’s projects, which often result in journal publications, but they also conduct their own studies with real-world impact. For example, his undergraduates have conducted studies of water quality in western Washington lakes. Because the state has cut lake-monitoring programs due to budget concerns, this undergraduate research fills an important need. “In some cases we’ve done studies that we deliver to the parks, but often citizen groups use our data to try to get action from the state or parks,” says Gawel. “We try to deliver to people that matter, but a lot of times it’s folks we didn’t even think about who end up getting a hold of our reports via Google and contacting me later.”

Resources: Past projects by Gawel’s students are described in the 2012 UW Tacoma report “Innovations in Teaching and Learning.” Local media have covered the public health implications of heavy-metal contamination in Washington lakes, as reported in studies co-authored by Gawel and his students.

Learn More

Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation.

Helping faculty help students prepare for life after graduation

Posted on May 1, 2014October 14, 2015

Susan Terry and Briana Randall: UW Career Center

“We work with students about one of the most important decisions in their lives—not necessarily a particular job, but a career path. What we want for students is what we all want—fulfilling lives and successful careers.”

**Susan Terry**
Director, Career Center, UW Seattle

One of the most common questions students ask at the UW Seattle Career Center is, “What can I do with my major?” “Students really want a direction; they want to understand the connection between major and career and their place in the world,” says Susan Terry. “We need to help our students be more intentional about the choices they make. They have so little time. We know how to find the rock-star students. They find us. But we need to engage more of the students who aren’t stepping into the UW experience as readily. Faculty providing some of that guidance and mentorship is extremely useful and important.”

To that end, the Center has launched a web page to give faculty “simple ways they can introduce the idea of career or even just signal to their students that they’re open to talking about these issues,” says Briana Randall. This relatively new focus on faculty resources builds on the Center’s ongoing work with students and departmental advisers, providing general and discipline-specific information about internships, service-learning, and careers; and directly serving students through one-on-one career counseling and workshops at the Center or in academic departments.

“I think faculty and staff jump ahead and assume that because our students are pretty amazing they must not need help articulating their skills. However, a lot of students really do need and appreciate guidance.”

**Briana Randall**
Associate Director, Career Center, UW Seattle

“We are excited to be working with faculty. They are the front lines in helping students learn about and value opportunities outside of class—and in helping students connect the dots between their different kinds of learning,” says Terry. Here are some of the Center staff’s suggestions for faculty:

Quick, easy referrals from faculty and advisers can have a big impact: “Students are much more likely to take information seriously or go to an event if they hear about it from a faculty member or departmental adviser, or, best, from both,” says Randall. The Center’s online checklist includes ideas such as:

List resources for students in the syllabus or link to them from the course website.
Mention resources in class or share handouts such as “How Do Huskies Get Jobs?,” “Internships: What, Why, and Where?,” and “Making the Most of Your Major.”
Encourage students to pay close attention to emails and resources from their advisers. “Advisers are a tremendous resource for faculty,” says Randall.
Require or offer extra credit for attending a career fair or an online or in-person workshop, such as “LinkedIn 101,” “Identifying Your Strengths,” and others offered by the Center.
Invite a career counselor or alum to visit class.

Help students start to think about life after graduation sooner rather than later: Many programs don’t talk to students about what is next until their senior year. Faculty can encourage students to prepare earlier. The UW Seattle Career Center focuses on helping students understand their interests and strengths—core characteristics that can serve them in all areas of their life—such as resiliency, persistence, or the ability to innovate. “This work will make it easier for students to plan their time at the UW and beyond, because they have a strong sense of who they are and what they can contribute to different kinds of work environments,” says Randall. Terry adds, “We counsel students that not all alumni land the ideal job that maximizes their talents right away, that often they have to work their way into that perfect position over time. At the same time we talk about the need for them to follow their strengths and not allow themselves to be trapped in something that’s not a good fit.”

Make it clear how students’ classroom experiences can help in their careers: Local and national employers say that students, especially undergraduates, are not practiced in articulating their skills, says Terry. “You really have to spell it out on the spot what type of skills students are developing in a course or major, such as problem-solving, quantitative analysis, project management, or team management, that could translate to a different course or even a different discipline,” says Terry.

Resources: New faculty pages on the Career Center website.

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Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation

Supporting team success in long-term projects

Posted on May 1, 2014May 15, 2016

Randy Beam: Teaching Teamwork Explicitly

*“I kept hearing from people in the business world: ‘Teach students how to work effectively with each other; teach them how to work in groups.’”*

**Randy Beam**
Professor, Communication, UW Seattle

Undergraduate students often complain about working in teams and many claim to hate group projects. However, well-structured group work can improve student engagement, deepen learning, and help students build essential skills for their professional and personal lives.¹ Because workplaces are increasingly collaborative, employers look for candidates with a demonstrated ability to work well in diverse teams.^2,3 Teamwork skills also help graduates become successful leaders and collaborators in their communities. Although students are often asked to work in groups, few have been taught how to do so effectively. UW faculty, such as Randy Beam, are trying to change this pattern. They explicitly teach teamwork skills in class. In doing so, they help students develop skills essential both in college and after graduation. In addition to the strategies profiled below, teamwork techniques used by Beam are described in a “Teaching Teamwork” video, available on the 2y2d Initiative website.

Take Randy Beam’s class and you’ll be graded on your grasp of communication theory and your ability to function in a team. Beam added theory and practice in teamwork to his syllabi after realizing that his students have a lot of experience—but not necessarily a lot of success—working in groups. He decided, “If I was going to ask students to work in a group, I needed to provide some guidance on how to do that in an effective and efficient way. That’s why I put together a teamwork system that I follow. I call it a system deliberately. It’s not just about having a policy on slackers or just devoting a session to training on group processes. You do all these things because they are mutually reinforcing.” Beam has used this system in several classes, including one with over 400 students who work on term-long group projects during Friday discussion sessions. Here are his principles for guiding student groups:

Provide explicit instruction in team dynamics: Students read excerpts from Working in Groups by Engleberg and Wynn and spend a discussion session on exercises to establish expectations and norms for their group’s collaborative work. They discuss how the project fits into their competing priorities—and how their priorities impact their commitment levels and responsibilities to the team. Most importantly, they establish operating guidelines for working together: how they will make decisions, divide and submit the work, voice concerns, resolve differences, and ensure performance. They also decide how they would modify these guidelines if they find mid-quarter that they are no longer working well as a team.

Monitor progress on group projects: Beam and his TAs check in regularly with groups to ensure they are working well together. In addition, groups submit regular progress reports, meeting notes, and drafts. “You have to be there for the students. You have to encourage them to work well together and to troubleshoot problems that they might have in a group,” he says.

Make team performance count with a slacker policy: A high-stakes policy includes specific, automatic triggers that can cause a student to be removed from a team. The policy also allows groups to request the removal of a member, for example, a student who is not following group guidelines or contributing as agreed to group work. Students who have been removed then have to complete the project on their own. Beam includes the policy in the course outline, as well as explaining in class the actions that will trigger removal from a group.

Ask students to reflect and evaluate their team’s work: At the end of the term, students complete a self-evaluation, as well as peer evaluations to reflect on the experience working as a team. In the peer evaluations, Beam asks students to estimate the percentage of work performed by each team member.

Resources: Beam drew inspiration and materials from: W. Gibb Dyer, Jeffrey H. Dyer, and William G. Dyer, Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 2013); and Isa Engleberg and Dianna Wynn, Working in Groups, 6th ed. (New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012). Contact Beam for copies of the worksheets he developed for his students at rabeam@uw.edu.

¹Kyllonen, Patrick C. “Soft Skills for the Workplace.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, November-December 2013. http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2013/November-December%202013/soft_skills_full.html.

²Atman, Cynthia J., Sheri D. Sheppard, Jennifer Turns, Robin S. Adams, Lorraine N. Fleming, Reed Stevens, Ruth A. Streveler, Karl A. Smith, Ronald L. Miller, Larry J. Leifer, Ken Yasuhara, and Dennis Lund. Enabling Engineering Student Success: The Final Report for the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010. http://www.engr.washington.edu/caee/CAEE%20final%20report%2020101102.pdf.

³National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Job Outlook 2013. Bethlehem, PA: NACE, November 2012. http://www.engr.colostate.edu/ece/ind_relations/job-outlook-2013.pdf.

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Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation.

Talking about and across differences

Posted on May 1, 2014May 15, 2016

Ratnesh Nagda: Fostering cultural understanding globally and locally

“We often think about how the classroom connects to the community. Maybe we shouldn’t think of these as so separate; maybe the way to bridge them is to think about the classroom as a community and the campus as a community. So, the way that students engage in the classroom, with the campus, with the community outside of the campus, those are layers that are interconnected. Rather than separate, they form concentric circles. The classroom is then an in vivo lab, a microcosm of our broader society.”

**Ratnesh Nagda**
UW Faculty Diversity Scholar; Director, Intergroup Dialogue, Education, and Action (IDEA) Center, and Professor and Director of the Bachelor of Arts in Social Welfare (BASW) program, School of Social Work, UW Seattle

In our increasingly interconnected world, UW graduates will need to navigate the complexities of working with multidisciplinary teams and engaging with communities other than their own.¹ In this environment, effective communication and collaboration require more than tolerance or respect for difference; knowledge about the world and practice partnering across boundaries will serve our graduates well in their professional and civic roles in a globalizing society.² UW professors such as Ratnesh Nagda are preparing their students to succeed and lead in this complex world, training students to talk about and across difficult differences.

Ratnesh Nagda not only leads difficult conversations, but also trains students to do so. He directs the Intergroup Dialogue, Education, and Action (IDEA) Center in the School of Social Work, which helps students and community members engage constructively with challenging issues, such as race, gender, nationality, religion, and sexuality. “We have a new set of ‘three Rs’ in education: relevance, relationships, and responsibility,” he says. “If we’re committed to a more just society, the work we do in the classroom has to be relevant to solving major and complex social problems. Talking about and across differences can help us build transformative relationships that cultivate and sustain our responsibilities to make a difference.” Here are some of Nagda’s principles for helping students address differences and create a more just future:

Engage issues of social justice: Nagda says, “We can talk about intercultural competence, but if we don’t address issues of social injustices, such as income stratification and histories of violence and power inequality, we are just skimming the surface.”

Build students’ listening skills for true dialogue: Through a series of developmental exercises, Nagda encourages students to talk with rather than past each other. He says, “It’s a huge eye-opener for students to see how little they usually listen, or are listened to, and that they can learn techniques to make them better listeners.”

Students pair up and share for two minutes each with their partners, then try to paraphrase back what they heard.
In their next discussion, which can be with a partner or in a small group, students try to listen for not just for the words explicitly spoken, but for underlying feelings, meanings, and values, and to ask questions for deeper understanding.
Students then practice “connected listening and speaking,” linking their comments to those of previous speakers. Nagda asks students to pass a ball of yarn from one speaker to the next to help them visualize connective dialogue.
Finally, students reflect on and have “a dialogue about the dialogue,” noting dynamics, and engaging new questions that have emerged for them.

Be attentive to who speaks, how, about what, and when: “People from marginalized groups are often silenced or seen as spokespersons, and people from privileged groups can dominate discussions or be hesitant to talk.” Nagda pushes students to critically reflect on these dynamics and participate more reciprocally.

On day one, ask students to create shared agreements for engagement: Nagda pushes students to move beyond basic civility in their agreements to a deeper respect and appreciation for what each person brings to the classroom.
Own your identity in the classroom and ask students to own theirs: Nagda asks students to consider how issues of identity can shape classroom interactions, learning processes, and understanding of course content. “For example, my identity as a transnational, first-generation immigrant man of color in a faculty role influences the way I see and experience the world, and who I am and how I am perceived in the classroom,” he says.
Use hard moments as learning opportunities: When conversations get tense, Nagda says, “We have students pause, reflect, and unpack the layers—from the personal to the political—that are manifest in the tension. It is not only to deconstruct the situation but to construct alternatives, to turn walls of separation into bridges of connectedness.”

Encourage students to apply their learning in new settings and as leaders: These skills can apply in student and community organizations, and at work. Says Nagda, “Students learn to ask, ‘How can we participate or organize more inclusively?’ and to reflect on ‘How can I empower members of a community by listening to them, by working with, and not just for, them?’ Not only do our students see the world in a different way, but they are in the world in a different way, a generative way.”

Resources:For detailed guidance for intergroup discussions: Patricia Gurin, Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda, and Ximena Zúñiga, Dialogue Across Difference: Practice, Theory and Research on Intergroup Dialogue (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013).

¹Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement. Strength through Global Leadership and Engagement: U.S. Higher Education in the 21st Century. Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Global Engagement. Washington, DC: American Council for Higher Education, 2011. http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Documents/2011-CIGE-BRPReport.pdf.

²Luo, Jiali and David Jamieson-Drake. “Examining the Educational Benefits of Interacting with International Students.” Journal of International Students 3, no. 2 (2013): 85-101. http://jistudents.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/2013-volume-3-number-3-journal-of-international-students-published-in-june-1-2013.pdf.

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Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation

Preparing globally-engaged leaders

Posted on May 1, 2014May 15, 2016

Divya McMillin: Fostering cultural understanding globally and locally

*“We want students to ‘take-off’ from the classroom into the real world, even before they graduate.”*

**Divya McMillin**
Director, Global Honors Program, and Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Tacoma

In our increasingly interconnected world, UW graduates will need to navigate the complexities of working with multidisciplinary teams and engaging with communities other than their own.¹ In this environment, effective communication and collaboration require more than tolerance or respect for difference; knowledge about the world and practice partnering across boundaries will serve our graduates well in their professional and civic roles in a globalizing society.² UW professors such as Divya McMillin are preparing their students to succeed and lead in this complex world. McMillin supports students as they grapple with large-scale issues that shape our interdependent world.

Divya McMillin believes that “our world needs big thinkers.” Her goal is to connect students not only to the world outside the classroom, but also to the world at large. She says, “we need to provide the conditions that produce informed and compassionate leaders. Students are eager to build skills and knowledge in global issues.” McMillin keeps student excitement alive by teaching through current world events, recruiting excellent faculty, inviting industry speakers, facilitating experiential learning, and mentoring undergraduate researchers in her own research program in foreign policy and global media studies. Here are some of her guiding principles:

Emphasize that cultural understanding is a valued skill in diverse professional settings: McMillin makes it clear to students that employers and graduate programs are keenly interested in candidates who excel above and beyond conventional degree holders. Global competencies and cross-cultural fluency are especially advantageous. “Our core curriculum gives students a sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of global interactions and prepares them for the challenges of a networked society,” says McMillin.

Discuss global “big questions” to drive improvement in students’ analytical skills:
Deep exploration of world events helps students develop new ways of thinking and requires an understanding and appreciation of cultures. Says McMillin, “Analysis of global flows and conflicts requires lateral thinking, flexibility, inventiveness, and empathy—qualities that are also necessary for students’ personal and professional success. Perhaps it will lead to acts of leadership within their careers—leadership that could change the world.”

Bring the world into the classroom: McMillin has created a community-partnered faculty model in the Global Honors Program at UW Tacoma (which will expand in fall 2014 with the establishment of the Institute for Global Engagement). Under this model, professionals from private and nonprofit organizations guest lecture (sometimes from across the country or the world) or team-teach with university faculty. “This provides an incredible opportunity for professionals to regain the excitement of discovery and to deepen student learning by bringing alive the theory they are learning in the classroom,” says McMillin. The program also helps students build connections to local and global communities through undergraduate research and experiential learning.

Seek donor contributions to expand access to experiential learning: The cost of international learning opportunities is often a barrier for UW Tacoma students, more than forty percent of whom are the first in their family to attend college, and many of whom work, support families, and fund their education with grants and loans. To increase access to global learning, the Global Honors Program has facilitated merit awards to each student, and McMillin has developed fully funded international research opportunities. “We have secured private sponsorship to support student-faculty teams for year-long studies,” she says. “The students who do fieldwork abroad then tie their research back to the needs of our local community.”

Help students learn to navigate a complex world for themselves: “Students deeply appreciate the dots we connect for them and the autonomy to rearrange those dots in ways that are more meaningful to their lives and careers,” says McMillin. As a result, students remain engaged and enthusiastic, as evidenced by the program’s current one hundred percent retention rate and its highly invested alumni.

Resources:

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Read the full Provost report on how to prepare students for life after graduation