Educational Policies for Integrating College Competencies and Workforce Needs

Explores the challenges of workforce development for a global economy in Brazil, Mongolia, Ukraine, and the United States, with a focus on basic skills development, internships, and the role of stakeholders. Recommends policy and curriculum changes

Research on the Integration and Development Path of College Students’ Labor Education and College Student Associations

Student organizations in colleges and universities are important carriers for implementing the fundamental task of cultivating morality and cultivating people and promoting quality education, and college and university organizations have a good foundation for the masses of students and play an important role in educating people in ideological and political education. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the educational platform of college student clubs to explore and analyze the reality of labor education integrated into college associations, clarify the community groups in college clubs that can effectively integrate labor education, and drive the implementation of labor education for college students from multiple perspectives

“Pilot implementation of an interdisciplinary course on climate solutions”

A pilot implementation of an experimental interdisciplinary course on climate solutions was undertaken at San Jose´ State University in the fall semester of 2008. The course, co-taught by seven faculty members from six colleges, was approved for a general education requirement and was open to upperclass students campus-wide. A course with such a breadth of topics and range of student backgrounds was the first of its kind here. The lessons learned from the pilot effort were assessed from student, faculty, and administrative perspectives. The educational benefits to students from the interdisciplinary format were found to be substantial, in addition to faculty development. However, challenges associated with team-teaching were also encountered and must be overcome for the long-term viability of the course. The experimental course was approved as a permanent course starting in the fall semester of 2009 based on the pilot effort, and plays a role in the College of Engineering’s recent initiatives in sustainability in addition to campus-wide general educatio

Inclusion of an Introduction to Infrastructure Course in a Civil and Environmental Engineering Curriculum

Civil infrastructure refers to the built environment (sometimes referred to as public works) and consists of roads, bridges, buildings, dams, levees, drinking water treatment facilities, wastewater treatment facilities, power generation and transmission facilities, communications, solid waste facilities, hazardous waste facilities, and other sectors. Although there is a need to train engineers who have a holistic view of infrastructure, there is evidence that civil and environmental engineering (CEE) programs have not fully addressed this increasingly recognized need. One effective approach to address this educational gap is to incorporate a course related to infrastructure into the curriculum for first-year or second-year civil and environmental engineering students. Therefore, this study assesses the current status of teaching such courses in the United States and identifies the incentives for, and the barriers against, incorporating an introduction to infrastructure course into schools’ current CEE curricula. Two distinct activities enabled these objectives. First, a questionnaire was distributed to CEE programs across the United States, to which 33 responses were received. The results indicated that although the majority of participants believe that offering such a course will benefit students by increasing the breadth of the curriculum and by providing a holistic view of CEE, barriers such as the maximum allowable credits for graduation, the lack of motivation within a department—either because such a course did not have a champion or because the department had no plans to revise their curriculum—and a lack of expertise among faculty members inhibited inclusion of the course in curricula. Second, three case studies demonstrating successful inclusion of an introduction to infrastructure course into the CEE curriculum were evaluated. Cases were collected from Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and West Point CEE programs, and it was found that the key to success in including such a course is a motivated team of faculty members who are committed to educating students about different aspects of infrastructure. The results of the study can be used as a road map to help universities successfully incorporate an introduction to infrastructure course in their CEE programs

Building Skills and Alliances to Meet Demand in New Jersey's Labor Market

This summary report examines the Ready for the Job initiatve, which profiled the skill and occupational requirements of 73 occupations in New Jersey. This report highlights four cross-industry demand skills: math and technology skills, problem solving and critical skills, communication and teamwork skills, and entrepreneurship and business skills

Signaling the Competencies of High School Students to Employers

[Excerpt] The fundamental cause of the low effort level of American students, parents, and voters in school elections is the absence of good signals of effort and accomplishment and the consequent lack of rewards for learning. In most other advanced countries mastery of the curriculum is assessed by examinations that are set and graded at the national or regional level. Grades on these exams signal the student\u27s achievement to employers and colleges and influence the jobs that graduates get and the universities and programs to which they are admitted. Exam results also influence school reputations and in some countries the number of students applying for admission to the school. In the United States, by contrast, students take aptitude tests that are not intended to assess the learning that has occurred in most of the classes taken in high school. The primary signals of academic achievement are diplomas awarded for time spent in school and grades and rank in class—criteria that assess achievement relative to other students in the school or classroom, not relative to an external standard

Career examination through a LEAP framework: liberal arts graduates' perceptions of employment skills in the workforce

The purpose of this mixed methods sequential exploratory study was to develop an understanding of the ways in which graduates of liberal arts programs recognize, make meaning of, and apply the competencies developed as an undergraduate within the workplace. In the first quantitative phase of the study, the research questions addressed the association among liberal arts graduates’ perceived importance, academic preparation, and assessment of value attributed by employers of eight critical skills in the workplace and any differences based on participants’ academic domain. The data were collected via a self-developed web-based survey (N=328) sent to graduates of six institutions representing four different Carnegie classifications. The overall response rate was 9.4%. A chi-square analysis in conjunction with the Holm-Bonferroni procedure yielded a statistically significant relationship in five of nine academic domain relationships. A post-hoc contingency table analysis further revealed statistically significant results between academic domain and perception value categories. In the second qualitative phase, eight case studies, consisting of graduates of liberal arts programs from four Carnegie classifications and four academic domains, delved deeper into the results from the first phase. Four themes emerged during the within- and cross-case analysis related to participants’ perceptions of the use of critical skills in the workplace: (1) Personal accountability to the job, (2) workplace dynamics among coworkers, clients, and supervisors, (3) self-awareness of what is important in the workplace, and (4) employer support of the liberal arts in the workplace. The final phase of the study integrated the quantitative results and qualitative findings to determine broad-scale outcomes of the study. Based on the overall analysis, the study provides policy implications and recommendations related to practical skill development within liberal arts programs