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ERIC Number: EJ1332967
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: N/A
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0024-1822
EISSN: N/A
Power Skills for Work and Life: General Education Faculty and Career Services Staff Partner to Make Liberal Education Visible and Valued
Schrand, Tom; Tulante, Meriel
Liberal Education, v107 n4 Fall 2021
The collaboration between the career services office and the general education faculty at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia began with storytelling. In fall 2014, while teaching a course on how people create and use narratives, Meriel Tulante (one of the authors of this article) approached Tracy DePedro, Jefferson's director of career services. Tulante had an idea about asking students to develop a professional narrative that could help introduce them to potential employers, using devices such as résumés and anecdotes to highlight skills and qualifications. DePedro readily agreed to visit Tulante's class to coach students on how to tell the story of their preprofessional development and build their personal brand as they headed toward graduation. Students track their progress in eight competencies through an ePortfolio process in which they collect examples of work or experiences related to the learning goals, not only from the general education core but also from their preprofessional majors and/or cocurricular activities like internships and study abroad. In Tulante's narrative class, these ePortfolios were one of the resources students could use to craft a professional narrative to use in their job searches. This collaboration with career services professionals suggests that bridging the gap between liberal education and the world of work may require faculty to bridge the gap between the curricula and the career services office, making the same leap between academics and the workplace that students are expected to make upon graduation.
Association of American Colleges and Universities. 1818 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. Tel: 800-297-3775; Tel: 202-387-3760; Fax: 202-265-9532; e-mail: pub_desk@aacu.org; Web site: https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A