Smith Staff Attend NACE Competency Symposium

During a sunny late spring day on the campus of Clemson University, a cross-departmental team from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business attended the 2017 NACE Competency Symposium, sponsored by Clemson University and the University of Tampa.

NACE, or the National Association for Colleges and Employers, developed eight competencies for career readiness that require a holistic view of a student from college acceptance to starting their first job. Competencies are the forefront of the future of higher education and the workforce. While a student’s resume may show a strong GPA and a variety of strong leadership experiences, what truly sets students apart in the placement process is how well students can articulate the competencies they have gained both in and out of the classroom.

The team from Smith—Courtney Bigger, Associate Director, Career Services; Kristin LaRiviere, Associate Director, Undergraduate Program; and Megan Benefiel, Assistant Director in the Office of Transformational Learning—worked throughout the symposium to develop and refine a plan for infusing the undergraduate Smith journey with an increased focus on competency development.

The symposium focused on helping teams understand the life-cycle of competency development, implementation, and assessment, and encouraged teams to adapt the National Association for Colleges and Employers eight competencies for career readiness for their respective institutions.

For the Smith School team, it is evident Smith is well on the way to integrate competencies into the undergraduate experience (both curricular and co-curricular); however, there is still have much work to do to prepare the undergraduate students to focus on competency articulation rather than simply listing activities.

Ideas sparked through the symposium:

• Developing a cross-unit working group focusing on better collaboration toward competency-based education (ideally both in the curriculum and through co-curricular events). Members would include staff from Undergraduate Program, Office of Career Services, Office of Transformational Learning, Global Program, and Undergraduate Program Committee, as well as relevant faculty.
• Create—through the above working committee—a common language regarding the competencies Smith undergraduates should acquire by graduation. These competencies will largely be connected by the Assurance of Learning goals set forth by AACSB, but are not limited to the AoL goal.
• Collaborate across units to produce marketing materials that educate faculty, staff, and students about the importance of understanding competency development, as well as map where students can develop competencies. This competency mapping can be done in conjunction with the current Smith journey materials. In turn, these materials can be used during the entirety of a student life cycle—from open houses to alumni gatherings—to encourage students to adapt the language of competency development.This marketing materials should use language that the students can understand and easily translate into their own experience.
• Develop create methods to assess student competency development. One idea generated while at Symposium was to utilize upperclassmen as TAs who are trained to assess competencies such as public speaking and critical thinking so faculty can focus on grading content.
• It is encouraged and there is space to grow with our external partners (alumni and employers) to have them understand and integrate the idea of competencies into their workforce and language, to enable students so that their measured success does not end when they leave the university but rather carries with them throughout their lifetime.
• A review across all populations could be an end goal after a successful integration with the undergraduate population, certainly in line with competencies other governing bodies such at MBACSEA put out.

For more information about the NACE Competency Symposium, visit: career.sites.clemson.edu/symposium.