The Skills Advantage: From Campus to Career

Research confirms that employers highly value transferable skills - such as communication, critical thinking, teamwork, etc., which are often considered the core of a college education and the defining traits of a college graduate.

The problem is that these skills are too often invisible. Colleges are always teaching both content and skills, but the titles of courses and majors usually signal content alone. FGCU’s QEP aims to make the invisible curriculum visible, and thereby help students to deploy all aspects of their education for professional success. 

The main tool of The Skills Advantage is a set of ten Transferable Skill Badges based on the NACE Competencies. Their design matches the way that core skills are developed in and through normal coursework as well as in campus life. The digital badges students may complete are: Professionalism, Career & Self-Development, Leadership, Teamwork, Oral Communication, Written Communication, Communication Technology, Data Literacy, Critical Thinking, and Cultural Competence. 

Each badge comprises two phases.

• Phase I is a portfolio in which undergraduate students document learning artifacts relating to the skill (the portfolio must include classroom artifacts and may also include artifacts from co-curricular or student life experiences).
• Phase II is an interview in which students learn to articulate their skills, ideally using the portfolio artifacts as examples in a skill story that shows they can apply the skill in context.

The QEP will build on these badges to enhance student career success:

• From Campus
  • Train faculty to create and embed new skills-related assignments into regular courses
  • Enroll students in the badge pathway as they submit course-embedded artifacts
• To Career
  • Local employers and professionals become guest interviewers in the badge process
  • Interview events become Skill Fairs that include networking & other career support

These initiatives will: a) Increase the number and quality of skills-forward assignments students encounter at FGCU; b) Make students more aware of and articulate about their own skill sets; c) Improve student career preparation, especially interviewing; d) Connect employers with students, and e) improve early career outcomes for graduates. 

Our goal over the QEP timeframe is to invest in 125 faculty though our faculty programs, have at least 33% of students submit badge artifacts while undergraduates, and achieve a rate of 20% of graduating seniors earning a badge. But these participants will also drive a broader culture shift at FGCU.  We aim to re-balance teaching culture so that skills are no longer a silent partner, but sit at an equal level with content; and to partner with employers in building a skills-to-career pipeline that values a student’s whole education and improves career outcomes for students across majors.

The Skills Advantage topic was chosen through an open QEP proposal process and developed collaboratively. The project builds on the existing FGCU Digital Badges initiative, begun in 2020. The project connects with the FGCU Mission, which stresses partnerships with employers; and it contributes to improving employment metrics mandated by the Florida SUS. The Skills Advantage positions FGCU as an innovator in college to career pathways. The initiative is predicated on the insight that the core skills at the heart of liberal education are the same skills that students transfer to the workplace – that skills and degrees are connected with an And, not an Or.