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Q&A
CUNY's curriculum updates and Career Success Fellows program
0:40:05
·
3 min
Council Member Eric Dinowitz inquires about CUNY's efforts to update curricula and prepare students for civil service careers. Lauren Andersen, University Associate Provost of Careers and Industry Partnerships at CUNY, explains the Career Success Fellows program and curriculum integration efforts.
- 100 faculty members across CUNY are designated as Career Success Fellows
- Fellows integrate career connections and foundational skills into their classes
- Some schools, like CCNY Colin Powell School, have additional efforts to integrate public sector partnerships into classes
- Career Success Fellows host training and events on their campuses to engage more faculty
- CUNY is tagging courses in their system that have been updated based on the fellows' work
Eric Dinowitz
0:40:05
Yeah.
0:40:05
It it just it just gone off that just sounds like there's a you know, sometimes we don't have the same number of entities or engaged organizations in the Bronx to do that.
0:40:16
Work Manhattan is very rich in those.
0:40:19
So it just sounds like a little more outreach needs needs to be done in the Bronx for that.
0:40:25
Go so so for CUNY, you spoke a little bit about curriculum.
0:40:30
And in your testimony, you said it the integration curriculum consists of internships in the state legislature and that in the past there have been internships.
0:40:42
But are there any what do you do or what investments are you making in new curricular or updating your curricular to ensure that civil service pathways fellows are equipped for their respective career tracks.
Lauren Andersen
0:40:57
Sure.
0:40:57
Thank you for the question.
0:40:59
Part of our strategy around ensuring that students are prepared to be able to enter the workforce, whether there are interest in going into the public sector or the private sector, is making sure that from day 1, the curriculum is connected to careers.
0:41:12
So one of the things that we've done is we have now about a 100 faculty Cross Qdney who have been designated as career success fellows.
0:41:20
And what they have committed to doing is to integrating into their classes, key connections both to specific careers and specific jobs in the public sector and private sector.
0:41:33
But also some of the foundational skills that those students are going to need when they move into the private sector, like communication, stakeholder engagement, etcetera.
0:41:44
For public sector pathways in particular, We have several schools notably the CCNY Collin Powell School, the Marksville group, who have taken on additional efforts to be able to integrate partnerships with the public sector into their classes in the form of real world projects, in the form of consulting projects with public agencies, etcetera.
0:42:07
So there are a couple different ways that we do that at CUNY.
Eric Dinowitz
0:42:09
Yeah.
0:42:09
Can you talk more about that?
0:42:10
Because it sounds you said a 100 faculty career fellows over 25 campuses What efforts are being made to increase a number?
0:42:20
Because, again, preparing our students for the the the workforce, I think, is critical.
0:42:26
And so what efforts are being made to increase that number and do more of that investment in, you know, sort of the work you were just speaking about.
Lauren Andersen
0:42:35
Sure.
0:42:35
So in addition to committing to updating their own classroom curricula, The other things that fellows these fellows commit to doing are to hosting training and events on their campuses for other faculty.
0:42:48
We found that it works best for really mobilizing faculty to make changes around their curriculum when their peers are encouraging them to do so.
0:42:56
That's one of the requirements of the career success fellows program is that they host local events to be able to get more faculty engaged and deploying these strategies.
0:43:05
In terms of efforts to invest in scale, we are very excited that over the past couple of years, we've been able to prioritize this project in terms of the transformational funds that are coming from the state, but we're very eager to expand that work.
Eric Dinowitz
0:43:18
What what is attendance like at those workshops?
0:43:22
Sorry.
0:43:22
Would you consider them you said workshops?
0:43:24
The career fellows are hosting for the colleagues.
0:43:26
What are what is the attendance there?
0:43:29
And what is the impact?
0:43:30
Do you do you find that other faculty members are indeed updating their curricula in response to those workshops?
Lauren Andersen
0:43:37
So as you can imagine with 25 campuses, it's variable from campus to campus.
0:43:42
But one of the things we've been doing is, as a result of those workshops and the career success fellows work, we're actually tagging the courses in our system that have been updated based on the work of these fellows.
0:43:52
So we are able to track that.
0:43:54
I don't have those numbers with me, but I'm happy to get them to you.
Eric Dinowitz
0:43:57
Oh, it sounds very easy for tagging them.