| Initiatives | Goal | Means of Achieving | Outcome | Methods of Assessment | Results | Result Use |
| Learning | Student Employment Program development and training on the eight NACE Career Readiness competencies. | We have hired a new Student Employment Coordinator to develop additions to the 50/50 student employment program and to the Student Affairs student employment program. Our goal is to going from "good" to "great" with this important student development program. Andrea Salcedo and Shari Leder have developed an aggressive 30 - 60 - 90 day plan to move us forward toward our goal. We are evaluating several software programs that teach the eight Career Readiness Competencies that employers have identified through the National Association of Colleges and Employers. We will propose the purchase of a new software program during the Fall Semester of 2019 with the implementation during Spring Semester 2020. | Students will have the opportunity to develop skills in the following eight competencies: Critical Thinking/ Problem Solving. Oral/ Written communications. Teamwork/Collaboration. Digital Technology. Leadership. Professionalism/Work Ethic. Career Management. Global/Cultural Fluency. Learning outcome opportunities will be emphasized in their work and evaluated by the supervisor. An opportunity to reflect on the importance of the skill development and best way to explain it to another employer through their "success story" will be emphasized. | The eight NACE competencies software program has a pre and post test capability and an action steps section that emphasizes theory and application learning. Since it is a self paced and supervisor reviewed on line program we will be able to measure the learning and application performance of each student employee. The regular performance feed back from the supervisor will provide students with real world performance experience and responsibility increases will be encouraged accompanied with pay increases where possible to encourage and reward increased learning and performance.
| The Student Employment Coordinator was hired and trained. The Career Readiness Guide was vetted and purchased focusing on the training of students through the eight NACE employment competencies. The first cohort of student employees was taken through the pilot with over 100 completing the four hours of learning and testing. The 50/50 program was integrated into the Career Readiness program and the 50/50 program will be managed by the Student Employment Coordinator next year. Results of the first cohort is being evaluated and efforts are being made to prepare to publish the results. A new Student Employment Coordinator will be hired for Fall Semester 2020. The student employee of the year was created during this review period and Kylie Harris our student marketing employee, was awarded the Student Employee of the year award for Student Affairs. | Feedback from the students and supervisors has been collected and will be evaluated between June and August 2020 with any improvements and changes to the program installed in the Fall 2020 cohort. The 50/50 program will be managed by the coordinator with the help of a student assistant. |
| Access | Develop a "Career Mentor" program to staff the career library daily for "peer to peer" advising for students on such things as Resumes, Cover Letters, Networking, Handshake and Standout (mock interview software). Develop technology to support these efforts and train the career mentors to effective coaches/mentors to our 28,000 students. This program will be especially helpful for our first generation, lower performing students. The "Wildcat Scholars are partnering with us in our office to help first generation and dev/dev students to be not just retained but help them persist to graduation. | Summer bench marking visits are being made to the University of Nevada Reno and BYU to learn from their "Career Studio" programs and speed the development of our "Career Connections" program. Jacob Wilkey will be the team leader on this project and is comparing and contrasting the strengths of each program to speed the development of our career mentor program. We will hire Career Mentors during the Fall semester and train them with tutorials that Jacob will develop during the semester. They will staff the library daily starting spring semester 2020. They will be the first contact for students on a walk in basis to review resumes, develop cover letters, help with networking, connect students to Handshake and train students how to use Standout,the mock interview platform. | Student to student/peer to peer is one of the best ways to enhance learning. Each peer will be trained on the proper skills to help students in each of the defined areas. We hope to have students return year over year to take the lead in training new career mentors in the program. | We will measure success in this goal by the development of training modules that will proceed the hiring of the "career mentors" during Fall semester. Hiring and training each mentor so they are confident to meet with students in the Spring semester. Setting up schedules and monitoring their student encounters until they are confident will be necessary to measure the quality of the interactions. Establishing the correct referral process for the student mentors to use to be sure the student is getting their needs met through the Career Counselor/Employment Adviser for their college. | The career mentor program was initiated by developing a full suite of training programs on the TRELLO software that allowed student mentors to be trained in resume writing, networking, interviewing , linkedin and on our handshake system. We will add practice interviews in the future as we roll out the standout platform. They were scheduled for walkins daily from 10:00 until 2:00. The mentors would do a first visit with a student and determine if they needed to see a counselor for additional help. The program has students visiting everyday and received good marks for providing what the student wanted when they wanted it. A senior career mentor was appointed to train, oversee the mentors and note the student satisfaction. The library was remodeled into the Career Station with new marketing and materials developed to utilize the branding. An open house was held and well attended by students and staff. | We graduated all but one of the Career Mentors Gentry will be our senior mentor during the 2020/2021 academic year allowing for continuity purposes. We have reviewed the past year and will hire four new Career Mentors focusing on the 8 NACE competencies and evaluating their knowledge from the skills taught in the Career Readiness Guide. They will also be trained on Standout for practice interviews. |
| Diversity | Increase the number of applicants of diverse individuals through intentional recruiting of team members by working with Human Resources and different departments like clubs and organizations, minority associations and minority student workers. | We will provide diversity training opportunities for team members and will openly discuss ideas and ways to recruit and increase the size of our applicant pool to provide more candidates that represent different populations and communities. We are still intent on hiring the best qualified individual for any open position but feel that by increasing the number of diverse applicants we will be better able to increase the diversity of our team over time. Also, making sure that we continue to have a warm, welcoming and accepting work environment and through learning from each other how we can best support every team member with open hearts and minds that value the differences and the strengths that each person brings to make us better. | Learning to value the differences each person bring to a team and recognize their strengths that makes a team stronger is a life lesson that will help our student workers and all team members be better community and world citizens. We will seek to know the experiences that compose the "story" of each team of our team members. Learning from each other will help us bond as a team, enjoy our work time together and better serve our customers. | We will measure this goal by the increase in our diverse applicant pool and by the increase in our employee diversity. | A special focus was placed on hiring a diverse group of individuals for our open positions. We hired Anrea Salcedo and Brooke Calderon with that emphasis. Andrea is Mexican American and Brooke is Pacific Islander. We also had four females of our six career mentors. We feel this focus on diversity allowed us to learn more about different cultures and customs and be more welcoming to a more diverse group of students. | Reflecting on this experience we will continue to seek out and hire a diverse group of students and professionals as openings occur. This has been positive for our team and students who access our services. |
| Access | Continue to develop the Career and Major navigation portal with our student success partners. Implement the new program in the Fall semester of 2019. | Our career team (Greg, Shari and Amelia) will continue to work with the student success team (Jennifer Wright and her team) to launch the career and major navigation web site in August 2019. The site will be monitored for effectiveness and marketing to all advisers through training opportunities. Students will complete their career and major interests through tutorials and assessments that will be taken on line and debriefed in group sessions before one on one counselor/adviser meetings are scheduled. This approach should allow our five counselors to better serve the growing Weber State student population. | Enter Student Learning Outcome | We will track the number of students taking advantage of the on line navigation program and the number of students who want to come to the group feedback meetings. We will also track the number of students who request a follow up meeting with a counselor/adviser and their satisfaction with the service. | The major and career navigation program was rolled out Fall semester 2019. It is an excellent use of our resources focusing on online completion of career assessments and academic advising information that is convenient for the student and more productive for the counselors and advisers. Group meetings are held twice a week with a career counselor and a student success adviser providing next level information and feedback on their assessment results. The participation has been less than expected and desired but we have plans for additional marketing for Fall 2020 to inform and encourage more student participation. | The first year has shown us that students need as much information from as many sources as possible to think differently about present programming compared to past experiences. We received good feedback from students who participated and we will look to incorporate those ideas in motivating more involvement going forward. Our marketing specialist is involved in rolling out new ideas for our social media efforts and staff and adviser engagement for providing information on the changes and recommending the use of the online assessments and group feedback sessions. We are encouraged by our first year and believe it is the right approach for the future since there is no way 5 career counselors/employment advisers can meet individually with 29,000 plus students. This is the future! |
| Access | Create and develop the REAL PROJECTS program (Real Experiences Applied Learning). Offer the first course Fall Semester 2019. | Complete the curriculum development and get approval of where to offer the course after Fall Semester. Develop marketing strategies to increase the number of students registering for the course. Choose a time keeping system that the students will utilize and get the final approval for the technology remodel of the library to provide a better area for teams to meet, for career mentors to work with students and for Career Cafe to continue to evolve on Wednesdays. Evaluate the Fall Semester class and make course changes as needed to continuously improve the class. Continue to encourage traditional internships and promote self developed internships to all students. Complete the formation of the Internship Committee to define internships and better measure the number of internships completed. | Through REAL PROJECTS (on campus internships), traditional internships and self developed internships. Students will develop increased skills through practical application in the following areas: Critical Thinking/Problem Solving. Oral/Written Communications. Teamwork/Collaboration. Digital Technology. Leadership. Professional/Work Ethic. Career Management. Global/Intercultural Fluency. These competencies will be taught and practiced through working with their company representatives and in working with their team members. | We will do on going evaluation of performance measurements during the class and will have a reflection/unpacking opportunity for each student to add to their "success story" that they can share with their employers. After the internship committee agrees upon the definition of an "internship" we will gather data on the number of internships for credit that are completed each year. Once we have a more accurate of the quantity of internships we will work to improve the quality of internships with the development of common standards throughout all of the colleges and majors. | The course was approved through the honors program. The internship designation was approved by faulty senate and the deans council. Curriculum was developed and two classes were taught. Ten projects were approved from employers. Six REAL projects were completed and presentations and final results were presented to employers, deans and administration. Evaluations were completed by the students and employers and changes were made to improve the second class. The program received the student affairs award of recognition. The library was remodeled with new technology installed. Plans are in place to grow the program. The first annual internship conference was created, marketed and presented. It was an outstanding success. | The program has been evaluated twice by students and employers and changes have been made to enhance the experience and increase and improve the interactions between students and employers. More marketing has been developed to share the program with more students and employers in order to grow the program. |
| Community | Increase the emphasis on industry/college/major specific events instead of university wide events will be encouraged in 2019 - 2020. We currently have five general job and career/internship and stem fairs. We would like to see more specialized fairs to better connect specific students and their majors with specific employers who have need of their skills. The seven colleges will help each other with their college specific events. | Each Career Counselor/Employment Adviser and Career and Employment Adviser will meet with their college Dean and faculty and identify industry specific employers that they want their students to meet and learn how to prepared themselves for internship and career employment at theses priority organizations. These could be done through employer panels, alumni discussions, hiring round tables or information sessions. WE will do surveys with the students of the learning opportunity and will take the time for students to "network" with their favorite companies and contacts. We will emphasize that companies bring back alumni that work for their companies. | Students will be trained on how to network effectively with employers representing their majors and how to talk about the skills that they are learning in their coursework and through their employment and teamwork activities. This setting of smaller groups and employers specifying their skill set needs will be much more productive for students, employers and faculty. | We will measure the results of this goal by the mini employer event in each of the seven colleges. We will do a satisfaction survey with the students and employers to be sure we are meeting their needs. | At least one college specific employer information session was held for the seven colleges. Panels and discussions were held for the State Department, Marshals Service, Utah Opera and Ballet and numerous ones in the colleges of Business and Technology. The focus was on our partners and priority companies for each college. Response from students ranged from over 60 for the State Department to as few as 10. The student feedback was positive and the employers appreciated seeing specific students with majors related to their needs. Career Bytes was started the summer of 2020 with two virtual broadcasts by employers and consultants (subject matter experts). They were recorded and put on our web site for continuous access. The first one was done by America First on resume writing and the second by a consultant/professor on networking. | We received feedback on each session from both students and employers expressing appreciation for the opportunity to connect and prepare for internships and jobs after graduation. We plan to do more sessions next academic year with a higher emphasis on virtual sessions. We are planning on investing in new video equipment to broadcast and record each session with concerns for the health of our students, employers and staff. |