Let’s Talk Competencies! Career Readiness Doesn’t Matter if Students Can’t Express It

The Student Leadership Competencies (Seemiller, 2014) is a body of research that provides a common language of leadership for students, staff, faculty, and employers. Learn some best practices of how this language can be implemented throughout a campus, which can help your students express their career readiness to employers more effectively.

Competencies are a collection of knowledge, skills, and abilities that demonstrates if someone is affective at certain tasks. Since they are able to be learned and measured, competency models are often used in co-curricular programs to help create student learning outcomes.  The Student Leadership Competencies is a body of research that is analyzed the learning outcomes in all 522 accredited academic programs in higher education. It creates a common language of leadership that can be understood by students, staff, faculty, and employers.

There are many resources available for institutions of higher education to be able to start using this language in a consistent manner, which will ultimately help students be able to express their career readiness to employers more effectively. This session will introduce participants to the competency development, where it fits in the intentional change theory model, provide an overview of the Student Leadership Competencies research/resources, and share best practices of how to implement using these competencies across campus. Examples of how they were implemented at the program, department, and divisional level will be shared. The presenter will discuss how to create buy-in from students and staff as well as provide resources that can be shared during that process.

Learning Outcomes

Through this live briefing, participants will:

• gain and understanding of competency development;
• be exposed to Seemiller's Student Leadership Competencies;
• know why changing their current language to the language used in the Student Leadership Competencies will help employers understand student’s abilities better; and
• be provided examples of different methods to incorporate and have students utilize this language.