Ensuring student employment is positively impacting student success and career development

The opportunity

<50%

Less than half of college graduates succeed in finding purposeful work (Gallup)

11%

Only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agreed that college graduates have the skills employers need (Gallup)

7/10

7 out of 10 ASU students work while at school

The mission

Work+ is designed by University College on the premise that work and learning should be better integrated. Student work presents the ideal platform for student professional and personal growth. Students engage with their work in a way that aligns to their career goals. It provides a life transformative education that develops their sense of identity, agency, and purpose.

Work+ builds a template for the merging of work and learning realms by:

Empowering students

Providing resources and storytelling frameworks for taking ownership and advantage of their work opportunities to advance their own personal and career development.

Engaging students

Engaging them with their work with a storytelling framework. Engaging them with their workplace through their mentorship relationship with their supervisors. Engaged with others through community framework.

NACE competencies

Whether you’re a graphic design intern, research assistant, barista, or front desk aide, your job experience will generally benefit from a set of crucial professional skills. Work+ utilizes career competencies as highlighted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), and has built modules to help you develop them. (Source: NACE)

Storytelling

Power of reflection

It turns out that simply asking students and professionals to briefly reflect on what they’d just learned results in better performance over time. Taking time to breathe between projects helps students learn from mistakes and recognize strengths and weaknesses.

Where the power of learning is the action of doing the activity, reflection’s power is in the action of articulating thoughts. In Work+, you create your Professional Story: a narrative of work-related experiences and short reflections to help you realize who you are, what your goals are, and express how you can contribute to the wider world.