Amplifying Career Competencies in Your Courses: A Faculty Learning Community
The Center for Teaching and Learning and the Division of Undergraduate Education are delighted to welcome applications for our year-long Faculty Learning Community (FLC) Amplifying Career Competencies in Your Courses.
Participation in the FLC will include:
An in-person kick-off meeting on Friday, January 30 from 9 to 3 p.m. (lunch provided)
Two 90-minute virtual seminars during the spring 2026 semester
Feedback and support from CTL and the Career Competency Fellow as you implement career competencies in a fall 2026 course
The goals of our FLC strongly align with the IU Indianapolis 2030 Strategic Plan goals to enhance undergraduate employment prospects, students’ career outcomes, and to increase retention and graduation rates. Research has shown that students are more likely to persist and succeed in courses when instructors persuade students of the value of course outcomes to their lives after college.
The Faculty Learning Community (FLC) will be co-led by Carrie Sickmann, CTL Career Competency Fellow and Senior Lecturer in English, and Douglas Jerolimov, Instructional Consultant in the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Carrie participated in the 2023–2024 Career Competency Workshop Series in the School of Liberal Arts and successfully transformed her course to strengthen students’ career competency development. Douglas co-facilitated the 2023–2024 workshop series and focuses on course design, course development, and the assessment of student learning. His recent work emphasizes approaches that integrate generative AI as a tool for teaching and learning.
Carrie Sickmann (left), Doug Jerolimov (right)
Frequently Asked Questions
The primary goal is to provide participants with time, structured course revision guidance, peer support, and an incentive to enhance and make visible the integration of career competencies in their courses and improve their students’ career readiness.
Your courses can empower students with the skills they need to thrive beyond graduation and apply their disciplinary learning in their future professions. Without calling on you to significantly overhaul your course, this FLC will help you make visible its career-readiness competencies—such as communication, problem solving, critical thinking, technology, and professionalism—into existing curricula, preparing your students to articulate and demonstrate their competencies to future employers.
Whether you're teaching liberal arts, STEM, or professional programs, this community offers a space to reflect, innovate, and support student success in meaningful ways!
In addition to developing a robust course that makes visible the skills that students will also develop for their future careers, all participants will receive a stipend of $1,000 as professional development funds upon successful completion of the FLC.
All instructors of record from IU Indianapolis, IU Columbus, and IU Fort Wayne, are eligible to apply. Eligible Instructors participating in this FLC will be drawn from all ranks and categories of faculty (tenured, tenure-track, lecturers, clinical, and adjunct), and from all course types (in-person, hybrid, or online, etc.).
Please note that faculty from the IU School of Medicine are not eligible to apply to this program.
A complete application including specific course(s) in which career competencies will be emphasized.
Priority will be given to individual instructors and small groups of instructors who are teaching 100- and 200-level undergraduate courses with one or more of the following criteria:
courses with high total annual enrollments (>100 students across an academic year),
courses where multiple sections are offered in a term,
courses that are supported by a single course coordinator or use a unified curriculum, and/or
courses where the DFW rate is 25% or more.
Application decisions will be communicated by Friday, January 16, 2026.
The FLC's kick-off meeting is scheduled for Friday, January 30, 2026, 9 a.m to 3 p.m. Participants will subsequently attend two 90-minute online synchronous (Zoom- or Teams-based) meetings on dates to be decided.
The in-person kick-off and synchronous virtual meetings will include a mix of workshops and presentations by guest speakers from Career Services, students, individual work time, and small-group discussions. Course design, instructional technology, and assessment best practices will form the central aspects of the FLC curriculum.
All participants will be enrolled in a Canvas course which will serve as a repository for resources and a platform to submit artifacts, receive feedback, and engage in peer review.
Participants should expect to spend 3-5 hours monthly to prepare for and complete meeting activities.
Participants will receive the stipend upon completion of FLC activities successfully. Successful completion entails:
Attending the kick-off meeting of Friday, January 30, 2026
Attending both 90-minute online FLC meetings subsequent to the kick-off meeting, dates and times TBD
Submitting the following FLC deliverables:
A "before" and "after" syllabus
A draft and a final course map
Draft and final documents communicating course-change implementation and associated assessments
Student learning outcomes data
The workshop provided me with valuable insights and opportunities to connect and collaborate with colleagues, allowing me to enhance my course design to better support my students. Even small changes made a big difference -- my students consistently share how they feel more confident and better prepared to apply their knowledge beyond the classroom.
Sydney Kadinger, Clinical Assistant Fellow and CTL Career Competency Fellow
FLC Learning Objectives
Identify career competencies to amplify in your courses through strategic revision of course- and module-level learning objectives, assignments, and learning activities.
Assess the amplification of career competencies in your course with direct and indirect measures of student learning.
Engage in peer learning as a member of a community of instructors who amplify career readiness in their courses.
Specifically, you will be asked to:
Explore NACE career competencies and the Profiles of Learning for Undergraduate Success.
Write relevant and measurable career competency-based objectives and ensure alignment among learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities.
Articulate the value of specific career competencies to students in your syllabus, explaining how your course will support students in developing those competencies.
Explore different types and functions of assessments.
Use the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework to design or refine an assignment.
Create a rubric using templates and generative A.I.
Explore value and characteristics of evidence-based teaching practices
Share drafts of assignments, activities, and syllabus; provide and receive actionable feedback
I know how important job skills are and only thought I gained job skills on a job. This class showed me the importance of communication and decision making. It showed me that I learn skills everywhere, not just in an internship. I wish I had more classes structure like this.
