Educating for Professional Success

I’m not surprised when I hear that employers are dissatisfied with the skills recent college graduates bring to the workplace. I’ve been hearing that since the 1980s. However, employers’ complaints historically focused on what are called “soft skills,” abilities that are typically associated with the liberal arts or the co-curricular experience.

More recently, employers have criticized college graduates for lacking “hard skills” as well, and large corporations report investing $30,000 to $50,000 a year to fill the gaps between what employers want and what college graduates have learned.

Utica College’s Associate Professor of Computer Science, Ronny L. Bull, has been addressing this gap for years.  

It all starts with building relationships. Bull has ties with several area employers, and he uses these connections to learn how prepared UC computer science graduates are when they enter the profession. Through informal conversations, he learns where graduates’ knowledge and skills are lacking, and he uses this information to make modifications to the curriculum and to refine pedagogy. For example, when he learned that graduates needed more knowledge and experience with coding, he revised all of his 100-level to 400-level courses in order to teach coding skills that tied back to the course objectives. Well-crafted coding projects reinforced the understanding of this content by engaging the students. As students progressed through their degree program, they could expect more and more challenging coding problems presented to them in higher level courses.  A secondary effect was that they were better prepared for the real world.

“It’s not just about knowledge, though,” he said. “Interpersonal skills, teamwork, and problem-solving are other competencies we address through our curricular offerings, since these ‘soft skills’ are critical to a graduate’s success as well.”

By networking with employers, Dr. Bull is able to “create a pipeline of people who know how to do a job.” His success is indicated by the fact that area employers ask for Utica College graduates, mostly because “they don’t have to train them,” Bull stated.

A carefully designed curriculum that has hands-on experiences built into its courses and that provides  students with real-world opportunities during their undergraduate years allows Dr. Bull to develop students’ knowledge and skills so that they can be successful in the professional workplace. More importantly, however, it gives him insight into individual students’ interests, abilities, and aptitudes. In turn, this allows him to match student interns and graduates with employers.

Helping students see what kinds of opportunities exist in the computing industry is part of the education Dr. Bull provides his students. Prior to the pandemic, he regularly brought students to tour local facilities and meet employers. On many of these visits, the employers they were introduced to were Utica College computer science alumni! It isn’t just career-readiness that Bull emphasizes, however. The curriculum and its emphasis on real-world problems and projects also prepares students for graduate education, and over the years, Bull has brought dozens of students to conferences sponsored by ACM, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Professor Bull also relies on the relationships he has established with computer science graduates when it comes to assessing the curriculum. Several years ago, he set up a discord server where students and faculty could collaborate, share, and chat. This created a community within the department, and when students graduated, they remained part of this group. Alumni were able to share feedback about the curriculum with their former faculty—feedback that was then used to make changes. 

The work that Ronny Bull does soliciting feedback from employers and alumni and using this information to develop curriculum and create experiential learning opportunities is an example of assessment at its finest, seamlessly woven into the fabric of what he us doing to develop students into successful professionals and lifelong learners.

 

Wilkie, Dana. “Employers Say College Grads Lack Hard Skills, Too.” Society for Human Resource Management, 21 Octover 2019, www.shrm.org/resourcestools. Accessed 3 March 2021.