Career Ready Fellows: Using Course Learning Experiences to Prepare Students for Careers

Although students regularly engage in curricular and co-curricular experiences that help prepare them for their future endeavors, they are often unable to articulate the connections between their college experiences and the skills and competencies that will help them succeed on the job market and in their chosen careers. We have built a multi-disciplinary cohort of teaching faculty and staff instructors who are working together to explore methods for supporting students in making connections between their Geneseo experiences and their career readiness, vis-à-vis course activities. No prior experience integrating career competencies into coursework was necessary to become a fellow. Supported by Career Design Center and the Center for Integrative Learning, participants are working together over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year.

Interested in participating as a fellow during the 2026-2027 year? Please read the detailed information below and apply here. Applications are due by March 24, 2026. 

Introducing the 2025-2026 Career Ready Fellows

Ahmad Almomani, Department of Mathematics

"Mathematics empowers students with logical reasoning, problem-solving, and analytical tools that are essential for their future careers. Through this fellowship, I am excited to explore innovative ways to connect mathematical thinking with career readiness, helping students articulate how skills developed in the classroom prepare them to thrive in real-world challenges."

Travis Bailey, Department of Biology

"Geneseo students have been taking steps for career readiness starting long before college. During college, planning can uncover one's gaps in preparation. Addressing those gaps will maximize their opportunities for career success. I enjoy working with each person to develop the possibilities that their talents afford."  

Justin Behrend, Department of History

"I am thrilled to be a Career Ready Fellow because it offers me the opportunity to better help graduate students (particularly in the humanities) translate their professional training into promising career paths. I am eager to collaborate with my colleagues to better prepare our students for various career paths and lifelong learning."

Hanna Brant, Department of Political Science & International Relations

"I am excited for the opportunity to help students articulate how their degree from Geneseo and experiences are marketable for future employment. I look forward to learning new skills and resources to facilitate this process through my mentorship of students, and course assignments and content, so that students can gain transferable skills to use for applying to jobs and internships."

Whitney Brown, Department of Psychology

"In my current courses, I touch on preparing students for careers in the mental health field and other helping professions. As a Career Ready Fellow, I’m excited to learn from other faculty, get creative in designing career development-focused assignments, and continue coaching students to build strong relationships with faculty and professional staff who are eager to support them."

Byeong-Hak Choe, School of Business

"I’m excited to serve as a Career Ready Fellow, and I see this opportunity as a chance to improve on supporting students’ career development. In my data analytics and economics classes, students work on projects that are related to the kinds of challenges they will face in the workplace, such as analyzing data, interpreting results, and communicating their findings. I hope this fellowship will give me new ideas for incorporating career readiness into my teaching so that students leave my classes prepared for the workplace."

Claire Gravelin, Department of Pyschology

"‘You can't do anything with a Bachelor's in Psychology' is an all-too-common phrase I hear in various spaces, and my students hear it too. As someone dedicated to dispelling these myths, I have developed and taught professionally-oriented psychology courses to help students connect their academic experiences with career readiness. Yet I recognize opportunities to extend this integration beyond specialized courses, and am eager to collaborate with faculty across disciplines to challenge one another, share best practices, and create new opportunities for embedding career preparation more broadly throughout the curriculum—ultimately increasing all students' access to the knowledge and skills essential for professional success."

Jennifer Guzmán, Department of Anthropology

"As the coordinator for the interdisciplinary programs in sociomedical sciences and linguistics and a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology I teach and advise students who have clear career goals and others who are uncertain how to translate their college experiences into a profession. All of these students benefit from opportunities to advance their career preparation and expand their skill sets. I am looking forward to participating in the Career Ready Fellows program and working closely with other dedicated colleagues to expand Geneseo's resources for students who are preparing for careers in such important areas as health care, public health, and social services."

Jyothsna Harithsa, School of Business

"I hope to learn from fellow faculty members and help establish a streamlined process through which our students are ready for the market and the potential ways in which it might evolve in the future." 

Shawn Harnish, School of Business

"Knowledge without application is a lot like a bobble head. Big head is bouncing all around but it isn't going anywhere. Putting knowledge to work provides the traction to go down a pathway that leads to  success. I always strive to create this bridge in my classrooms." 

Li Lu, School of Business

"As a Career Ready Fellow, I’m excited to help students connect what they learn in data analytics with real-world career skills. In my courses, I want students to see how working with data—whether through cleaning, visualization, or interpretation—builds transferable skills that employers value. Since AI might take over many entry-level jobs, it’s even more important that students strengthen their higher-level problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking skills. This program helps reduce that gap by incorporating career-focused activities that prepare students to stand out and confidently apply their learning in future opportunities."

Kathleen Mapes, Department of History

"I’m excited to take part in the Career Ready fellowship program because I think it will make me a better teacher and a more understanding and informed mentor.  I look forward to thinking critically about how I might help students to bridge the gap between their liberal arts education and future professional pursuits." 

Brenna McCaffrey, Department of Anthropology

"Students in our Anthropology and Sociomedical Science majors are extremely well-prepared to enter an exciting variety of career paths post-grad, but it can sometimes be difficult for them to identify those paths while still in school. I look forward to developing better ways to facilitate the connection between the skills they develop in the classroom and the strengths that are valued on the job market."

Sam Newberry, Department of Biology

"I don't know what I don't know! While I work hard to ensure students learn course content, I presume I could be doing more to strengthen skills and application. The Career Ready Fellows program is exciting to me because it has the potential to reframe the classroom with a student's potential future workplace in mind. What can be done now that will better prepare them for their future career? What does that prepartion look like? These are some of the questions I look forward to exploring as part of this program."

Lytton Smith, Department of English

"For me, undergraduate study took place alongside working the stalls at a London theatre, tending bar at a pub, and summers at a literary and actors agency - but though these things fit with studying English literature, there wasn't a way to connect the dots between academic learning and careers. I'm looking forward to being part of the Fellows to explore intentional ways to join curriculum and work lives, rather than siloing off college from careers."
 

Benefits of Participation
  • Opportunity to develop new course materials that support student needs and interests
  • Work with a cohort of faculty and professionals who are interested in connecting course activities with career readiness competencies
  • $600 stipend 
Sample Fellowship Outcomes
  • Incorporating a new activity that directly connects critical thinking done in a course activity with how the students would use that skill after they leave college.
  • A syllabus reorganization or redesign that emphasizes and highlights teamwork and leadership skills that are necessary for successful employment and already a part of your course.
  • Designing a mock interview in which students prepare statements on how their coursework prepared them to be more capable in using technology and being more professional.
  • Incorporating regular reflections throughout the semester that ask students to make connections between equity and inclusion topics in your coursework and how students could talk about these in job applications and job settings.
  • A project that serves a local community or simulates a task someone in a professional career would do that includes a reflection on how the students would talk about this project during an interview.
  • A series of guest presentations that explore and connect your course material with professional practice and communication.
NACE Competencies & Behaviors for Addressing Career-Related Goals

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is a professional association of college career service professionals. They use a framework of eight competencies and behaviors for addressing career-related goals, which they define as “a foundation from which to demonstrate requisite core competencies that broadly prepare the college educated for success in the workplace and lifelong career management.” The eight career readiness competencies identified by NACE are:

  • Professionalism
  • Communication
  • Critical Thinking
  • Teamwork
  • Technology
  • Leadership
  • Equity & Inclusion
  • Career & Self Development

As our campus endeavors to expand student access to experiential learning opportunities, aligning these experiences with the NACE Competencies gives us a framework and uniform language to empower students to talk about their experiences. 

A recently released report called, “Integrating Academic and Career Development: Strategies to Scale Experiential Learning and Reflection Across the Curriculum,” identified practices that encourage ongoing reflection and narration for students. This helps them transition from “I took” and “I learned” statements towards “I did" and "I can do” assertions. Faculty members in this cohort will be integrating teaching practices that encourage students to reflect and assist them with incorporating course competencies into the development of their professional persona. Throughout students’ SUNY Geneseo experience they collect assignments, experiences, and new competencies; one of the goals of this project is to help students articulate how they will be able to leverage their experience to themselves and others. Students could be saving class assignments in a portfolio to share later, taking time in the moment to reflect on growth and goals, or doing mock interviews and practicing how they will talk about connecting their classwork with skills for a potential job.

Apply to Become a Geneseo Career Ready Fellow

Submit the Career Ready Fellowship application by Tuesday, March 24, 2026.

Please email Melanie Medeiros (medeiros@geneseo.edu), Director of the Center for Integrative Learning, if you have any questions.

Related Pages
Center for Integrative Learning