(OSU-Cascades Career Fair | Photo Courtesy of OSU-Cascades)
OSU-Cascades has offered innovative ways to prepare students for their future careers for years now, but a new program introduced by the college aims to further that goal. Cascades Edge is a new career development program that is built directly into a student’s coursework, for no additional cost.
Blair Garland, the chief marketing and engagement officer with OSU-Cascades, led the team in charge of creating this new program. “We have this concept in mind of, ‘this is a new campus, maybe we can do things a little differently while still utilizing the resources of OSU’s main campus,’” Garland said. “We started out with the idea of creating a distinct feature that would not only make a difference for our students but also help us stand out.”
Garland said from there, the team in charge of making this new program ran things like a start-up business, “We worked with the Innovation Co-Lab, as well as focus groups filled with prospective students and parents to learn more about their hopes and concerns. This led us to a few different ideas that we eventually refined down.”
Garland said that during this process, they discovered that the most promising concept to pursue was focused on career development. With this idea in mind, a team of faculty, staff and even a few students were put together to flesh out the concept. Once the central idea was mostly there, new students to campus were invited to discuss the idea, to further help Garland’s team learn how to better help their community.
One of the students who was invited to work with the team of faculty and staff was Kimberly Markley, a 38-year-old, first-generation college student from Ohio who is enrolled in the computer science program. In one of these meetings, Markley raised the point that the computer science program already had so many career development tools in place that have helped her on her educational journey.
“I was given a big opportunity to work with Blair on Cascades Edge. We worked together on multiple focus groups of parents, prospective students, and asked so many questions to better understand what the OSU-Cascades community needed,” Markley said. “As we were discussing all of the things our focus groups had mentioned, I spoke from the heart about how the computer science program includes a professional development unit. I said this unit has changed my view of myself and what I can offer the world. I had a good resume, internship experience, learned best practices on how to communicate with employers, interview skills and more. It also made me realize why certain classes applied to my dream job and career.”
Having a current student speak about how impactful the computer science career development unit is struck a chord with Garland and the rest of the team. Garland said this helped him refine the many original ideas that had down into Cascades Edge, a career development program that can help every student in any major.
Cascades Edge is a four-pronged program aimed at helping students gain the skills, focus and confidence needed to succeed in the workplace and land their dream job. The first portion is a course that every first-year student takes. This is an exploratory course that helps students narrow down their passions and strengths, while also explaining to students how different majors and career paths translate to different jobs down the line.
The second piece of the program provides students with an action plan where they decide what kind of an impact they want their careers to have. From here, this goal-oriented action plan helps students plan out their time at OSU Cascades, including what classes to take, clubs to join and internships to pursue.
The third portion, Garland describes as a “career development menu that is embedded into their classes.” Essentially, students will be able to pick from a list of professional topics that will help them develop as successful workers, like interview practice, job shadows, internships, research, resume workshops, pre-career fair workshops and more. Garland said these skills help students learn important skills, and also greatly increase their confidence as they begin to search for jobs and other opportunities.
The final step is a LinkedIn-compatible badging system. The National Association of Colleges and Employers defines a set of eight career competencies that students need in order to succeed in the modern workforce. The Cascades Edge program gives students a streamlined path to achieve many of those badges during their time in college. Each student can earn up to four ranks in each badge category. Many badges can be earned through classwork; freshman-level writing courses provide you with a level 1 communication badge, for example.
In terms of how the program will change in the future, Garland said, “Like with most things at OSU Cascades, we do our best at designing the program and learning from those experiences. We measure what works and what doesn’t, and fully expect to refine the program as it goes along.”
To a student like Markley, this is just another step OSU-Cascades is taking to benefit not just the student body, but the entire Bend community.
“I longed for an education for my entire life, and being given this opportunity to succeed and be supported by the community around me is indescribable. Education has saved my life in so many ways, and I love this community so much because of how much we support one another,” Markley said. “This movement happening with Cascades Edge is hopefully going to be one of the many tools making the Central Oregon community happy, healthy and functional.”
