Academic Integration

Career development should be an essential component of our students’ undergraduate education, not a voluntary activity that they participate in if they have time, access, and understanding of its value. This especially true for our students who are just beginning their careers. By embedding career development content in Tech’s on-campus degree programs, every traditional student is exposed to at least basic career readiness content before graduating. To do this, the Career Center team works with Tech’s faculty to meet our traditional students multiple times throughout their degree programs within carefully chosen courses to deliver key lessons related to career readiness.

The integration model for most programs consists of spending 1 class period with students in every section of 3 required courses. The 3 courses are chosen based on the majors of the students who commonly enroll in the course, the typical timing of enrollment based on prerequisites, the consistency of instructors, and being a required course of the degree program. Few programs have 3 required courses that satisfy all these needs perfectly, but they are still useful criteria as starting point.

The Career Center team uses the whole class period to deliver a presentation and/or facilitate an activity focused on a certain career development topic. The presentation may include an assignment related to the topic that the instructor should assign points for its completion. The Career Center team does the work of reviewing the students’ assignment submissions, returning the reviewed versions to the students, and providing grading guidance to the instructors.

Each semester, the Career Center works with faculty to schedule these presentations and activities on a day that suits the instructors’ needs. If you teach one of the selected courses, the Career Center will contact you before the beginning of each semester to make arrangements. Questions about this program should be directed to Dr. Amy Deitrickson at addeitrickson@indianatech.edu.

The most common reason students attend college is to get a job. Therefore, it’s critical that Tech makes career development support highly accessible to every student. While the services of the Career Center are always available to every Tech student and alum, many people do not seek assistance for a variety of reasons. Therefore, instead of hoping students come to Career Center, the Career Center team goes to where our students are. This program is part of Tech’s effort to do that.