Career Readiness Initiative

I'm Levi Davenport, I'm the Director of Career Development and Corporate Relations here at Northwest University. I'm really excited about the Career Readiness Initiative. What we found in higher ed, specifically liberal arts universities, is that students are getting out and getting into the workplace and the ramping on time for students to be work-ready, if you will, takes the employer a little bit of time to get that graduate to the place that they want them to be. So what NU has done is addressed that need. It's sort of bridged that gap that we've seen between graduation and day one at work. So what Career Readiness Initiative does is it eliminates that gap so that the student, when they graduate, has a list of core competencies for the workplace, a list of certificates, things that have trained them specifically to start day one. It's really going to benefit employers.

So we've done a ton of data analysis and meeting with business owners, C-level exes, presidents telling them about this initiative, asking for their input, recruiters from Amazon, recruiters from Microsoft. They love it. They say it's all about making the student have quantifiable skills on their resume. So employers really, really are behind this. They wanted this to start over the summer when we first started talking about it last year. And so we ramp it up to where we've really done due diligence, the faculty, because that's one thing that is sometimes difficult, is making sure that when you adapt the core curriculum, faculty are on board and all NU faculty thinks that it's amazing. And all employers are like, yes, we want this.

This initiative will set students up for success because they will be ready to work on day one. Their core competencies and the certificates that the students will be obtaining that will be in a separate document alongside their transcript will really show that they're not just saying I have conflict mediation skills. We're actually giving them a certificate that they've done the work to show that they do have it. The Career Readiness Initiative basically allows employers to hire with confidence because they know these graduates have the necessary tools to start work day one.

And then it also really allows graduates to graduate with confidence. Our NU students will be able to know coming into NU, I can graduate with confidence, knowing I'll be able to have all this access to employers with these competencies and certificates that I've obtained that put them head and shoulders above other graduates from other institutions. If you resonate with the Career Readiness Initiative and you want to hear more about it, whether it's you want to hire an intern, whether you want to be a mentor, whether it's you're a parent of a prospective student or a prospective student or current student and you want to hear more about it, please reach out to me, my office. I take all emails so you can just email me or call me. And I'd love to be able to assist you and give you more information on this incredible initiative.