The ExCeL QEP is focused on supporting the academic and career success of USF students and requires the support of all faculty and staff across the university to have a meaningful impact.
The goal of the ExCeL QEP is to foster the career readiness of undergraduate students by improving their engagement in experiential-centered learning experiences. The focus is specifically on those experiences that will positively contribute to graduates’ first destination outcomes: internships, co-ops, undergraduate research, and student employment.
Helping students identify the most helpful experience for their unique career and life goals, as well as articulating the competencies they are acquiring both in and out of the classroom, will be the key to their success.
As faculty and staff involved with undergraduates, you have an important role in the ExCeL QEP to help make this happen. If you supervise, mentor, advise, or teach students involved in internships, co-ops, student employment, or undergraduate research, you can start helping today.
Infuse ExCel Into your Course or Experiences:
Do you hire, supervise, or mentor students in internships, co-ops, student employment, or undergraduate research? If so, you can be a part of ExCeL in three easy ways by helping:
- Track
- Assess
- Develop
1) Track: Handshake Experiences
Whatever your relationship is with students, you can encourage them to report their experiences through Handshake: Experiences. This can be done as an assignment or voluntarily; an addition to something you already have in place, or can replace what you are using now.
- For the students: This will allow students to add these valuable experiences to their Handshake profiles at the same time, making them more marketable to employers.
- For the course/department/college: Reports can be run to give departments/colleges details about the experiences of your students.
- For the university: This provides the needed details of these experiences to more effectively report student involvement in these valuable experiences and tell a larger story.
2) Assess: Career Readiness Report
Students are building Career Readiness Competencies everyday in and out of the classroom. The more familiar they become with these competencies and recognize how they are developing, the more capable they will be to articulate them to future employers or graduate schools. By providing self-assessment and outsider feedback using this common language, students can develop and track their competencies and see their own growth over time.
- For the students: This will allow students to self-assess throughout their student experience and request feedback from others. Valuable action steps and LinkedIn learning courses will be recommended to the student to develop areas needing growth.
- For the course/departments/college: We can run a report and give you the details about the self-reported and outsider perspective of your students’ Career Readiness Competencies. In courses, this can be taken at the beginning and the end, with feedback only requested at the end, to provide a pre and post-experience assessment. A PDF can be generated to submit for an assignment if desired.
- For the university: This provides a longitudinal view of student growth and provides insights into the experiences that are most beneficial to students.
3) Develop: Provide Professional Development
By encouraging our students to partake in professional development, we are not only helping prepare our students for successful careers, but setting the standard for continuous skill development throughout their careers. To help you do this effectively without a lot of extra work, we have created programs and curated trainings to benefit USF students.
If you would like your students to learn about a particular career topic and apply this knowledge in your course with an assignment, we have a variety of prebuilt Canvas modules you may embed. These engaging and interactive modules provide content, activities, and assignments using CCPD platforms and AI technology for assessment, to allow minimal need for instructor grading.
Many student employment opportunities meet the requirements to be considered and internship and can easily be transitioned. This not only helps departments market the positions, but also can help students and employers recognize the value in the experiences more readily. FWS funds can be utilized for these on-campus internships and students may have the option to enroll in internship courses as well.
The Engaged Student Employment (ESE) program represents a new approach to ensure our on-campus undergraduate student employees develop the essential skills employers look for when hiring recent college graduates. ESE will change how USF recruits and retains student employees, how we engage them on the job, and how they build and reflect on their experiences, while also creating greater access to meaningful experiences for students right here on the USF campus. This Canvas-based program will allow student employees to participate in LinkedIn Learning videos, give time to reflect on what they learned through reflection summaries, and have opportunities to participate in engaging workshops and numerous activities. Upon completion of the ESE program, an Engaged Student Employment Badge digital badge will be awarded.
This series of virtual and in-person workshops is designed to help students prepare to be successful in their graduate/professional school applications and programs. Workshops can be attended individually, but if a student attends 5 or more, they will receive a greatly discounted GRE Preparation Course. This program is sponsored by the USF’s Center for Career & Professional Development, Workforce Development, Office of Corporate Training & Professional Development, and Office of Graduate Studies.
The Center for Career & Professional Development is available to present to your classes or student groups in-person, virtually, or pre-recorded on a variety of career-related topics throughout the year. Learn more about the topics available, and request a presentation today.
Course Infusion: Logistics
Including information about ExCeL and the Career Readiness Competencies in your syllabus can go a long way to helping students better understand how their courses are preparing them for success after graduation. Here are some ways to make this more transparent for students.
Here is a sample syllabus statement indicating your connection with the QEP:
Experiential-Centered Learning Course Statement
This course is part of USF’s Experiential Centered Learning (ExCeL) program, designed to enhance your career readiness through meaningful experiences. Through intentional engagement, you’ll develop valuable skills and competencies that contribute to your future career and educational success. The assignments in this course are contributing to your growth in the following Career Readiness Competencies (CRC):
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Critical Thinking
- AI
Canvas Outcomes enables the USF and faculty to track students’ progress as measured by pedagogical goals or desired outcomes. For ExCeL, Canvas Outcomes allow for measurement of Career Readiness Competencies being developed by students in course through the infusion of outcomes into pre-existing assignments and rubrics.
These outcomes and rubrics are adapted from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Competency Assessment Tool.
Grading student work automatically collects and compiles data on student progress for the Outcomes. The data is available for reporting to support program improvement, ExCeL program assessment, and the overall progress toward the QEP goals. This unified, streamlined approach dramatically reduces the amount of work required to implement Learning Outcomes through the intelligent reuse of assessment workflows in the grading process.
Option 1
Course Schedule in Syllabus and Canvas:
| Date | Work Due Before Class | Topics to be Discussed in Class |
| 1/9 | First day of class; no assignments is due | List the main learning objectives or topics covered during this class period. Example: Overview of Fluid Dynamics Fluid Properties |
| 1/16 | List readings or homework assignments that are to be finished BEFORE students arrive at this class period. It may also useful to include reminders about due dates for important assessments. | Example: Manometers, Fluid Statics Fluid Statics |
| 1/18 | Holiday (No Class) | |
| 1/20 | Example: Read Chapter 2 (Textbook pp. 74-92) Answer problems #13-36 at chapter’s end Find three entries in Fluidex Abstracts Database | Example: Turn in HW #2 Forces on Curved Bodies Bernoulli’s Equation as [CRC: Critical Thinking] |
Option 2
Assessment Description in Syllabus:
Analysis Project: Students will practice collecting, analyzing, and presenting data, which is a necessary skill for public health practitioners. Using SAS, students will complete an individual project, in which they will be required to manipulate and analyze public health data. The analysis will include descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as, an 8-10 page written paper. Students will also be required to report their findings in a presentation to their fellow classmates. A standardized rubric (provided in Canvas) will be used to evaluate
student mastery. [CRC: Critical Thinking, Communication, & Technology]
Option 3
Assignment Description in Canvas:
Option 1: Internship Course
Week 1 :
- Complete the Career Readiness Report self-assessment as a pre-experience and submit PDF of results in Canvas [CRC: Career & Self-Development]
- Report Experience in Handshake and submit screenshot of submission in Canvas [CRC: Career & Self-Development]
Week 12:
- Complete Resume Writing Module in Canvas and submit final resume in Canvas for grade [CRC: Critical Thinking, Communication, Career & Self-Development,& AI]
Week 14:
- Complete the Career Readiness Report self-assessment as a post-experience and Share with 2 raters including your internship supervisor. Submit PDF of results with rater results included to Canvas and complete discussion board reflecting on areas of growth. [CRC: Career & Self-Development & Communication]
Option 2: Course with Undergraduate Research Attribute
Week 1 :
- Complete the Career Readiness Report self-assessment as a pre-experience and submit PDF of results in Canvas [CRC: Career & Self-Development]
- Report Experience in Handshake and submit screenshot of submission in Canvas [CRC: Career & Self-Development]
Week 15 :
- Complete the Career Readiness Report self-assessment as a post-experience and Share with 2 raters including your internship supervisor. Submit PDF of results with rater results. [CRC: Career & Self-Development]
Extra Credit Opportunity:
- Attend 2 workshops facilitated by the Center for Career & Professional Development and submit proof of attendance in Canvas. [CRC: Professionalism]
With your help, we can make every USF student career ready when they graduate.