The Blazer Ready initiative is an effort to connect many of the essential skills identified by employers for a new college graduate hire. The initiative is aligned with National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) guidelines. The program uses certification incentives and scaffold levels of recognition for students
Certification / Training in the areas of:
- Volunteer Services
- Equity and Inclusion
- Leadership
- Career Preparation
- Health and Wellness
Year 1 completion Spring 2023
Evaluation Plan and measures: Participation Numbers and Student Reflection
KPIs:
- Number of Blazer Ready activities provided and
- Number of students completing a certification area
Baseline measure (for each KPI):
- The year one (2022-2023) goal for activities provided was 50. This is 10 events/area designated as a Blazer Ready activity. These activities were assigned the Blazer Ready tag in our student engagement platform, Presence, to identify them as a Blazer Ready activity.
- The year one goal for students completing a certification area was 100 students.
Current/most recent data (for each KPI):
- At the end of year one (2022-2023), 69 Blazer Ready designated activities were offered with a total of 3941 students attending
- There were 242 students who completed at least one of the certification areas.
Goal or targets (for each KPI): For year two (2023-24), the goals are
- 80 Blazer Ready designated activities offered and
- 300 students completing at least two areas.
Time period/duration: 4 years (Fall 2022-Spring 2026)
Since the soft launch in Spring 2022, we were able to promote the Presence platform and Blazer Ready to a majority of the academic and student support departments on campus. There have been monthly Blazer Ready training sessions for students through scheduled events and requested student organization training. Along with training sessions, there have been promotion events for students marketing the benefits of Blazer Ready. Through the end of the first year (2022-2023), we had 3941 students participate in 69 events. More importantly, we exceeded our certification area completion goal by 142 students. Based on student feedback, we plan to streamline the program by eliminating the tier system and adding more incentives.
Moving into our second full year of the Blazer Ready program, we are working to refine the program, explore more opportunities to earn credit outside of attending Blazer Ready activities, provide more meaningful incentives to complete the program, and incorporate Blazer Ready activities in academic coursework. Feedback from students suggests the tier system is too difficult to maneuver through, so we plan you eliminate the tiers and have each year represent a level. This change will allow students to work on multiple levels and areas at once which will allow students to progress through the program at a faster pace. In year two, students will be able to earn credit outside of attending the scheduled Blazer Ready events with such activities as holding a leadership role in organizations,, participating in a volunteer experience or an internship, and leading projects or groups, These types of activities will be documented in Presence and credited toward a student’s completion of Blazer Ready. This provides other opportunities for students who cannot attend the scheduled events. We also learned early in year one that we need to incentivize Blazer Ready. We are providing t-shirts, cords, stoles, and a medallion for completion of the entire program. Moving forward, we want to work with faculty to add Blazer Ready opportunities in the academic coursework. The platform we currently use allows students to apply for opportunities which would give them credit in the platform. For example, we could use study abroad to meet some of the requirements for completing Blazer Ready. Students would report the opportunity in Presence, and it would be credited toward a student’s completion of Blazer Ready. We also want to incorporate some of the planned Blazer Ready activities into the academic coursework. This happened on a smaller scale in Fall 2022. Several sections of a biology class were required to create and submit a resume which is a requirement for the Career Preparation area of Blazer Ready. We hope to partner with more faculty to add activities their course work.
The main challenge we face is to maintain buy-in from the students and academic affairs. If students feel like the program doesn’t help with their growth and development, they will stop participating. We hope the incentives will help, but we must continue to make the content attractive and beneficial to students. Also, it may be harder to add programming to academic coursework if we cannot articulate the benefits Blazer Ready can add to the course.
