Gain Real-World Experience on Your Own Time

^{Above: Connor Fink, finance major, is in the College’s first cohort of the Charleston Global Career Accelerator.}

Under its new dean, Jason Coy, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) set an ambitious goal of ensuring that all students benefit from experiential learning.

Experiential learning focuses on producing real-world applications through active, hands-on learning and can take the form of internships, apprenticeships, site visits, study abroad, individual student research with faculty, peer teaching and service-learning projects.

The challenge was how to make experiential learning accessible to all students, particularly those without the flexibility to commit to an internship for a full semester because of family or work responsibilities. Myra Seaman, professor of English and associate dean of student success for HSS, discovered a solution.

“At the Council for Colleges of Arts and Sciences conference, I listened to a panel of deans speaking about a pedagogically driven program that offered an alternative to a traditional internship,” says Seaman. “They described how, on their own time, students could take a course that would give them work experience and help them build career-readiness skills. It sounded like the perfect way to give students the flexibility to immerse themselves in a low-risk professional environment.”

Accelerating Careers

Launched over the summer with 20 College of Charleston students participating, the inaugural 11-week Charleston Global Career Accelerator (CGCA) offered students a three- or six-credit program that allows them to engage with one the program’s five experiential tracks or get a “taste” of three of the tracks.

• data analytics
• coding for data
• digital marketing
• web development
• career rotation

In addition to weekly online videos and learning activities that students can do when it suits their schedule, students are required to attend weekly 90-minute online Global LiveLabs that are offered at a range of hours and include instructor-led activities and small-group challenges.

Each week, students are presented with a problem facing a business or organization, and their task is to provide solutions. In addition, students are assigned career milestones to improve their career-readiness assets, including their LinkedIn profile and résumé.

Building Skills

Molly Johnson, an accounting major and business administration minor, decided to take the CGCA course to learn more about data analytics and build her résumé, with the goal of landing an internship.

“I’m really enjoying the course,” says Johnson, who is taking the class while working in Charleston. “I have learned how to use Microsoft Excel to my advantage and am now nerding out on Tableau.

“Each week, we watch videos on data skills and then have milestones where we use the skills we have learned to help a business,” she adds. “We watch a video of executives being interviewed by the GCA team, so we understand the company’s needs and resources.”

Johnson worked on a project for the Recording Academy, best known for hosting the Grammy Awards, which felt two separate websites would strengthen engagement in its offering and the Grammys. Johnson analyzed engagement and concluded that two separate sites increased engagement, but that the experience for mobile devices needed to be improved.

“Having weekly milestones has given me the ability to show how I have used different programs to conduct data analytics,” says Johnson, who also appreciates building connections with students from other schools. For example, through Global LiveLabs – which allow students to work with class members around the country – she and the other students set up a GroupMe chat to help one another with projects and build their networks by sharing LinkedIn profiles. “I have really been able to immerse myself in the experience.”

Creating Opportunities

CGCA created an opportunity for Connor Fink that otherwise he would not have had.

“I’m working full-time with the Navy, so an internship is not a possibility,” says the finance major who transferred to Charleston when his wife was accepted to study as a nurse anesthetist at the Medical University of South Carolina. His goal is to go into corporate banking. “Getting to take a program that will strengthen my résumé and give me real-world experience has been great. It’s an added bonus that it’s a six-credit course.”

Like Johnson, Fink took the data analytics track because he knew it would be Excel heavy. He has found it beneficial and is enjoying learning how to display metrics using Tableau. He recently received his certificate for the Excel portion of the class and added it to his LinkedIn profile.

One milestone case study assigned to Fink was for the National UFO Reporting Center. Using Tableau, he incorporated statistics and visualizations to show where sightings have taken place.

Fink found the Global LiveLab to be more engaging than he expected – and he enjoys the connections with other students it has allowed him to develop.

“The instructor is phenomenal and really good at keeping our attention,” he says.

Future Development

While they are only halfway through the course, Seaman is thrilled with the skill development and experiences the students have had.

Thanks to the conference she attended, College of Charleston students now have a flexible way to gain real-world hands-on experience.

Given the success of the summer program, the CGCA course will be offered to all students, whatever their major, every semester.