CSUB receives award for graduate education project

System-wide project to bolster programming focused on career readiness

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 11^th, 2024

California State University graduate students will be able to take advantage of new programming starting in Fall 2025 that will help better prepare them for entering the workforce.

Dr. Debra Jackson, associate vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of academic programs, is leading a CSU-wide project aimed at providing more co-curricular programming that focus on career readiness.

Students will participate in various workshops and other activities that will address eight career readiness competencies identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which include career and self-development, leadership and technology.

“Workforce readiness is something we talk about with our undergraduate students but not as much with our graduate students,” Dr. Jackson said. “We want to make sure we’re giving graduate students all the services they need to succeed in the workforce.”

CSUB and seven other CSU campuses are actively involved with the project, including Fullerton, San Diego and Long Beach.

Dr. Jackson recently earned a $20,000 Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). CSUB also secured an additional $10,000 in funding from the Chancellor’s Office.

The funding will support the first two years of the project, the first of which is being spent on development and the second on delivering the programming.

“I am so excited about this project, and I’m so excited to see that CGS and ETS thought it was a great idea also,” she said. “When we talk about the CSU, we almost exclusively talk about undergraduate education, but the CSU is also an important institution for graduate education. I think this award helps shine a light on the work that the CSU does in educating 50,000 graduate students every year and the role that graduate education plays in fueling the workforce of California.”

CGS President Suzanne Ortega said the project — officially titled “The Next Step: Building Career Readiness Among Graduate Students across the CSU” — has the potential to be replicated at other state systems and will help support a career-ready workforce.

“This project models the collaboration and teamwork CGS members can use to deliver high-quality career readiness programs to ensure that graduate students are ready for the workforce, whether in academia or industry,” she said.

ETS CEO Amit Sevak said ETS is “proud to recognize CSUB’s program that goes above and beyond to support learners on the path to success.”

Dr. Denver Fowler, associate dean of undergraduate and graduate studies and director of the Graduate Student Center, said he is excited about CSUB’s role in the project and hopes it will have a significant impact on students.

“I believe this is an excellent opportunity to further collaborate with other CSU campuses in ensuring all of our graduate and doctoral students are career-ready and hit the ground running upon graduating from their respective programs,” he said.

Dr. Jackson believes the project is another feather in the university’s cap that further demonstrates CSUB’s commitment to student success.

“The work we do at CSU Bakersfield is underrecognized. We’re a quiet star in the state, so I really love to see the university get recognized for the great work we do here,” she said.

'The next step is missing'

The project has been in the works since last spring, but the idea for it came in 2022 during a Western Association of Graduate Schools conference that Dr. Jackson attended. One of the conference sessions highlighted a group of schools from Colorado who were collaborating to deliver more co-curricular programming to their graduate students.

Dr. Jackson thought this would be a great idea for the CSU, especially since it would be more convenient because it would be a collaboration of schools all within the same system.

An informal survey that was conducted last spring asking campuses about the kinds of programming they provide to their graduate students found that the level of services offered to graduate students in the CSU differed greatly from school to school.

“The kinds of services that are offered to graduate students at the different CSU campuses varies widely,” Dr. Jackson said. “Some of the campuses in the CSU system don’t have grad centers or grad deans while others have their own college or school of graduate studies.”

The survey revealed that less than a quarter of programming offered to graduate students across they system addressed career readiness. Instead, they largely focus on helping students get into grad school or supporting them through to degree completion.

“We have almost nothing on how to prepare for after you graduate,” Dr. Jackson said. “Sometimes that piece might already be embedded in the curriculum of the program they’re in, but not necessarily. We don’t spend a lot of time doing that because we’re so focused on the academic side. That vision of the next step is missing.”

Only one workshop offered to graduate students last year at CSUB — “I Got My Master’s. Now What?” — addressed what comes after graduation, according to Dr. Jackson. Of the few programs in the CSU that were about post-graduation success, the survey showed they only addressed four of the eight competencies the project aims to focus on with its new programming.

One of the goals of the project is to help standardize and equalize graduate programming across the system so that all students have access. One of the ways the coalition of CSUs plan to do that is by offering new programming in both synchronous and asynchronous sessions to give students more flexibility on how and when they participate.

“The idea is a hybrid approach where it doesn’t matter where the student is at,” Dr. Jackson said.

Now that funding to establish the project has been secured, the next steps are for grad deans at the participating schools to begin meeting regularly and conduct a comprehensive survey of graduate student programming across the system.

The goal of this first stage of the project is to evaluate what programming is already available to help identify where the gaps are and where resources should be dedicated.

“Not only does this allow all of our CSU graduate students to access innovative, high-quality programing that can help achieve their career goals, but it allows each campus to save valuable resources that can be directed elsewhere," said Dr. Elaine Frey, assistant vice president for graduate studies at CSU Fullerton. "Students who take advantage of this career development content will be better prepared to enter a ever-changing workforce, with a broader skillset in communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology.”

Dr. Jackson hopes the programming will prove successful enough that additional funding will be secured so the project can continue to support graduate students for years to come.

“This is giving us seed money to develop this idea of collaborating across campuses. If it works, then we need to have a bigger conversation about how to sustain it and institutionalize it so we can make it a true CSU-wide initiative,” she said. “The most important thing is that our students participate in the programming. I hope students say they benefitted from the programming and that it helps them secure employment that meets their needs and goals.”