Syllabus

Interdisciplinary course in career development that connects the liberal arts and sciences degree to academic and career preparation, practical job skills, goal-setting, critical thinking and reflection. Designed for second year students, but open to all students.

This course explores the meaning and value of your liberal arts and sciences education to your future career – no matter your major. Through weekly lecture and discussion meetings, you will reflect on your experiences, your strengths, and the value of your liberal arts and sciences education at UW-Madison; explore a career community that interests you through both digital social networks and in-person interviews; and practice techniques to present your value to a prospective employer in writing, in person, and online.

Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Credits: 1
Level: Elementary
Requisites: None
Instructional modality: In person
Meeting time and location: See below

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Instructional team

Professor office hours: 11am–12n Tuesdays, SuccessWorks front desk (third floor of University Book Store – enter by Moka Coffee)
TA office hours: Contact your TA

Sequoia Sirek
ssirek@wisc.edu // LinkedIn
Public Affairs

Luke Moore
lmoore5@wisc.edu
Planning & Landscape Architecture

Alyssa Lutker
lutker@wisc.edu // LinkedIn
Journalism & Mass Communication

Viswanath Pathmanaban
pathmanaban@wisc.edu // LinkedIn
Computer Science

Jonathan Jibson
jibson@wisc.edu
Supervisory instructor

Steve Catania
steven.catania@wisc.edu
Career Education and Learning Manager

Career Advising

For L&S Students: Visit SuccessWorks
(third floor above University Book Store)
to find hours for drop-in, online,
and scheduled career advising.

Not an L&S Student?
Find your career office here.

Textbooks

Required. CliftonStrengths for Students (2017). This book has a unique code in it that allows you to take an online strengths assessment for one of your assignments. Purchase a new physical copy – not a used copy, not an eBook. Students in the past who bought a used copy or an eBook had trouble accessing the online strengths assessment. If you bought an eBook, check your email including your spam filter for the code. (Expect to pay $25.)

Optional. You Majored in What? Designing Your Path from College to Career (2017). This book is a comprehensive guide to the job search process, written by an expert in career advising and targeted to liberal arts and sciences university students. It should remain useful to you throughout your time at UW-Madison and beyond. It's optional because PDF versions of each chapter are available in Modules, week by week, but it's written as a workbook for you to write in. (Expect to pay $25.)

Here in Canvas. Working Toward Success: Building a Career in the Liberal Arts and Sciences (2019). This 200-page PDF textbook is also split up into chapters in Modules, week by week.

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Calendar

Learning outcomes

Develop and communicate a compelling personal career narrative about your path through a liberal arts and sciences education, with respect to a specific target career community.

How this course works

You should expect to spend two and a half hours a week on your assigned readings, activities, and writings. By UW policy, "a credit hour is defined as the learning that takes place in at least 45 hours of learning activities, which include time in lectures or class meetings, in-person or online, laboratories, examinations, presentations, tutorials, preparation, reading, studying, hands-on experiences, and other learning activities." Your estimated workload accounts for the planned cancelations of class indicated on the calendar.

Homework and other assignments (due by midnight before your class meets)

Readings and lecture videos. Each week we ask you to complete several assigned readings (some available online, some from your textbooks) and to watch several assigned lecture videos (all available online). Each week's readings and videos are clearly listed in the Modules section of this Canvas site.
Assignments. At the start of each week, students must submit one or more assignments online through Canvas.

In-person class meetings

Discussion. Classes are held at various times during the week, in various rooms on-campus, depending on which section you registered for (see above).

Grading

Semester grades are computed out of 100 possible points on UW's scale. Grades are not curved.

90–100 = A
85–89 = AB
80–84 = B
75–79 = BC
70–74= C
60–69= D
0-59 = F

The breakdown or weighting of graded components is as follows:

56% = Career development assignments
8% = Informational interview
36% = Participation

Weekly assignments. Submissions may lose points for deviating from the formatting guidelines, for not utilizing college-level writing, for missing something substantive from the prompt, etc. The rubric for each is assignment is given in its prompt.

Participation. Engaging with your instructors and your classmates is essential, given the nature of the course material. Your instructors have discretion to assess your participation. Grading participation is inherently subjective, but here's a rule of thumb: if you feel like you should hide what you're doing, you're probably not participating! You earn credit by doing the following – doing some of them will earn you partial credit.

Coming to class on time
- 20% off for being 5 min late
- 40% off for being 15 min late
Coming to class prepared
Contributing readily to the conversation but not dominating it
Making thoughtful contributions based on the literature that advance the conversation
Showing an interest in and respect for others’ contributions
Participating actively in all groups

Make-up work for absences. Missing class means missing points – directly (no points for the day) and indirectly (worse prepared for other assignments). However, there are reasons you might miss class beyond your control: illness, personal emergency, dangerous weather, religious observance, sports participation, job interview, approved learning accommodations. In such cases, an absence can be excused with a make-up assignment, as described below.

To initiate, you must email your TA (not vice-versa) to explain your situation and request a make-up. Do this in advance whenever possible.
- Requests must be made in writing, even if you talked face-to-face already!
If your TA approves, they will email you instructions for a make-up, and you must complete the assignment by the start of your next discussion period.
- Make-ups are not accepted late.
After your TA has reviewed your make-up, you will earn participation points for the day (if the work is satisfactory).

Every student can request 1 make-up, no questions asked. After that, additional requests for excused absences are granted or rejected at your instructor's sole discretion on a case-by-case basis. (If you are missing class for a career-development reason, like a worksite visit, contact your TA.)

You may not be excused from a guest visit day.

Late work. Assignments will be accepted up to one week after the due date for 50% credit. You do not need to ask for permission to turn work in late. Even one minute past the deadline is considered late, so we recommend submitting early.

You may ask your TA to waive the 50% penalty for reasons such as those outlined in the attendance policy above – your TA has discretion in such cases.

How to view feedback in Canvas. Once an assignment has been graded, you should check it for feedback (otherwise you might lose points for the same thing over and over). Click on the assignment that's been graded, and click "View Feedback" – there’s a comment pane on the right side of the page, but that might not have all the feedback, and you should always click “View Feedback.” If you think you’re on the right page but you don’t see “View Feedback,” try clicking “Submission Details” first.

Hard-copy feedback. Some students prefer hand-written feedback, rather than Canvas feedback. To ask your TA to do this, leave the request as a submission comment when you turn in your assignment (don't just email them) and then bring a printed-out copy to your next discussion for your TA.

Lack of communication. If you miss two consecutive discussion sections or weekly assignments (without letting your TA know why) we will email you out of concern for your well-being. If you do not respond to us with an explanation and a plan to get back on track, we may ask the Office of Student Assistance and Support to reach out to you to offer help.

Extra credit. There are no extra credit opportunities in this class. Keeping up with your assigned work is a crucial skill in the modern workplace.

NOTE: You will only get out of this course what you put into it. Students tend to earn high grades in this course, by attending all course meetings and completing all of the assignments on time and with integrity. And students who keep up on attendance and assignments tell us consistently that they achieve their learning outcomes in this course. Many of the assignments cover tasks like reflecting on your experiences, putting together a resume, and setting up a LinkedIn site, which you'll have to do anyway – so why not get some guidance and credit along the way?

Course website and digital instructional tools

If you are reading this page, you are already on Canvas. It is our campus learning management system (LMS) – basically an interactive course website. It is the place to submit assignments, participate in online discussions, complete quizzes, view your grades, and view a calendar with due dates. Your instructor will conduct class through this platform. (If you are new to Canvas, know that most students get the hang of it as they go through their semester. For more detailed information, use the Canvas Student Guide. For accessibility standards, review the Canvas Accessibility webpage.)

Chrome is the recommended web browser for Canvas, and it is best to always have the latest version installed for security reasons and to experience full functionality of the course. (Visit the Canvas Community to learn more about which browsers Canvas supports.)

Zoom is a web conferencing tool that you might use to meet synchronously (live) for office hours and/or for particular class sessions. In Zoom, we can also share documents, create polls and surveys, and use whiteboard technology to collaborate with one another. You can access UW-Madison Zoom here. (You can also get support for Zoom on your own.)

Tech support resources

Computers & Equipment For Students: What Do I Need?
DoIT Help Desk: The Help Desk provides free tech support and troubleshooting help with your computing needs by phone (608.264.4357), email (help@doit.wisc.edu), chat (https://helpdesk.wisc.edu/chat) or in-person at 1210 W. Dayton Street.
Download WiscVPN: A VPN is a "virtual private network". WiscVPN allows you to access University resources without being on campus, and provides an extra layer of security.
- How to connect to the WiscVPN

The privacy and security of faculty, staff and students’ personal information is a top priority for the university. The university carefully reviews and vets all campus-supported teaching and learning tools, including proctoring tools, and it takes necessary steps to ensure that tool providers prioritize proper handling of sensitive data in alignment with FERPA, industry standards, and best practices. (Visit the Office of the Registrar's FERPA overview for more information on student privacy and educational records.)

Notifications

We use the Canvas Announcements feature to send information and reminders to students. You can view past Announcements by clicking on the menu choice on the left.

Make sure that your Canvas settings allow our course Announcements to flow directly to your email! Click on the Account button on the upper-left of the screen and choose Notifications to verify that your email settings for Announcements are turned on. (See example below – the little bell is green indicating that announcements will automatically flow to your email.)

Academic policies and statements

The university has provided several additional policy statements at UW–Madison's online policy guidebook. (You may recognize them from other course syllabi.) We hold, honor, and abide by these policies. Take time to read through them. Notify us if you feel that a policy is being violated.

In addition, we want to clarify a few points beyond what the university has stated, as they apply to our course.

Accommodations. There are several reasons a student may receive accommodations, from holidays to sports teams to the McBurney Center. Whatever the reason, you are expected to reach out to your instructor and connect about your accommodations within the first two weeks of the semester (or else as early as possible).

Generative AI. We expect you to complete your own work in this class. You are expected (1) not to use work you did not do, and (2) not to pass off work as your own if you did not do it. In this course, it is unacceptable for you to use generative AI – such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Grammarly – for your assignments. It is true that prompt engineering for generative AI is a real skill in the workplace, but our course is focused on developing other skills. (Most of our assignments are to do an activity and then to write about it, so it will be easier to write it yourself than to wrangle a machine to write it for you!)

Your TA has the ability to mark an assignment down if the assignment bears the hallmarks of being generated with AI. Your TA also has the ability to follow UW–Madison's academic misconduct process.

Personal electronics. Bring a personal electronic device to every in-person class meeting, because some activities will require you to use one. In discussion, you may not otherwise use a personal electronic device – unless the instructor has connected with you about accommodations. In lecture, you may use a personal electronics device to take notes, but not for any other activity – to do so is disrespectful to your instructors, distracting to your classmates, and wasteful of your tuition. (We encourage you to take notes by hand because it involves better mental processing and because we will not test you on in-class material.)

Professionalism. The topic of this class is how to connect your academic and extra-curricular university life to your future life in the world of work. Part of what we practice in this class is professional conduct, including such things as:

clear and timely communication
regular attendance and participation
respect for the views and experiences of others
appropriate use of personal electronics
constructive participation in discussion without monopolizing the discourse (which includes listening as much as talking)
appreciation for the returning alumni who give freely of their time to make this class succeed (such as following up with thank-you notes)

Supporting you

If you find yourself needing additional support, please look through the support resources below to help you be successful.

Testimonials

After taking this course, students report that it works!

93% felt better prepared to utilize campus resources to assist with career planning.
85% felt better prepared to apply for an internship
85% of students felt better prepared to explore career options

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