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Inside University of North Carolina, Greensboro's Bryan Gold Career Readiness Initiative

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Description

The Bryan School of Business and Economics at University of North Carolina, Greensboro found it necessary to enhance their students’ skill development beyond the classroom. With this in mind, the Bryan Gold Career Readiness Program was born and by partnering with Suitable, Bryan students are now more engaged and motivated than ever before. By delivering dedicated support, Suitable has been able to make Bryan Gold both exciting and effective for its students.

About the School

The Bryan School of Business and Economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro adapts a program called the Bryan Gold Career Readiness Program after no professional development pathway had been implemented before.

Challenge before Suitable

Employers and alumni expressed that Bryan school students were well prepared academically but lacked the polish and soft skills that were crucial in establishing their futures after graduation. The Bryan School had events and activities relating to professional development already, but information and listings about them were very unorganized as they were all posted in different areas of their website making it difficult for students to find. UNCG wanted a centralized app where students could easily access for information on professional development activities. The school also had no means of tracking the student data, so as students participated in these enriching events, there was no record of it for the school nor for the students.

Life with Suitable

After working closely with Tyler Wiersma, a UNCG professional development specialist, Suitable was able to launch the Bryan Gold vision, an initiative that transformed the student experience and made it more personalized to the college’s students and needs. Suitable’s experts helped Tyler define a set of core competencies that align with the schools mission and when activities are created, they are tied to at least one competency so students can better understand the value of their participation . Suitable helped Tyler build out different levels of achievement and digital badges to help students chart their progress and visualize what they have learned and accomplished. By integrating Suitable’s gamification into the student experience, Tyler was able to increase student engagement without sacrificing the fun for students. 

Suitable’s attendance tracking has been a game changer for the school, not only is it effortless for both faculty/staff and students, but now administrators can understand student success better than ever before. Within the first semester, students have made a seamless transition to Suitable and Bryan Gold has been able to achieve unprecedented levels of student engagement.. Suitable has become the way of life for students and using the app to search for and check into events is becoming second nature.

Every student is given an Experiential Learning Record (co-curricular transcript) that showcases their learning and development. This record is personalized to the student and can be shared anywhere over the web. The Experiential Learning Records provide a clear layout of student’s progress in each competency to help them articulate their career readiness to recruiters. Never before has UNCG been able to help students develop those soft skills that are built outside the classroom nor did students have a record to tell their unique story to employers.

Outcomes Achieved 

With Sutiable’s automated attendance tracking, the Bryan school administration can now collect data that was never visible to them in the past. They found that 91% of freshmen completed a non-required co-curricular activity and 53% of freshmen completed three or more non-required activities in just one semester. While this data and the leaderboard through Suitable’s platform, is not only motivational to students, but the school can now acknowledge those that are going above and beyond. Top students are completing over 40 activities which is a turnout that Tyler was not expecting from the newly developed program.

Plans for the Future

In the future, the Bryan school plans to introduce Suitable to [student organizations] so that they can also benefit from the powerful data that Suitable provides. UNCG also plans to have engagement competitions for student organizations and will leverage Suitable to award incentives. The Bryan School also wants to implement Suitable’s qualtrics survey integration to allow their students to report off campus activities. The school would also like to involve more employer partners to improve relationships between its students and employers. With Suitable’s rapidly developing technology, Bryan Gold will continue to elevate to new heights.