A Reflection on the Bridge Supports Workshop

By: April Calkovsky

In August 2025, I witnessed an inspiring collaboration between faculty and staff across colleges and departments. The Faculty Development Center sponsored a novel two-day workshop - Bridge Supports: Helping Instructors Prepare & Support EMU Students Moving into Professional Fieldwork. I joined co-creators Jackie LaRose (COE-Teacher Ed Faculty), and John Carlson (UACDC-Job & Internship Specialist) in bringing together faculty and staff coordinators of fieldwork programs to share ideas, create connections, and provide support to those doing this very important work. While our group was small, with seven participants, this allowed us to dive deeper into the needs of the participants, and we could not have been more pleased with what transpired.

The participants came ready to engage. We hosted staff and faculty field coordinators from the Schools of Social Work and Occupational Therapy (CHHS), Teacher Education and K-12 Administration (COE), and Music Therapy (CAS). These individuals varied in their experience levels and everyone came to learn, not just from the three of us, but from each other. Jackie, John, and I brought our own experiences to the group, with each of us having our areas of specialty. We covered everything from connecting with community partners, creating new relationships, and building an infrastructure to support both students and employers, to preparing students for these experiences so that they make the most of them and are able to easily transition from practicum to the workplace. 

Jackie’s immense experience provided examples of infrastructure - the documents to co-create with field partners, assignments for students, tracking logs, contracts, and more. Jackie’s examples of how she created and maintained relationships with community partners, complete with real stories from the field, was a highlight of the workshop. Jackie also brought the chocolate, which, as we all know, is essential brain food for collaboration. 

John’s 20+ years of human resources experience provided the insight we all needed into the thought processes of employers, the importance of networking (and how to teach students to do it), and ways to support students before, during and after, their internships, clinical rotations, and field experiences. As a career coach, my focus was on building field coordinator relationships with students by getting to know student needs, assessing and addressing their readiness for field placement, and empowering students to engage their authentic selves in pursuit of their professional goals. I also brought the hard candy, another essential element for deep thinking!

From the start of the workshop, we knew we had an amazing group of participants. Their engagement and enthusiasm was evident in the stories, laughter, and strategies shared, and the authentic conversations held. We created a shared Google drive, not just to post the presentation and the materials John, Jackie, and I had to offer, but for all of the participants to share their contracts, assignments, forms, and other materials they have created and used for their programs. The energy each day was electric - we all knew something special was happening! During the workshop, we provided time for individual work on various aspects of each participant’s goals. 

While the individual work was important, and worth documenting, the collaboration that emerged was the stuff of my dreams for this university - connection instead of competition across all colleges and programs at EMU. We were not ten people operating from our silos. We were ten people recognizing our common goal of student support and student success, coming together to inspire and support each other.

The most important outcome of this two-day workshop was the recognition that we are all struggling to reinvent the wheel in our silos when all we really need to do is come together and share our resources, ideas, strategies, and expertise. From this realization came talks of collaboration for monthly or semesterly meetings, conference presentations, and even a book for field coordinators of all kinds, across multiple disciplines, sharing what we’ve learned. The workshop group is still in communication through a group chat - more than a month into the semester, we are sharing thoughts, ideas, struggles, and solutions. There is more work to be done! 

We invite faculty and staff across campus to share their ideas as well, and we have an opportunity to do just that. We are going to continue to bring people together in the spirit of supporting students and one another. The FDC has graciously offered space (and dessert!) for field coordinators across campus to come together to continue the conversation. On Thursday, November 6th from 12:30-1:30pm, in the FDC’s Collaboratory, Jackie, John, and I invited you to join us to bring your lunch and your fieldwork coordination struggles and strategies. 

We have common challenges. Please share this blog post and invite people working in field coordinator roles (and the like) to join us. Can’t make the November 6th Brown Bag Lunch but have ideas to share and questions to ask? You may email me, April Calkovsky, at acalkovs@emich.edu, and I will share it with Jackie and John, in an effort to support you. Working together we can create resources and toolkits and space to recognize and remember that we are better together at EMU.