In 2024, my contribution to career competencies' integration in the curriculum was acknowledged by the innaguaral Career Competency Innovation Award.  

It was my priviledge to serve as the innaguaral Career Faculty Fellow at the UConn Center for Career Development in the Spring 2023.

As the Career Faculty Fellow, my goal was to help articulate NACE career competencies for my students and encourage faculty to integrate career relevant information in their courses.  To achieve this goal, I initiated several projects:

1. Career Competencies Articulation Project: development and articulation of career competencies’ integration in the classroom. The article summarizing the outcomes of this project is published in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice  in 2024:  

Smirnova, N. V., & Lesser, M. H. 2024. “Integrating Career Readiness into Economics Courses”, Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 24(10). https://doi.org/10.33423/jhetp.v24i10.7372

2. Presentations to External Audiences:

• American Economic Association (AEA) poster presentation (01/04/23): “Classroom Use of Public Data to Inform Students’ Career Choices”

• Eastern Economic Association (EEA) panel presentation (02/2023) and paper presentation (02/2024): “Career Competencies: Infusion in the Undergraduate Economics Courses”

• AEA’s Committee of Teaching and Research on Economic Education (CTREE) poster presentation (06/01/2023): “Career Readiness Competencies: Evidence from Integration into Principles of Economics Courses”.

3. Working with Internal UConn Audiences:  staff, faculty, students. 

4. Research Paper Initiation: working title: “Three A’s: Awareness, Alignment, Articulation”.  Research paper will address challenges and solutions to a problem of students’ inability to articulate career readiness and competencies at the job market upon graduation.  This is a collaborative project of Natalia Smirnova (Economics), Svetlana Kalnova (Communication), Craig Calvert (Business School), and Kaitlyn Anderson (Career Center). 

Career Competencies Integration in the Curriculum - examples

Below is the write-up on the Career Everywhere Awards celebration event (May 1, 2024).

Below is my reflection on the outcomes of the Career Faculty Fellowship (Spring 2023).