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All incoming students at Indiana University, Bloomington, will be engaging in career development in their courses.
Indiana University
Higher education is experiencing greater levels of scrutiny for the value of a college degree from a variety of sources, including legislators, parents, prospective students and employers. Recent research has found colleges leave graduates behind, with many underemployed and some earning less than the minimum wage.
Other studies point to inequities in career placement and development while in college, with some student groups less likely to take advantage of institutional resources or complete work-based learning experiences like internships.
To address these concerns, colleges and universities have integrated career development into academic requirements, making integration work an opt-out, rather than opt-in.
Indiana University, Bloomington, is the latest institution whose leaders are reimagining general education requirements to emphasize work-based learning through an equity lens. Starting this summer, all students in the College of Arts and Sciences will participate in the Pillars Undergraduate Experience program, which includes experiential learning, career preparation and opportunities for research.
The background: This work started unofficially in 2015, when the university established the Walter Center for Career Achievement and began offering boutique services for students’ career needs, says Joe Lovejoy, assistant dean of undergraduate education at the College of Arts and Sciences.
While the center saw considerable growth over the first five years, after a while student engagement with at least one program or service tapered off around 50 percent, prompting leaders to consider new ways to reach students.
Focus groups with students, employers and alumni showed a need for connecting classroom learning with career goals in the future. Learners also pointed to other models of career skill development within the classroom as a graduation requirement at IU’s professional schools.
Rather than producing more one-off services, IU administrators kick-started a curriculum review to ensure that students couldn’t miss out on career thinking.
“We really felt like our current model left the student success piece in this space where if you seek it out, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t,” Lovejoy says. “We thought we could have a much higher-impact, [more] inclusive, equitable experience for all of our students if we tried to create an undergraduate experience that just baked all this stuff in.”
Four pillars: The Pillars Undergraduate Experience, named after the four tenets of the experience, will launch in summer 2025 for all incoming students in the College of Arts and Sciences and include:
- Research experiences starting in the first year. Pillars will expand and scale offerings for students across disciplines to engage in faculty-led research through the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Experience (ASURE).
- Marketable skill development in the classroom. IU recognizes the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ eight career competencies as well as ethical reasoning, self-learning, innovation and engagement. Faculty will weave in new or pull out existing competencies through the Career Connections Fellowship to help learners identify these practices.
- Life design coursework in the first-year seminar. The university has been piloting a new course for incoming students that exposes them to design thinking, college resources and the Momentum platform by Suitable, which allows students to map out their curricular and co-curricular participation at IU.

IU College of Arts and Sciences’ undergraduate Life Design course, taught by Angela Lexmond, senior lecturer.
IU College of Arts and Sciences
- Experiential learning. Administrators raised $10 million to fund work-based learning, including internships, study abroad programs, community service and creative projects, to reduce barriers to participation and align students’ interests with their eventual career aspirations.
Partnering with faculty: One of the challenges to integrating career development into the classroom is preparing instructors to deliver the content. While students often place responsibility on their professors to aid in career preparation, faculty are less likely to feel comfortable in this role.
IU leaders have seen great success with the Career Connections Fellowship, with over 300 professors (of around 1,066 eligible faculty) participating in the workshops and some investing additional time to serve as senior fellows, Lovejoy says.
The faculty at IU's College of Arts and Science also signed on to the initiative last fall, voting in favor of implementing career preparation as a curriculum requirement.
“There’s not one way of delivering this, but one of the ways that we’re particularly excited about is having part of that requirement delivered very early to students,” says Richard Hardy, associate dean for undergraduate education. “So [we are] trying to get them in their first or second semester of being on campus—preferably their first—and showing them what a liberal arts degree can do for you, as far as your career and your life generally.”
What’s different: Several facets of Pillars, IU leaders say, make it innovative.
- Research opportunities across the disciplines. Currently, around 400 students engage in ASURE, with a total of 2,500 past participants ranging from traditional lab sciences to less considered research fields to expose them to different careers. “When people say ‘research,’ the science aspect of research is very legible to students … people with pipettes and lab coats,” Hardy says. “[When] we’re talking about the arts and humanities and some of the social and historical studies disciplines, it’s less legible to them.”
- Fundraising for experiential education. IU has a goal of raising $55 million in donor support to provide financial aid for experiential learning during their four years, Lovejoy says.
- Holistic support. IU’s student success model requires buy-in from all members of campus, not just success coaches or advisers, and places resources directly in the classroom for learners. “We’ve pulled in our faculty and our alumni and our employer partners and are really trying to create this environment where this is a completely unavoidable component of the experience,” Lovejoy says.
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This article has been updated to reflect the faculty of the College and Arts and science approved changes to the curriculum, not the IU faculty senate.