As part of Wichita State’s Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) plan, applied learning opportunities and career outcomes continue to be an integral part of Wichita State University’s mission for students.
Applied learning is the application of a student’s academic learning, giving students a chance to further develop their critical thinking skills and knowledge and enhance what they’ve learned in the classroom
These opportunities serve students in multiple ways, including preparing them for their careers after Wichita State; helping fund their collegiate experience through paid opportunities; and facilitating them to form connections.
Within the last year, WSU has furthered its commitment to giving students the best opportunity to succeed and gain experience before they graduate:
- Shocker Career Accelerator recently completed its move to the newly constructed Milly Marcus Annex of the Marcus Welcome Center. This move strengthens WSU’s Admission to Career focus.
- Bobby Gandu, assistant vice president of SEM and director of Admissions, was named associate vice president of SEM and Applied Learning, further aligning WSU’s Office of Admissions and Shocker Career Accelerator.
- Sara Muzzy, director of Career Development, was named director of Applied Learning.
- Sarah Mathews, manager of Career Development, was named director of Career Development.
- Brian Austin — director of Employer Relations — and Mark Bengtson — director of Talent and Sourcing — and their teams shifted from Industry and Defense Programs to Academic Affairs.
“With additional resources and infrastructure in place, Wichita State is excited to further expand applied learning on our campus,” said Ashlie Jack, senior associate vice president of Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Enrollment Management. “This work further solidifies our commitment to access and affordability, developing a talent pipeline that meets employer needs and increasing economic prosperity with higher education which benefits the Kansas economy.”
The goal is to ensure all students leave Wichita State with more than just classroom learning, opportunities for which have expanded across all colleges and majors as part of the SEM plan, strategy 1.4. Thanks to WSU’s commitment, students at WSU worked more than 9,000 jobs from over 700 employers and earned over $32.1 million in wages during the 2022-23 school year through the university’s applied learning model according to the 2023 WSU Annual Report.
Students engaged in applied learning are more likely to retain the jobs from their internships and more likely to be employed within six months of graduation versus students who didn’t have an internship, according to a study from LinkedIn.
While documenting academic learning has traditionally been done through a student’s academic transcript, such documents do not include the extent of applied learning experiences students had. That’s why students graduating from Wichita State will soon leave with not only their transcript, but also with a newly developed Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR).
The CLR is a record of a student’s achievements in curricular, co-curricular and applied learning activities. Similarly to a transcript being a verified record of academic learning, a CLR is a verified record of learning both inside and outside of the classroom.
Applied learning at WSU dates back to at least 1979 with the creation of the Office of Cooperative Education and Work-Based Learning, which is now the Shocker Career Accelerator, though students were gaining applied learning experiences well before that, including when Wichita State (then University of Wichita) partnered with what is now Heartspring in 1934 to create a program for students to help children with disabilities.
Opportunities to gain applied skills like those in 1934 have continued to the present day, such as students working in WSU’s Molecular Diagnostics Lab, which started as a COVID-19 testing lab in 2020 before expanding and engineering students manufacturing handrails for Charles Koch Arena to serve attendees. And Wichita State’s Innovation Campus brings businesses to campus, which gives students even more opportunities to work in their careers while they are still getting their degrees.