Integrating Career Exploration and Skill Development into Curriculum

Shahnaz Masani:

It means to me no more gatekeeping. I really feel strongly that students shouldn’t have to need extra time, pre-established connections, access to these unwritten rules or secret knowledge to imagine a future in science or to find purpose and meaning in their learning and in their work. So, when we bring career conversations into the classroom where every student already is, they don’t have to navigate these systems alone without support. They don’t have to rely on these forms of capital that are only available to some. So, really it means to me, I think, that we see career work as equity work, as work that helps students dream off and embody their purpose.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today, I am joined by Krysta Foster and Shahnaz Masani, both from Michigan State University. Krysta is the Associate Director of Career Services for the Lyman Briggs College, and Shahnaz is an assistant professor in the Lyman Briggs College in the Physiology Department. Thank you both for being here.

Krysta Foster:

Thanks so much for having us.

Shahnaz Masani:

Thanks for having us.

Krysta Foster:

We’re excited to be here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I am so excited to talk to you both today about how you are integrating career exploration and skill development into the core science curriculum there in the Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State. As we all know, the more we can integrate career into curriculum, the more accessible it is for every student regardless of their background or circumstances. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to start or how to partner with faculty to make it happen, which is why I’m especially excited to have you on this episode, Shahnaz, to provide that faculty perspective here.

I know you and Krysta have built a really strong partnership and done some really innovative work for your students that I think could serve as a template for our listeners on this podcast. So, I am excited to dig in. Before I get into my questions about our topic, is there anything else either of you would like to add about yourselves, your backgrounds, or your roles there at Michigan State?

Krysta Foster:

Yeah, so we can share a little bit about Lyman Briggs. We’re going to spend the next hour talking about us and our work. So, I figured it would be appropriate for us to set the stage. So, Lyman Briggs College is one of our residential colleges at Michigan State University. We’re mostly STEM majors, so lots of students who are going into the sciences, be that in pre-med, be that into PA school, nursing school, but then certainly research in all different areas, both human biology, research, plant, animal, all of those things.

So, within the college, our career team supports students in the typical career exploration, job search resumes, but we also do a lot of graduate and professional school preparation, which makes our jobs just a little bit more interesting in terms of how we’re helping to prepare students. So, part of that has been really helping students to make meaning of their experience to apply that to the work that they’re doing, which has been really exciting as we think about the integration of science and society.

Shahnaz Masani:

So I’m a STEM professor. As a faculty member whose expertise is education research, what I really value about working at Briggs is our strong focus on bridging the connection between science and society. Krysta always says, this is her joke, I’ll put it out there. At Briggs, we teach you how to clone a dinosaur and then we also make you talk about whether what can be done should always be done. But as a scholar who’s focused on equity and justice, that’s really what draws me to working at Briggs with the faculty, with the staff, with the students.

We have deep conversations about what can be done, what should be done, but also what becomes possible when we all work together across disciplines to dream about a better world. So, in my intro bio class where we first started integrating the career curriculum, we integrated it into a lab space. That lab is a course based undergraduate research experience that intentionally incorporates discussions on both the social constructions of scientific knowledge, but also in how we might use that to imagine biology that could work for justice.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s really great context. Thank you both. It just sounds just from those brief pieces of context you just shared that the college is just generally collaborative already and really thinking beyond the silos, just career or just curriculum. It’s really integrated with both. So, it sounds like it’s very fertile ground for some of the things that we’re going to talk about today. But before I get into the more specific questions, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Krysta Foster:

I love this question. I think that’s something I’ve so appreciated about the work that uConnect is doing. We start to think about what does it look like for us to move career work out of just happening in the career office? And so I think for me, that’s really what Career Everywhere means. It’s that it’s everybody’s job to help students to work towards these opportunities. Certainly, we know that students come to college to pursue their education, but they also come to college to get jobs.

So, when we can really help them to make meaning of those experiences, to have everybody be a part of that student success equation, the better off our students are going to be. I think that’s really why Shahnaz and I have felt so strongly about partnering and how we’ve really looked to try to take down some of those silos, as you said, that have really persisted in higher ed for a number of years.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, exactly what Krysta said. It means to me no more gatekeeping, right? I really feel strongly that students shouldn’t have to need extra time, pre-established connections, access to these unwritten rules or secret knowledge to imagine a future in science or to find purpose and meaning in their learning and in their work. So, when we bring career conversations into the classroom where every student already is, they don’t have to navigate these systems alone without support. They don’t have to rely on these forms of capital that are only available to some. So, really it means to me, I think that we see career work as equity work, as work that helps students dream off and embody their purpose.

Meredith Metsker:

Well said. I love that. I also appreciated at the beginning of your answer, you mentioned the time element because as we all know, not every student has the time to attend class and then go into the career center and maybe work a job or go home and take care of a family. So, I think that’s a really important element. Great. Well, now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again, how you are integrating career exploration and skill development into the core science curriculum there in the Briggs College. So, to set the stage a bit, can you walk me through what this integration looks like and what the initiative entails?

Krysta Foster:

Absolutely, yeah. So, as we’re talking about Lyman Briggs throughout our conversation, we might refer to it as Briggs or LBC or we even call our students and alumni Briggsy. So, if you hear us talk those terms in, just wanted to give that friendly shared vocabulary. But yeah, absolutely. I think for us, this has always been about true collaboration. So, when we started to put together this curriculum, it wasn’t that I had a set career curriculum and Shahnaz said, “Come and just give your presentations.” This has been a joint partnership from the very beginning. Then as part of that, we’ve brought in undergraduate students both as participants but also as researchers.

They’re a big part of our research work, contributing to coding, helping us to put together manuscripts, even presenting their work at conferences, which has been really exciting to see. Our graduate students are in the classroom presenting this material to undergraduate students. We pull in our alumni and development team who help to bring alumni into our spaces. We bring in community partners, we bring in employers. So, when we were talking about this earlier, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. We’re not just Career Everywhere. We’re career everyone,” which is really fun.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, I love that.

Krysta Foster:

Yes. So, our work, we call it the In Real Life Lab, so IRL and really just this idea that we wanted to help students to imagine their careers in real life, to help them to find those outcome expectations, but also just to see how it fit within the context of their disciplinary learning. If we’re talking about science, we should also be talking about how you’re going to use that science in your future career. So, I think the key piece of this is really that these aren’t add-on modules. They’re thoroughly integrated into the course. Another one of our strong tenants on that note is that the work is really purpose-driven as opposed to destination-driven.

So, for us, that means that students think about the impact that they want to make through their career as opposed to just focusing on what job they want to end up in, which can really help us when we get to some of those conversations about parallel planning and really starting to imagine what their impact can look like. So, we’ve been really intentional about trying to embed partners in every step of our process. So, again, alumni, employer partners, involving graduate and undergraduate students in the research. Through that, we’ve developed a curriculum that focuses on helping students to define and articulate their purpose, to do purpose-driven planning, to articulate their skills, and to build their professional networks.

Shahnaz Masani:

To add to that, our hope was to give students space to see that what they’re learning in their classes already matters, to give them time and space to process, to make meaning, to name the connections between the work they’re doing now and the futures they hope to build. We also know that this work will never be complete in one semester in a class. So, we really intentionally brought in career staff and our grad students to implement to teach the curriculum. This is intentional because it both helps us build a bridge to resources outside the classroom.

Our students say over and over again, “We know them, so we’ll go to them.” Also, by bringing in grad students and early career professionals, we are training the next generation of leaders. So, that then when they’re staff, when they’re faculty, they won’t imagine siloed spaces because they’ve seen what these siloed space can look like.

Meredith Metsker:

That is an excellent additional perk. I’m really glad you brought that up, but yeah, I mean, it is literally training the next generation of higher ed professionals.

Krysta Foster:

Which has been so exciting to see. So, the graduate program is something we launched this year from a grant from the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Lumina Foundation. What’s been really unique, I think about that grad space is we bring in students who are in the student affairs and education master’s program at Michigan State, but we’re also bringing in graduate students, both master’s in PhD from the science programs.

So, truly creating that desiloed space and that they’re learning from each other as much as they’re learning from us. So, we had a couple of our grads graduate this year, and they’ve talked about what an integral piece of their job search this experience has been, so that they’re able to share what it looks like for them to collaborate with campus partners. Then we’ve also been able to pull them into the research elements, which has been really exciting.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Talk about scaling impact. It’s like this little ripple effect. I love it.

Krysta Foster:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

So I would love to hear more specifically what these… Did you call them modules? What those look like and how they are spread out throughout the semester, just some of the more logistics on how you make that work.

Krysta Foster:

Yeah. So, we focus again on those four areas. So, purpose articulation and definition, purpose-driven planning, which includes both primary career plans but also parallel career plans, which is really important for students in the sciences. Because in the sciences, we don’t always know what all of our options are. So, then from there, we move into skills articulation and then helping folks to build networks. So, I would say that we’re in the classroom with students about 9 to 10 weeks out of the semester for about an hour. Shahnaz gets them once a week for about three hours in that lab space. So, a really great chance for us to get to integrate with the curriculum that they’re already doing.

Meredith Metsker:

So it’s throughout the whole semester, like hour at a time.

Krysta Foster:

It absolutely is. So, we’ve really tried to make sure that even though each module or each lesson plan is different, that they all are purpose-driven. So, really thinking about that impact again, that they’re all really active too. So, as Shahnaz mentioned earlier, write this piece about being able to help students create the time and space for this work by giving them that time and space in class. That’s a huge piece of this access work is making sure that we’re allocating time and then also that they’re doing it at a time where the career staff, where our graduate students are in class with them, so that they’re able to help answer some of those questions.

I think the biggest piece of this is that we’ve really tried to focus in on making sure that we’re helping students to develop their self-efficacy, right? So thinking about how we build their confidence in executing specific tasks. So, in the research, in the literature, we see four main components of self-efficacy. So, those are mastery experiences where students get to try something and actually do it, vicarious experiences where they’re learning from other people, verbal persuasion where they’re getting that validation that they’re developing that skill, and then finally that social and emotional state where they feel that confidence. They feel that joy that they’re able to really execute this.

So, if we were to think about how that looks in one of our modules, I would say our interview module is the one that’s always the most fun. It’s the one where we get to pull in the most partners. So, that module in particular takes place over two weeks. So, during that first session, we’re giving students strategies for answering common interview questions, so focusing in on elevator pitches, talking about things like the PARK methods to help answer some of those behavioral-based questions, and getting them to think about their class context too when they’re developing their answers to those questions.

So, thinking about how they’ve developed their teamwork skills in this course-based research experience that they’re having with Shahnaz. So, after that, the following week, we bring in employers. So, the employers first sit on a panel where students are able to learn from them, hear a little bit about what they’re looking for when they’re interviewing entry-level candidates, and then each of the students actually does a one-on-one mock interview with those professionals too. So, what we find is because students get so anxious when it comes to interviews, this is a great way for them to have that experience in a really low stakes, really safe learning-based environment.

Shahnaz Masani:

As an education researcher, it was really important to me to work with Krysta who has this expertise both in the scholarship and then in the practical application in this space, to think through how do we design really intentionally experiences that give them multiple sources to build their self-efficacy. Because what we know is that even when students have the knowledge, have the skills, they may not be engaging in those experiences unless it’s also paired with that confidence, with that self-efficacy.

So, you can see in the design that when Krysta and the folks come in and they give them these strategies, we scaffold their learning and then they immediately apply that scaffolded learning in those mock interviews, and that’s giving them an opportunity to have that mastery experiences. I did it, it wasn’t so bad. We’re also embedding multiple opportunities for them to have those vicarious experiences in stage one where they’ve gotten that scaffold. They first craft a response and practice it with their peers, giving each other feedback. So, really establishing employers or experts and your peers also have expertise and experiences that you learn from. We also see so much verbal persuasion there.

We get immediate feedback from the employers that students reflect on. It was always so heartening to see, I was so afraid, and they made me feel so much better. It was so reassuring. Also, they were really honest. They were really honest and kind and gentle in their feedback, and that really relates to that final source, their social and emotional states. Like Krysta said, our students, so many of them are so anxious about public speaking, about doing interviews. For so many of them, this is their first interview in an academic setting. I remember so deeply my experience, it wasn’t great. Shocker, I had no practice, and we hear all the time I freeze or I ramble. Interviewing, speaking to others is hard.

So, we were really invested in being able to provide them with this low-stakes opportunity. We see them come back and reflect not only it wasn’t so bad, but also sometimes it didn’t go so well. I did actually freeze. We want them to have that experience when we’re there, when the alumni are there, when the employers are there to build them back up, to show them that one failure isn’t the end, right? Failure is just an opportunity for us to think and process and move forward.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it sounds like it’s a lot of real-world applications of what the content of the course itself, and they’re learning how to apply it in interview answers or apply it in just how they explain their skill set, which I know we’ll talk about here in a little bit. But yeah, it just sounds like it’s just very applicable knowledge that just builds on each other or builds on itself over the course of the semester.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, absolutely. I think as well in making meaning of those experiences and articulating them, framing it through and how does it help me embody my purpose? I think that has been really powerful for our students.

Krysta Foster:

I think so too. I think that reflection is such an important piece of this. So, throughout the semester, throughout each class period, students have a workbook that they’re reflecting on the content that we’re sharing, or they’re writing down their ideas about how they might answer a behavior-based question or what they would put in their elevator pitch. So, they have those really tangible notes, but then we’re also asking them to reflect on, “Do you feel more confident? What about this was impactful? How might you use this in the future?”

And I think that that time for reflection, that time for meaning-making is so, so important and that’s something I’ve really valued about my work with Shahnaz is that she’s always really intentional about pushing us to think, “How are we helping the students to see the value of this work for themselves?”

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And plus, I imagine the reflection gives you some interesting feedback and data on how to improve or adjust the program going forward.

Krysta Foster:

So much data. Yeah, that’s been the other great piece about working with Shahnaz is the research is there. We’re happy to share a little bit more about that too. I think that’s something we’ll get into a little bit later, but that’s something that we’ve been really invested in is making sure that we can continue to have an evidence-based approach to the work that we’re doing.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. I did want to make a quick note for anyone watching or listening that there is a full-blown article about this process that Krysta and Shahnaz co-wrote. So, I will make sure to include a link to that in the show notes. So, if you want to really get in to the nitty-gritty of the who, the what, the where, the why, and all that good stuff, I will make sure that that is in the show notes so you can check it out.

Krysta Foster:

Oh, my gosh. Can we hire you to be our PR team?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, yes. We’re going to share this thing far and wide.

Krysta Foster:

I love that.

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. Okay. Is there anything else either of you wanted to add about what that typical classroom session looks like? I know you really dug into the interview module, but I want to give you a chance to add anything else before I move on.

Krysta Foster:

Yeah, anything else that you would add, Shahnaz? I mean we could talk for hours about each of the modules and certainly the research article dives into that, really focuses in on each of the experiences that the students have. But I think at the core of it, it’s always coming back to how can we help students to see their purpose reflected in this work.

Shahnaz Masani:

I think maybe I’ll add one last piece. I know we talked about the grad students before, but a lot of our work with the grad students outside the classroom and the undergrad students that we have facilitating curriculum in the classroom revolves around, “How do we facilitate things equitably, kindly, gently?” This work, we’re asking students to reflect so deeply on their self-worth and their purpose. It’s really vulnerable work. So, we really want to make sure that we have a classroom that is scaffolded but kind and that sees them as humans that we value and we care about.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. They’re not just a number in the enrollment class. They are real people with individual needs, so that’s great. Krysta, you mentioned in our prep call that many students don’t recognize that their classroom research as actual research experience. I’m guessing a lot of folks see that in other science colleges. So, how does your curriculum help students make meaning of their academic work and connect it to their career goals?

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, I can take this one. I think we set up spaces in the academy that are siloed. So, you come to class and you build knowledge and you build skills. You go somewhere else to reflect on who you truly are, what your values are, what your skills are, and then you have a third space where you network and you shadow and you get internships and you learn from others. So, it’s this, “What are my skills and values? Who really am I and what have others like me done all in different spaces?”

And that’s what IRL brings together in a single space. We see it as an opportunity to have students reflect as they do. So, they’re building the skills and knowledge, and at the same time, they’re given space and time to process. How do these skills fit with my purpose? How are these skills, the skills that employers and alumni say that are important that they use? So these pieces that are generally separate now come together in the classroom, and I think that’s the convergence that helps students make real meaning of their academic work. It’s all in the design.

Krysta Foster:

I think it’s so cool to get to hear Shahnaz talk through that piece, right? After teaching this class for a number of years and doing some of that legwork, we know there are faculty members who are already doing career work. So, we’re so excited that we were able to come in and partner on that now. But to see those two things happen in bubbles for so long was so challenging. Students would come into my advising appointments and say, “I want to look for research, but I don’t have any research experience.” Then we would talk about, okay, well, tell me about your classes.

So, then they would talk about how they’re in intro bio, and I was like, “I am pretty sure because Shahnaz is my office neighbor that you spent your entire semester doing a research project.” So I think exactly what Shahnaz has said, being able to have those students reflect on what are my skills, who am I, and what have other people done all within that one space to make meaning of their experience, it’s so impactful and something that we don’t always get the chance to create space for in academia.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, yeah, it’s so important to connect those dots. I was reflecting on my college experience, and I think I got lucky in that… I mean, it was my second major, but I eventually switched and landed in journalism, which ended up being a good fit for me. I remember getting butterflies in the first day of my reporting class because it just felt so perfect for me, but I probably could have gotten there a lot faster if I had had access to all of these things in one place, this life design, design thinking concept.

Krysta Foster:

I think so too. I started college as an architecture major and ultimately found my meaning in my student organizations. Even for a long time, I thought that that was just because I liked planning and I liked putting together events. So, I decided to switch my major to business, and eventually, I got to the point where I realized what I actually loved was getting to help other students, to getting to help people, classic eldest daughter here, helping profession-bound.

But I think you’re absolutely right, and it’s about making meaning of those butterflies that you mentioned, right? Because I think that oftentimes when we find the right thing, we can feel it and it’s hard to describe that feeling to other people. So, I think IRL is also built to define why those butterflies happen for you and what that impact is that you want to make because of it.

Meredith Metsker:

I would love to dig into the origin story of the IRL curriculum. So, I think if I recall correctly, it started as a break room conversation and has now become this fully embedded program. It’s super successful. So, can you just talk to me about what inspired the In Real Life curriculum?

Krysta Foster:

Yes. I have to say that this is always such a fun question because it almost feels like getting to revisit the origin story of our friendship even.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, I love it.

Krysta Foster:

Because we knew each other, we were connected to a lot of same folks. Obviously, we worked in the same college. I started during COVID, so I had started in February of 2020. So, it took me a little bit longer to get to know folks in the college. But yeah, I always love revisiting this because it feels like our friendship origin story.

Shahnaz Masani:

Both our friendship and the work we do together has really grown and sustained because I will go to Krysta about, I want to say, once a week with an absolutely wild idea. Every single time, Krysta will just look at me and be like, “Let’s go. How do we make this happen for you?”

Krysta Foster:

It’s funny because it’s true.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, I think it really started when Krysta came into a community meeting during COVID. We were all siloed, and I think what really stuck out to me is she had so many entry points for the ways that she was willing to work with others. She came in with three really explicit offerings. So, she said she could come in and maybe do async modules, so just provide some stuff for students to work through, or she could come in for one or two classes in this semester and work with students with a pre-built curriculum, or she’d be willing to collaborate with somebody to dream up something new together. That really spoke to me, the willingness to meet you where you’re at.

Krysta Foster:

That’s so funny. Yeah, I remember that conversation or that community meeting and then what I really remember is that break room conversation probably a couple days later because we were finally back on campus and things were happening. We were just talking about again, this piece about Shahnaz is saying, “Students get so many skills in my class, but they don’t really seem to know that they gain these skills in my class.” I was like, “That’s funny you say that because I always have students who come to me and say that they don’t have any research experience, but I know that they do.”

So because our two systems, because our two types of positions usually happen in such separate spaces, we’re having these two really common things pop up, even though we sit in different spaces. So, the first thing that we really noticed is that students felt unsure about where they were headed, especially for those folks who might’ve come in and they thought that they wanted to go into medicine. Because oftentimes when students say, “I like science and I want to help people,” they think the only thing I can do is become a physician. We know that that’s not true, but so many of the jobs in science happen behind the scenes that sometimes they need a little bit more help to explore what those things are and to get that exposure.

So, that was question number one was how do we help students to navigate those different types of career paths? How do we help them to make meaning of their experiences, to think about the problems they really want to solve before they hit that moment of crisis? Because the other thing we were seeing was that students were really struggling once they decided to change their mind because they had already attached so much of their identity to their major, to their future job. So, I think that that’s something that we’ve both really learned from this process is that career work is so vulnerable.

Because of that, it becomes so much more important to have students make meaning of their experiences and to be able to talk about it so that they can continue to make active decisions about their career path and so that we can really meet them with that kindness both in the classroom and in our advising appointments. So, once we had thought through those pieces, we spent the whole summer building a curriculum, hours and hours in Starbucks, or there’s this really great little bookstore in Lansing called Hooked that we do most of our collaboration at. Shout out to Hooked. We would sit there for hours just building the curriculum. Again, it was such a joint effort.

It was bringing in what we knew students were doing in their class because Shahnaz was able to share that with me and then I was able to bring in my expertise to say, “Given that these students are in their first or second year, here are some of the conversations we’d love to be having with them.” So we were able to really set that baseline of curriculum together. We’re also super grateful that we’ve had really great support from our community. So, at Lyman Briggs, our associate deans have an innovation fund, and so they were able to help fund our undergraduate researchers who are going to be part of this work.

As I said, that research piece has been so important so that we can continue to make sure that what we’re doing is evidence-based and so having that investment from our leadership team, that’s so much. We also were able to bring in a graduate student from our scholarship of undergraduate teaching and learning that specifically focuses on, again, helping to train the next generation of educators by bringing them into that work and helping them to understand how undergrad students learn. So, we brought in Haiden Perkins, who’s actually a faculty member at Arizona State now and is doing this type of work with her students there too.

So, bringing all of those folks together ultimately led us to start to collect some early data, and then through that, we entered the curriculum to Career Institute with AAC&U. From there is where we found our grant funding to continue the grad program. So, I know that that’s a really long origin story, but I feel like there have been so many iterations of this that it feels important to mention all of the players who helped us to get here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I am glad you added that additional context. Again, for folks who are listening, you can find all those details in that report that I’ll include in the show notes. I’m assuming also that includes some of the grant funding elements too, because I’m sure people will be interested in that as well, because funding is always a toughie sometimes.

Krysta Foster:

It is, especially right now.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. I would love to dig more into your partnership. So, you’ve obviously built a really collaborative partnership between the career center and you, Shahnaz, as a faculty member. What advice do you have for other career services leaders or faculty members who are looking to build a similar partnership? Because I know again, historically, there has been some walls in between those two organizations.

Krysta Foster:

There absolutely have been, right? We keep coming back to this idea of those silos and trying to remove some of those barriers. It’s funny because over the last three years as we’ve been doing this, Shahnaz and I have had the chance to go to a lot of conferences together and separately. What’s funny is that in all of those spaces, there are career services staff asking how we can get faculty involved. That’s always the common question.

Shahnaz Masani:

And yet I will add that in my disciplinary conferences, the entire conversation revolves around we want to do this work and where can we find the career professional? So it’s just the same story in a different place.

Krysta Foster:

It’s so funny to see. So, I think that what we’ve really gained from this is the short answer to this question. We’re really bad at short answers in general, but the short answer to this is that people on your campus probably want to collaborate. So, find those people, right? Find those people who want to collaborate, find your champions, find the folks who are really going to invest in it. That being said, I think that the shared commitment to collaboration is really key.

So, as we’ve talked about quite a bit at this point, this was a true collaboration. It was something Shahnaz and I built together. I think we’ve come to appreciate that process is just as important as the end goal. So, it’s been really important for us to think about how do we work together, not just how do we arrive at this outcome and really staying open to maintaining a commitment to the end goal in terms of impact as opposed to exactly what we think we should.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yup, that’s so true. I think our partnership works because when we spent that summer, we spent a lot of time building the curriculum, sure, but we also took so much time to discuss our long-term vision, our hopes, our dreams. We took time to build shared purpose, values, and trust. I think that really holds us through this long journey that we’ve had together. We’ve had to have some pretty hard conversations about priorities, timelines, power, space, and building that trust early on meant we didn’t have to avoid them or sidestep them. We had enough trust to talk through it with each other.

We stayed in it because we’d taken the time to establish trust and because we were so aligned on why we’re doing this. We know we’re doing this to shift what students experience, to truly transform who gets to feel like they belong in our spaces. So, I guess that would be my advice. If you’re trying to build this partnership, take that time. Don’t just look for alignment on outcomes. Look for people who will sit with you in the coffee shop and do that relational work. That would be my answer.

Krysta Foster:

I think so too. Just one more thing I want to add, I think that first of all, I think Shahnaz is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had.

Meredith Metsker:

Love it.

Krysta Foster:

Part of that I think is because we have such productive conflict, and I think conflict gets such a bad rap that it feels like something we want to avoid. It feels like something that we shy away from. We think if we have conflict with somebody, we can’t work with them. I actually think that when that level of trust is there, that’s really what helps us to have, again, what I call productive conflict, because we’re able to create a better solution together than we would be able to separately. I think by always assuming that the other person is coming in with the best intentions, by always valuing each other’s expertise, that’s really helped keep both of us invested in the work and invested in keeping each other in the work.

So, I think something else I’ve really appreciated about this is that we’re always pulling each other into other people’s faces. So, if I am presenting to the career team on campus, I’m bringing Shahnaz with me, and then if she’s going to talk to some of the other science faculty on campus, I’m headed out with her. I think on that note, today, either one of us could have probably done this podcast and hung out with you, Meredith, and had a super great time, but I think that there’s just something so special about when the two of us are together, what we’re able to share, the different perspectives that we’re able to bring. I think that’s been super key to our collaboration.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. You clearly have a good partnership and friendship here. I am putting myself in the shoes of maybe some of our listeners who really want to collaborate with faculty like you all are doing, really have that relationship. Based on your experience working together on this project, is there anything you would tell them about how to make a compelling case to a faculty member to do this work, to incorporate more career in there? Because I know sometimes for some faculty member or some faculty members, they are hesitant to bring the career and vocational element in. So, I’m curious what your thoughts are on that.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, I think for me, it’s about finding faculty who truly center students, what they want, what they need, what their dreams are, and then talking to faculty about what you mean by career work. What are we doing here? Why are we doing it? Like we said earlier, career work is equity work, but also, for me, it’s world building work. We get to build the world we want to when we live into our purpose. To share that experience with your students is something that’s powerful, it’s something that we should be doing in education. So, framing it in that light has made a lot of my colleagues go, “Oh, I didn’t think of it that way.”

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. That is great advice. Thank you, Shahnaz. So, find those student-focused faculty members. All right. Krysta, anything else you want to add on your experience?

Krysta Foster:

I think Shahnaz put it so beautifully, and I think that’s drawn me to work with her. I think it’s drawn me to work with other faculty on our campus too. I think at a time where the value of higher education is being so questioned when there’s so much pressure to put out results that say that there’s a return on the investment, we know that that return on investment is not always monetary. There are other things, other skills that students are gaining from their experience. So, I think for me too, one of the things that I try to bring up when I’m talking with faculty is it’s reminding them that they are giving, you are giving students this incredible experience in your classroom, and all I want to do is help them to realize that and to articulate it, right?

I want them to see the value in your course. I want them to see the value in the information and the experiences that you’re able to give them. To be able to articulate that within their disciplinary learning, I think, has been such a core piece of this collaboration too and in bringing other faculty members in.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a great point in that not all ROI is monetary. If students don’t know to articulate the skills that they’ve learned, then it looks like they didn’t get a whole lot out of the experience. So, yeah, that’s a really, really great point. So, I want to return to the data elements we were talking about a little bit earlier, and I would love to hear about any results that you two have seen since launching the In Real Life curriculum. That could be anecdotes, it could be data, whatever floats your boat here.

Krysta Foster:

This is our favorite thing to talk about. We’re also in the midst of writing our second paper right now where we’re really focused on the impact.

Meredith Metsker:

Nice.

Krysta Foster:

So I think a lot of this is, yeah, it’s been really top of mind. It feels like something we’re talking about every other day as we’re sitting down to write.

Shahnaz Masani:

So we found, of course, the most basic level that students will say that they designed their career plans, both primary and parallel, directly in response to this. So, that really tangible piece, they designed their resume. They had interview strategies directly as a response to this class. I think more broadly, we see three main impacts of the work. We see students articulate that doing this within the course has helped them really identify their purpose and be able to articulate it to others. We’ve seen impact on the development of their STEM identity, which we know is so important for their resilience, their well-being, their long-term retention, and their fields and their disciplines. We see this through building their self-efficacy, right?

Exactly what the curriculum was designed to do as well as by building their outcome expectations, which put very simply is if I go into blank experience career, what might I expect to get from it? So we see that develop over time. I think finally and one of the most powerful things we see is impact on access and belonging, belonging in their discipline, but also in their class with their peers, with the teaching team, and with the college. I think what we’ve been working on most recently and really my favorite thing to talk about is purpose, that purpose-driven approach. Because you see students say over and over again how scary and overwhelming talking about their purpose is.

So, a student quote that comes to mind is a student saying, “You asked us what’s your purpose, and that’s a really big question.” So I thought to myself, “How am I supposed to answer that? If I have a bad answer, does that make me a horrible person?” It’s this intrinsic intertwining of what we do and who we are that makes this work really important. They talk about how having it broken down, doing this in a space with peers and with us is really helpful because it makes it seem a little bit less scary. I think the other reason purpose as a theme really speaks to me, it’s why I continue to do this work, is that it allows us and our students to dream.

So, we have students say, “I don’t need to be just a scientist. I can bring my love of arts and humanities. I can bring my unique set of interests and skills, and then I can apply it to the way that I practice science, the way that I practice medicine.” So it’s truly the purpose of my work is equity, and this is really allowing them to see how they could change the world. That’s so powerful for me.

Krysta Foster:

It really is powerful. I think getting them to see it on both a large and small scale is so exciting. You get those moments where a student says, “I learned about genetic counseling as a career and I didn’t even know that that existed before this class. Now I’m excited to pursue that.” And then you also get the students who say, “Oh, I interviewed for a research job last week and I got it. I actually used all of the samples that I developed in class, and I use my elevator pitch that I practiced during our mock reviews.” So those wins, big and small, just again, that equity piece of getting to see so many students have that experience is so exciting.

I think related to the equity piece where the sense of belonging that this work invokes, it’s something that maybe we didn’t expect from the very beginning. We see students connecting even over the fact that maybe they don’t know what they’re doing. I think especially in a science and pre-med space, there’s this assumption, there’s this culture that everyone else knows what they’re doing. If I don’t know, I must be the only person. So, actually students start to have conversations with one another. They’re like, “Oh, we’re all figuring this out together.” So not only can we rely on the support that we’re getting from Dr. Masani, from Krysta, from the grad students who are coming in, we can rely on each other.

One of our students who was in the class was telling us that she actually overheard a conversation during lab where one student had asked another if they wanted to go to a career fair together. I was like, “That’s it. That’s the dream. That’s perfect.” Just such a silly, nerdy thing, but it’s just so reassuring. But again, I think that long piece, there’s been so many good quotes from this work because we do a lot of qualitative data analysis. So, I think there’s one student in particular who just talked about how when they came into this work, they’re a little resistant at first. Doing career work in your biology classes is not something that goes over super well with college sophomores and first year students every time.

So, they talked about how they just felt like they got trapped in the room. There was one student who said, “I felt like a mouse who got trapped the first time that Krysta came in.” I was like, “Oh God, now I have to deal with this big scary career question. I was not anticipating having to do that today.” So we do see a little bit of resistance at the beginning about, “Why are we doing this here?” But then what we find is by the end of the semester, we are getting those stories about this helped me to decide what career path I want to pursue or I did get a summer job because of this. But more importantly, they talk about how supported they feel.

So, they talk about how from the teaching team, they feel like we were really able to guide them through those processes, that they didn’t have to do it alone, that that extra effort really made an impact with them, and that ultimately, the kindness that we approach the work with is so integral in the way the students receive it. So, I think career work is often seen as maybe cold and unpersonal. So, I think keeping that sense of vulnerability and kindness at the center of this has been really important in terms of developing that sense of belonging.

Shahnaz Masani:

Plus, we have multiple folks who have, I think, verbatim said, “I’ll go to Krysta because now Krysta knows my name.” We forget how big our universities like Michigan State are. It’s scary to go into a place where nobody knows who you are.

Meredith Metsker:

Now I have the cheer theme song stuck in my head.

Krysta Foster:

Oh, everyone knows your name.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, but I think that’s a really important point though. So, I mean, obviously, what you’re doing has been really successful so far, but I would love to hear, looking ahead, what are your goals for the In Real Life curriculum? Are you hoping to scale it? What does that look like? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, we’re absolutely looking to scale it. We’ve already been able to scale it a little bit. So, it started with just Krysta and me and my little sections of biology, and we’ve scaled it to pretty much a majority, I think 10 out of 12 sections at Lyman Briggs of intro bio incorporates some form of the curriculum. We’ve also really excitingly over the past year scaled it into the biology curriculum outside Briggs on Main Campus. I think what’s been important in that process is again, we’ve taken that really relational approach.

We’re not here to give you a pre-done curriculum, put it as a plug and play curriculum. We’re going to spend time working with the faculty to think through, “What is your context? Who are your students? What are your dreams for them? What are their dreams? And then how can we work best to modify, to edit, to dream up a curriculum that works for you and your space?” And that’s been a really exciting process.

Krysta Foster:

Yeah, I think Shahnaz is lending her social capital to this work has been so important. Being able to go into another space with Shahnaz and to have her share that as a faculty member that we are able to adapt it to these different contexts, I think, really speaks to this idea of that if you can find one person that you have that shared vision with, you can use that to create a ripple effect that when you share a vision and a purpose, that scaling really becomes possible. So, as we think about the work specifically for our Briggsies within the residential college, the idea is that we’re building towards a space where there will be a career education experience in each year of the core curriculum at Lyman Briggs.

So, again, we’ve really been focused on embedding it in the core curriculum as opposed to doing a standalone career class strictly because of that equity piece, really wanting to make sure that we’re meeting students in a space where they’re already academically engaged. So, the long-term plan is that in their first year, students would have that opportunity to really explore themselves, to explore their interests, to get to know the resources here on campus that in their second year, which is where the intro bio course typically takes place, they’re doing that purpose development, career planning, skills articulation, and laying a foundation for their networks.

In their third year, so at that junior level, further developing those networks, really using the skills that they’ve gained to make meaning and to share that meeting with other folks as they go into interviews, as they network, things like that. Then finally in that senior year, really bringing this all together and giving them time and space in the classroom again to pursue whatever it is that comes next, getting their resume looked at, working with a career advisor to do some job search or to work on their personal statement and to really give them those tools so that they’re able to be successful.

Meredith Metsker:

Sounds exciting. We might have to do an episode 2.0 of this and check back in a couple of years and see where you’re at.

Shahnaz Masani:

Absolutely. I might also think about I know we talked about scaling across our institution. We also have partnerships now through AAC&U. We’ve been talking to different campuses about what building these partnerships might look like. We have a wonderful collaborator from University of Buffalo who we’re thinking through… So, she does career work in her space. Melissa McCartney, that’s her name. Hey, Melissa. She’ll hear this. I’ll make her. But thinking through what she’s doing in her space, what we’re doing in our space, and how we can again, build stronger, more cohesive visions together. I think that’s the dream to find other dreamers and do the work together across our institutions.

Krysta Foster:

Yeah. Shameless plug, we would love to work with folks who are listening to the pod. We would love to see what it looks like to do IRL on our campuses. We’d love to have a conversation. We’re having some conversations with some other campuses coming up. We typically have a slew of folks that we’re meeting with after conferences just to talk about what it could look like. So, would love to chat with folks after the pod too.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, if they do want to reach out to either of you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Krysta Foster:

Yeah. So, we’re both on LinkedIn, so you can absolutely find us there and then our emails too. Mine is just krysta@msu.edu.

Shahnaz Masani:

Masani, so M-A-S-A-N-I-S-H, @msu.edu.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, great. I’ll be sure to include links to both of your LinkedIn profiles and your emails in the show notes as well, so folks can reach out to you. Before I start wrapping us up, is there anything else either of you would like to add? Any final pieces of advice for our listeners?

Shahnaz Masani:

Maybe I’ll add that as an ed researcher, I encourage folks who are designing this type of work to look to what’s been done before. There’s a lot of rich, deep scholarship in theory that will guide you as to, “Well, how do students make these decisions? What goes into making these decisions?” And it’ll make your work, your curriculum so much more applicable and so much stronger, as well as pairing that theoretical approach with the practical application and the time to do it in class. Don’t tell students what to do, give them time to actually do it and pairing theory and practice with that iterative research based design.

Krysta Foster:

What I love about Shahnaz is she always brings it back to theory.

Meredith Metsker:

Such an educator.

Krysta Foster:

Oh, my gosh. Yes. We were preparing our presentation for… I think this was AAC&U, right? We were getting ready to present in Puerto Rico at their class conference this past year, and we’re trying to come up with more of an interactive session. We were going to present the work, but we’re also going to try to help folks to start to imagine it on their campuses. Shahnaz was like, “What if we ask everybody in the room to think of their favorite theory and then build their curriculum around that?” And I was like, “The thing I love about you most is that you think that everybody has a favorite theory.”

Shahnaz Masani:

Tell them what happened.

Krysta Foster:

Multiple people in the room told us afterwards, “Oh yeah, actually, I do have a theory that I’d like to use when I’m coming up with student work. I do have a favorite theory,” and even made it all the way to our grad team meeting that week. Of course, especially our student affairs grads who are really super steeped in student development theory right now were like, “Oh, yeah, self-authorship by Baxter-Magolda. That really speaks to my soul.” I was like, “I was proven wrong, yet again.”

Shahnaz Masani:

There you go.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Awesome. Well, those are two great pieces of advice. I do want to be mindful of our time here. So, I’m going to start wrapping us up with this segment we do at the end of every interview, which is answer a question, leave a question thing. So, I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So, our last guest was Christine Cruzvergara of Handshake, and she left this question for you. What is a previous belief you had that you have now changed your mind about and why?

Krysta Foster:

Oh, gosh. Christine always coming in with the hard hitters.

Meredith Metsker:

Right?

Krysta Foster:

It’s funny because the first thing that popped into my head was something really silly. I used to believe that leggings were not pants. I was a hard and fast you have to wear leggings with a dress or a long shirt. But let me tell you, especially post-COVID, I’ve completely embraced the athleisure life. She loves a good pair of leggings.

Meredith Metsker:

Preach. Yes.

Krysta Foster:

Right? I know. We need that comfy work from home vibe. I think on a more serious note, maybe, so like I said, textbook eldest daughter, right? I’m a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist is how I tried to look at it now that I always thought about things as if I can’t give it 100%, if I can’t give it my all, I’m not even going to do it. I think that my own college career and certainly my professional career have taught me that failure is growth, that perfect is the enemy of good. Especially in this work, it’s happened in so many iterations. We get student feedback. We go back and reimagine things. We find new resources. We think about how we can make things better.

So, certainly when we started the work, the interview module, I know we keep coming back to that, especially they just recorded responses to interview questions, and then Shahnaz and I gave them some written feedback. Now we’ve been able to turn that into a much more interactive experience that from the beginning, we’re like, “Wouldn’t it be great if students could do a mock interview?” But I think if we had started there and said, “Okay, well, we’re just not going to do interviewing until we can figure that piece out,” it would’ve been such a disservice to our students. It would’ve been a disservice to the research. It would’ve been a disservice to us just trying to figure out how to make things better.

So, I think for me, that thing I’ve really changed my mind about is that sometimes you just have to try it. It’s not going to be perfect. It might be a little bit messy though the first time, and that’s okay, right? Your students are still going to learn from it, and you’re certainly going to learn from it in terms of how you can make it better.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. It’s applying the scientific process to real life.

Krysta Foster:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Hypotheses exist for a reason.

Krysta Foster:

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, beyond the laboratory.

Shahnaz Masani:

I guess I’ll first just share that I was always on the legging trend as a ’90s baby.

Meredith Metsker:

She was an early adopter.

Krysta Foster:

Absolutely.

Shahnaz Masani:

I’ll advocate to bring those really colorful, patterned ones back from the ’90s, but I’ll move on. I’ll move on from that. I think when I saw this question, a really specific incident came to mind. I think it was a couple of years ago now, really early into our friendship, Krysta and I were having this pretty casual conversation where we disagreed on something. It was by a text. I don’t even actually remember what it was about.

Krysta Foster:

It was probably about beaches and how I said that beaches don’t have to be at the ocean.

Shahnaz Masani:

It could have been that. I tried scrolling back, but there were too many texts, so I just moved on with my time. But what I remember is without even thinking, I sent her four citations to be like, “Look at these four things,” to show you that I know what I’m talking about. She just so gently and kindly responded in the way that only Krysta would, and she just said, “I would’ve just believed you if you said it, because I trust you on your expertise.” It was such a simple moment, but I keep coming back to it year after year thinking about it, because I think I hadn’t realized how deeply I had internalized this need to be over-prepared, to come with the evidence to back up what you see.

I immigrated here for grad school from India, and back home, I just feel like being believed for me from my personal experience was just more of a given. But once I immigrated here and I was in grad school in this hard STEM setting, especially as a woman of color, immigrant with an accent in STEM, this reliance became a survival mechanism. Prepare yourself twice, have those four citations always, then they’ll take you seriously. So, this was one moment amongst a series of moments with Krysta and with other folks that are now in my circle that I describe as my journey to unlearning this and to remembering how deeply I have experienced and how much I value trust as relational, not just earned through labor or a degree. It reminded me that I can find that here. So, that’s my belief.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that so much. I appreciate both of your vulnerability. Those are really beautiful answers.

Shahnaz Masani:

That was a hard one.

Krysta Foster:

It really was. It really made us think.

Shahnaz Masani:

That’s really hard one to follow.

Krysta Foster:

I think when we were answering it, we came up with a couple funny things that we once again got into our debate about. Shahnaz and I have a long-standing debate about whether or not you can have a beach not on the ocean. So, I grew up in Michigan. So, to me, anything that is sand that meets water, especially on the Great Lakes, it’s a beach. So, we keep having this funny argument about-

Shahnaz Masani:

Yeah, and I know that that is incorrect because beaches are salt water.

Meredith Metsker:

You know it to your Core that it meets the ocean.

Krysta Foster:

Yes. So, yeah. So, we were like, “Okay, we have to come up with something better than our beach thing.” If we ask our students to be so vulnerable in their career, certainly, we can be a little bit more vulnerable about things we change our mind about.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. You’re leading from the front.

Krysta Foster:

Yes.

Shahnaz Masani:

I think what it came down to was, as we think about our work together, that purpose is not something that just shows up that you discover, right? It’s something that you’ll work towards, that you embody, that you define for yourself. So, our purpose work is really predicated on having students identify their top five words in relation to their skills, their values, their interests, and the societal impact that they want to make. So, we drew our question from that centering of purpose.

Krysta Foster:

So when we think about our work, we’ve sat down and determined what our top five are, which we felt like was only fair if we’re going to ask somebody else to do it. So, when we think about our top five, the things that inform our work are active application, having students do that work in the classroom, reflection and articulation, a purpose-driven lens, disciplinary context, and community. So, we’d love to know for the next person you chat with, if you had to define your personal and/or professional purpose in five words or short phrases, what would they be?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, I love that. That’s a good question. Thought-provoking one.

Krysta Foster:

Yeah. Hopefully so.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I will be sure to pose that to the next guest.

Krysta Foster:

Well, thanks so much for having us, Meredith.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, yes. Thank you both for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was such a wonderful conversation, and I feel like we covered a lot and we probably could have gone for another hour at least and covered so much more. But like I said, we might have to have you back on here in a couple of years and you can give me the updates on how IRL is doing IRL.

Krysta Foster:

I love that. I love that how IRL is doing IRL, indeed.

Meredith Metsker:

As the youths would say, yes.

Krysta Foster:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, thank you both again and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Shahnaz Masani:

Thanks for having us.

Krysta Foster:

Thanks. You, too.