University of Central Missouri: Imbedding Life Design in the Fabric of the UCM Student Experience from Courses to Career Services to New Student Orientation

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After attending the Life Design Studio in December 2020, the University of Central Missouri (UCM) launched its life design initiative to campus in the following ways:

  • Created a life design project for students that was embedded into their Career Readiness Courses (UNIV 3000)

  • Established a Design Your Life Committee with partners across campus who attended the studio 

  • Presented to approximately 600 incoming freshmen on how to Design their UCM experience at kickoff

    • 94% of students strongly agreed or agreed that after this session they feel more confident in designing their UCM experience

    • 94% of students strongly agreed or agreed that this session was useful to their UCM experience

    • Check out the run of show and slides for the program here. 

  • Launched two 1 credit hour Life Design Courses in Fall 2021 

  • Prototyped our first employer session using design thinking methodology and brainstorming techniques to help them ideate strategies to better recruit college students

    • 94% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that this session was valuable in generating ideas on how to proactively recruit college students from their organization

    • 94% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that this session was useful to their organization

  • Created course curriculum around college and career curiosity for UNIV1400 Freshman Seminar students 

  • Utilized external funding to create a creative and collaborative design space for students called The Learning Lab, Sponsored by Black & Veatch

  • Embedded the life design framework into faculty presentations for students to design and build their future lives  

Moving forward, UCM is excited to announce the forthcoming merger of the Career Services Center and Learning Commons to create the Center for Learning, Career, and Life Design.  The vision of this center is to empower students with knowledge and connections that will lead to meaningful college, career, and life experiences. UCM will utilize the current academic year to learn, evaluate, and test prototypes to help build our new center moving forward.      

To learn more, contact Amber Goreham and Jessica Johnson at agoreham@ucmo.edu and jessjohnson@ucmo.edu

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