RISE & Career Readiness
Supporting Career Readiness at USF: How the RISE Model Enhanced Feedback in a Badging Program
The University of South Florida’s (USF) Career Readiness department faced a unique challenge: how to scale their newly launched badging program to effectively serve a growing student population. The initiative aimed to help students connect their academic, co-curricular, and extracurricular experiences with the essential skills needed for successful employment. To achieve this, USF sought to leverage the RISE Model and adapt it to fit their specific needs.
The Challenge: Scaling Career Readiness with Limited Resources
The Career Readiness badging program at USF was designed to provide students with a structured path to build and demonstrate eight key competencies identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE): Professionalism, Communication, Critical Thinking, Teamwork, Technology, Leadership, Global Citizenship, and Career Management. However, the program needed to reach USF students across three campuses, all with limited staff to oversee the project.
To scale the program effectively, the Career Readiness department decided to train federal work-study students as peer coaches who could provide feedback and guidance to other students. Ensuring that the feedback exchanged between peer coaches and students was both meaningful and high-quality was essential. Enter the RISE Model.
Adapting the RISE Model: From RISE to (A)RISE
The Career Readiness office requested permission to adapt the RISE Model by adding another step - Align. This adjustment was made to better suit the specific needs of the badging program. The “Align” step allowed peer coaches to evaluate students’ current skill levels before engaging in the Reflect, Inquire, Suggest, and Elevate stages of the feedback process.
The (A)RISE framework provided the peer coaches with a structured, easy-to-follow approach to giving feedback. This ensured that every interaction between a coach and a student was rooted in thoughtful, constructive guidance, fostering student growth in the eight NACE competencies.
The Solution: Ensuring Quality Feedback with (A)RISE
By implementing the (A)RISE framework, USF was able to train peer coaches on how to provide structured feedback that aligned with the goals of the Career Readiness badging program. The addition of the "Align" stage was particularly effective in helping coaches gauge the students’ starting points, ensuring that their feedback was relevant and tailored to the individual’s level of skill development.
(A)RISE enabled the peer coaches to have meaningful conversations with students about their career readiness, providing them with actionable insights and helping them articulate their competencies more effectively in interviews, resumes, and cover letters.
Impact and Success
The Career Readiness badging program, supported by (A)RISE, was successful at USF. Peer coaches provided feedback to over 3,000 students across three campuses. A director noted, “Our student team members gained essential transferable skills that enabled them to achieve their career goals more effectively. The students they provided feedback to would go on to complete and earn career readiness micro-credentials at higher levels.”
Unfortunately, institutional budget cuts meant the program could not be fully sustained, but the impact made during its operation was clear. The (A)RISE framework played a crucial role in ensuring the quality and consistency of feedback, allowing USF to serve a large number of students and helping them prepare for the workforce with greater confidence and clarity.
Conclusion
The University of South Florida’s Career Readiness badging program demonstrated how adapting the RISE Model can scale effectively to support thousands of students, even with limited resources. By adding an "Align" stage and leveraging peer coaches, USF was able to provide high-quality, structured feedback that helped students build essential career skills while also fostering growth in the coaches themselves.
The collaboration between USF and the RISE Model highlights how flexible and impactful the model can be in educational and career development settings, helping students bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world career readiness.
