Few things are more anxiety-provoking for college students than the question of how to translate their educational achievements into meaningful job opportunities after they graduate.
Colorado employers, meanwhile, are struggling to find enough skilled workers, with nearly two open positions for every available worker in the state.
A comprehensive career- and workforce-development program at Metropolitan State University of Denver aims to connect those job-seeking graduates with careers needed to fuel the state’s economy.
MSU Denver’s Classroom to Career (C2) Hub engages students soon after they enroll to help them explore career paths, build job-seeking skills, apply for internships and develop professional networks.
But the secret to the C2 Hub’s success is its singular focus on identifying Colorado’s growing, ever-evolving workforce needs and aligning career development with those needs, said Adrienne Martinez, the University’s associate vice president of Classroom to Career Initiatives.
Over the past three years, the C2 Hub has developed 5,300 industry partnerships across 21 industries, creating diverse pipelines to some of the state’s most in-demand fields, including health care, aerospace, aviation and business.
“The vast majority of MSU Denver students stay in Colorado after graduation, so we have the unique ability at MSU Denver and with the C2 Hub to really focus in on the Colorado economy and adapt our structure and forecast what the Colorado economy expects, not only when our students graduate but also 10 years from now,” Martinez said.
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She attributed the program’s success in part to a restructuring of MSU Denver’s career-services program, which now includes three core teams. One oversees industry engagement, helping to pair prospective employers with students for career opportunities. Another team focuses on supporting faculty members who are aiding their students’ career development in and outside the classroom. And the third team supports students with exploratory advising and counseling services, mentorship programs, résumé assistance, scholarships, internship opportunities and more.
“We’re illuminating that light at the end of the tunnel,” Martinez said.
Student support
For Christina Shukie, that light turned into a full-time job as a graphic designer for Tetra Tech, a global engineering-and-consulting firm focused on environmental solutions.
Shukie, who enrolled in the MSU Denver Communication Design program after taking time out of the workforce to raise children, credits her C2 Hub career advisor with aiding her job search while she was participating in internships.
“I wound up meeting with him at least monthly and strategizing about what are my next steps,” she said. “In my job search, he helped me set goals, provided resources and was just generally encouraging and supportive.” One of her instructors also connected her with prospective employers, and one of those contacts led to an internship.
The C2 Hub is reaching a growing number of MSU Denver students, said Derek Bowers, associate director of Communications and Operations. It served some 3,500 students during the 2022-23 academic year, 69% of whom were first-generation college attendees and nearly 70% of whom were students of color, he said.
The program paid dividends beyond career development: Undergraduates who engaged with the C2 Hub scholar-support program are much more likely to stay in school, with a retention rate 20 percentage points higher than students who didn’t participate in the program.
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C2 Hub services are currently spread across campus, but a plan to construct a new building on the site of the old Auraria Campus baseball field will provide for a centralized C2 Hub office that should make it easier for students to access its services and meet with prospective employers such as FirstBank Holding Co., which hires 15 to 25 interns each summer.
Industry connections
Those internships can lead to careers after graduation, and some MSU Denver students have followed that path.
Since 2018, FirstBank has hired 272 management trainees, 17 of whom were MSU Denver students — and 10 are still employed there. And since 2020, the bank has brought on six interns from MSU Denver, four of whom were hired full-time, said Joe Nicosia, who graduated from MSU Denver in 2018 with a degree in Business Management and is now a recruitment senior specialist for the bank.
The C2 Hub provides a coordinated way for employers to engage with prospective hires, he said.
“In my experience, we have a really good track record of hiring students from MSU Denver,” he said. “Our turnover is a lot lower with the students we hire from there. When we know we want to target students specifically from there, we can just go straight to the career hub there to post our internships.”
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More than a traditional career center, the C2 Hub aims to be a national model for aligning and connecting college graduates with careers, said MSU Denver President Janine Davidson, Ph.D., who envisioned and began planning for the hub shortly after taking office in 2017.
“Now, we need this innovative model more than ever,” she said. “Across the state, employers in all kinds of industries are in dire need of skilled workers, and the C2 Hub is the bridge that will lead our diverse graduates to those jobs. They are prepared and ready to help our state’s economy and communities thrive.”
