#220 Why Career Focused College Starts Earlier with Champlain’s Alex Hernandez Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 0:52
What if college didn’t wait until junior year to help your child build career skills, gain real experience and start building confidence? What they actually want to do? See too many students spend the first half of college completing general requirements and hoping clarity about their future is just going to show up later, then somewhere along the way, they suddenly realize they’re unsure of their direction. They might be short on experience, or they’re facing a job market that expects far more than the diploma alone. I’m excited about this conversation I’m having today with Alex Hernandez. He’s president of Champaign College. Champlain has long been known for what they call their upside down curriculum. It’s where students begin in their major right away freshman year and start building real world experience early in the college journey. Now, even if Champlain is not a school that your family is considering, I want you to listen to this conversation through a different lens. Alex shares ideas about career development, experiential learning, flexibility and building the human skills that employers really want so that you can evaluate any college your student might be considering if you’re trying to figure out how to choose a college that truly prepares your child for life and work after graduation, this episode is going to give you a lot to think about. I’m Lisa Marker Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:19
So President Hernandez, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to

Alex Hernandez 2:23
have you. Thank you. I’m delighted to be here

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:27
so you are leading Champlain College in Vermont. Give us just a quick little sound bite to introduce yourself and the university. Yeah.

Alex Hernandez 2:40
Champlain College is a career focused college in Burlington, Vermont, and we think a lot about, how do we get students to hit the ground running when they graduate? Which is, should it be a unique thing in higher education? But as you’ve probably experienced it, it doesn’t always happen that way, and we’ve just been really innovative over time the way we think about preparing students, we’re kind of different by design, and excited to talk about

Lisa Marker-Robbins 3:05
that this morning. I love that. So you guys, for a long time, you’ve had this upside down curriculum. Is what you call this right term for it? Correct, correct. Yeah. Okay, and so let’s talk about because that’s kind of how I think about as I’m working with. You know, even the high school students we work with, 15 to 25 year olds, very career focused. But when I really think about the even the high schoolers, I think about like inverting the process of finding the right college, right. I go, okay, career majors, college next, which is the opposite of what a lot of people do, which, again, maybe shouldn’t be that unique, but I feel like it is. So the upside down curriculum is kind of like that as well, right? Can you explain, like, what that means?

Alex Hernandez 3:52
Yeah, the upside down curriculum, very practically, means the moment you set foot on our campus, you start courses in a career focused major, and there’s a few benefits of that. First is, you get to pursue your passions right away. Most colleges are structured where you take two years of intro to everything, and you’ve enrolled in college because you’re probably interested in a major, but then they say, Okay, you need to wait till your junior year. And that’s okay for some students, but a lot of students, they want to dive in with what they’re interested in. And the benefit of that is our students can get a really meaningful summer internship the summer after their freshman year, which, again, most colleges will say, Don’t worry about an internship till the summer after your junior year. And so by the time our students graduate, because they’ve started early with their passions, they’re starting to have experiences. You might have 23456, career focused experiences. We have an alum named Shannon, and she was really passionate about games, and she came. In, and she just started doing projects, and she did internships, and she had six internships by the time she graduated. And so she just left champagne in a very different place, and a lot of college graduates where she had done things and she had networks, and in her life launched in a very different way.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:18
Yeah, you know, is, is interesting. I had Jeff selingo on the podcast recently, and you know, the number one thing that came out of his research for dream school, his book, was, parents want a career outcome for their kiddos, besides the fact, I mean, you and I are both parents of similar age kids, we just want our kids to be happy, ultimately, right? But if we’re investing in college, an expectation of there’s a career outcome on the other side. And you know, right now it’s tough out there for new graduates. So I would have to think that when the real world experiences are counting more than ever, I think that’s a change. That’s right, that’s right, your students are getting more of that right. Absolutely.

Alex Hernandez 5:59
So that’s really the premise of the upside down curriculum to unlock these experiences very early in your career. And we’ve been doing a lot of work to transform our programs at our college for the world that our students are facing today. And one of the things we’re talking about is we want experience to be included in a Champlain College education, and that means not just real world experiences in the classroom, and I’m happy to talk about some of those, but also internships, co ops, where you can be working full time. And so basically, over the course of these years, you’re collecting these experiences that are just as important part of an education as some of the traditional academic work that we traditionally associate with higher education.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:44
You know, it’s so true what you said about a lot of universities, colleges are telling young people, like, don’t worry about the internships. It’s going to be hard to land one until you’re heading at least in your junior year, maybe into your senior year. And as I’m thinking about it, it’s like, well, yeah, if you start out in all the pre work and all your Gen Ed requirements, then you don’t really have skills that employers probably want. Because, I mean, it’s got to be a win win on these internships. They got to get something out of it as well. So if you’re starting right in your major, then you actually are probably gaining some skills that would make somebody want to hire a rising sophomore into an internship, absolutely.

Alex Hernandez 7:28
And a really clear example of that, we have really great cybersecurity program. And the first, very first semester, again, in our upside down curriculum, you’re not just reading and thinking about cyber security, you’re going into a security operations center environment, and you’re actually doing things in cyber security. And so the act of doing, the act of experience. I mean, you know, we’re both parents, your kids come out with confidence in a different way. Yeah, I just didn’t, I just didn’t learn something in theory, but I’ve actually been able to perform it in practice. There’s a level of confidence that comes with it. There’s a level of accountability. Students just kind of treat it a little bit differently. And so when you kind of pair that together with the academic skills and the professional skills, we think that creates a very different education that you’re right is really important, especially today. There’s a lot of changes going on in the world right now that’s putting pressure on new graduates, and that labor market is changing, that job market is changing, and so we’re trying to be really thoughtful about how do you prepare them, not just with the the the diploma, but the actual skills they’re going to need? To need to thrive.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 8:44
I was just reading a study, and it was, it was talking about how employers, a few years ago, their main focus, their first focus, was, what was your GPA, right? So did you have a strong GPA, which shows persistence and intellect and you can do hard things and you can achieve and you’ve learned. You book learned right, and now GPA is secondary to real skills. And so that completely resonates with I was literally reading the article on LinkedIn this morning before interesting time. Yeah, I know I’m like, I wasn’t seeking anything out. I just was in my feed, because this is the hot topic. So I have some questions though about and I know our listeners, especially the parents or students, would want to hear about, like, how does this work? Then if you’re, I love that you’re getting right into your major, because kids often get frustrated by all of the pre work, right? So I think you’re, you’re removing some friction there, which is really nice, but are they still having to take, like, the same number of credit hours? Is it still a four year experience? How do you handle Gen Ed requirements, like, yeah, opposition and things like that?

Alex Hernandez 9:59
I. Absolutely so the upside down curriculum isn’t just about starting your major early, but we’ve completely rethought the way that we approach general education. And so a couple of the features of general education, one is we have a studio model for four years, and what that means is students work on real world projects, with employers, with organizations. They’re working across majors. They’re connecting different disciplines. So as an example, we were doing our students are doing a project with a Maritime Museum, and they’re creating a virtual reality environment for chick rec for the upcoming centennial. And you have students from different majors, and they’re connecting technology and they’re connecting history and user interface design and into a real, practical thing that’s going to show up in the community. And this studio model is designed to teach teamwork, collaboration, communication. It gets all those things that show up very prominently when you go on interviewer job or you go into your first roles. And these aren’t one off experiences. The studio model is a four year experience for our students. So that’s one way we think about general education differently. We also have community connections feature of our general education, where students really kind of, again, connect disciplines. They think about local, national to global. So as an example, our students work on a project with the apiary, and they think about the science. They think about the history of science. They teach it to elementary school kids. There’s aspects of elementary education. And again, we’re trying to put students in situations where they’re taking different disciplines, bringing them together in new ways for them that just really prepares them for the world today. And as we look of what’s going on in the workforce and what’s going on with AI, there’s a real premium on being able to connect the dots between different different fields, and so that’s just a really good example of how we approach general education differently, which is different from the survey check the box on a bunch of different subjects, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 12:15
So this interdisciplinary approach, so basically what somebody else might be doing at a different university or college that would be like comp 101 for lack of a better word is those skills and requirements are going to be embedded into these studio experiences. So they’re still going to become good writers, or get That’s right, they’re not getting half 101 grade, yeah.

Alex Hernandez 12:41
Well, we still have a comp 101 class, we still all find today’s skills class, but the vast majority of that two years worth of general education credits is really on developing these is really on these interdisciplinary approaches. As an example in the first gen ed courses our students take is called inquiry to action, and we basically ask you, what are your passions, and what are the things that you need to know in the world to fully explore your passions? And so again, it’s just a very different approach to general education.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 13:15
So let’s if they start in a major, because I love saying, like, let’s begin with the end in mind, right? Even when you’re choosing a college like for the students that we’re serving who are in high school that are going to go on a college path or college bound, I’m like be very thoughtful and informed about what college or university you choose to go to, rooted in this, in this end goal that we have out here, right? And I met all the time with, well, they’re too young to know. I’m like, they’re Yeah, they can learn a lot where we need to. We can expect more of them to be able to make connections and make good decisions. But if they come in at a particular major Can we talk about, like, what flexibility is there? How easy is it to switch your major or explore something new? Like, let’s talk about flexibility. Because, yeah, that’s what parents will want to know.

Alex Hernandez 14:11
Yeah, there’s huge maximum flexibility in the way we approach our our program. So we think it’s actually really important that students try something, even if it’s not where they eventually land. Because, rather than wait for two years and find out, Oh, wow, Junior actually don’t like that terrible race. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, you can redirect yourself to something else that may be more interesting to you. So you know, we have students some we have students who try a few things, and our curriculum is really structured like Lego blocks, so you can find ways to mix and match your interests together. So there’s no requirement that you need to know exactly what you want to do. We just want you to start pursuing something that you think is interesting, so you can learn from that. The other thing we’ve done is we’ve created. What we call the Flex 30. There’s a whole year’s worth of credit so that students can use to really drive value in their degree. And so as an example, a lot of people right now are talking about co ops, where you can earn and learn at the same time, meaning that you can work full time while you’re in college. Now, most colleges universities say that’s really not. We’re going to put you on part time status, like we’re going to delay your graduation so you can go to a co op as part of the Flex 30, you could do two co ops at Champlain and still graduate on time. So you have the flexibility.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:32
You’re still graduating in four years. One, you

Alex Hernandez 15:35
could still graduate in four years. You could do an online graduate certificate during that time, you could do a co op transfer in 15 credits and graduate three and a half years. So we’re trying to create the flexibility. So when students really see, hey, this is where I’m headed, how do I put these experiences together that maximize my time in college and drive the most value for myself and allow me to take my passions further and faster. So we’ve really tried to create that flexibility for students and their families and but kind of with enough structure that when students are on the track of what they’re passionate about, you know, there’s all these incredible opportunities. You know, whether you want to do animation or business or social work, it’s, it’s the philosophy is the same underneath each one

Lisa Marker-Robbins 16:28
of these programs. I think you hit on something there that I think is really important in, you know, earlier we talked about, you mentioned, like confidence, right? So your graduates are coming out with more confidence, because it’s scary. What, you know, these kids are up against the world, like the the 20 something era is just, it’s hard, right? And they’re figuring a lot out, not just about work and launching their lives, but How To Adult all of it, yeah. And, you know, it’s a lot. And so as they get experience, they they grow in their confidence and but what I’ve seen is, and you just hit this with like, There is structure, while it’s flexible, yeah, there’s some structure to it. Because what really serves to overwhelm kids in figuring out the career connection and their confidence in that path is when they they don’t have the structured framework of the next step. And it sounds like what I love is, I’m hearing like, you guys allow the flexibility, but yet you give the pathway and the structure to it, so that it’s not like, oh, it’s flexible. Go figure it out on your own.

Alex Hernandez 17:33
That’s right. It’s, it’s the structures there, so that when you’re in it, you’re getting these experiences, you’re making this progress, but if you’re, if you’re at a point where I’m a game design major and I’m really interested in environmental sustainability, you’ve got all the flexibility of the world to go chase that passion. And we actually think that’s really, really important. Because a lot of students come in and they’ll say, you know, this is a major I need to take because it’s the responsible choice, but it’s not really my interest. And what we see is that there’s this hidden job market out there where, you know, our student, who was really interested in game design and environmental sustainability, he ended up being offered an internship in Thailand to go work for an aquaculture company. And he was like, Why are you calling me on a Game Design major? And they’re like, well, we want to create a virtual world, a virtual simulation of our operation. That aquaculture company didn’t know until they saw him that they needed him. He didn’t know that this intersection of his passions existed, and now it opened up this whole new area of opportunity for him, connecting the environment to technology, and so that’s what we mean by the hidden job market. And we find those opportunities pop up over and over again the more we let students explore different aspects of their interests.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:59
So you’ve talked a lot about and this is what comes to mind. So my, my, my youngest are twins, and your dad as well. We talked about that before we got started, unique, you know, unique scenario there parenting for both of us. And my, my daughter, my girl twin, graduated from University of Cincinnati, who’s the founder of Co Op, yes, huge. I mean, my dad, who’s 81 did co ops back in the 60s, so I’m a huge fan. It’s amazing internships and Co Ops, right? Sometimes, though, I see students at schools that are known for co ops, like a Cincinnati, Drexel, Northeastern Kettering College, those would be a handful, and we’ll add you guys a list. But sometimes the kids, while the school is structured to offer or require a co op, and you’re right, most of those extend to you’re going to have a five year path instead of four. Doesn’t mean you’re paying for five years to college. You’re paying for four. Those universities, but it’s more time in school which kids often are anxious to get out into the real world. And some of them are like, I could stay in school forever. But we know those types of personalities, but what I’ve seen is some kids struggle to make the employer connections, like I’ve seen universities and colleges across the spectrum. Some support the connection to the employers really well. So the kids not overwhelmed with finding the opportunity. And some say, well, you’re going to go get these co ops, but it’s kind of the wild west of, how are you going to go out? Where are you going to find your opportunity? So I’m super curious as as to because obviously I’m the I’m a fan of the schools that help, that help facilitate the connection, because it’s hard as a 19 or 20 or 21 year old to do that on your own. How do you guys support like this employer embedded piece and finding the co ops and connecting with the employer? So we

Alex Hernandez 20:58
can be really hard. So we’re really committed the idea that experience should be included in a college education, and so we’ve created what we call the Champlain Exchange, which is a one stop shop that connects students with leading employers through co ops, internships, upskilling, career focused projects. And we actually have to do that, because this isn’t just about go out off campus to get an internship or go do a co op. Our model only works as you seen, whether it’s our studios, whether it’s our majors, when we’re deeply connected with employers in our classrooms. So in order to keep those connections, in order to keep those relationships, you know, we’re building this Champlain exchange to serve to create all the all those experiences across the board for our students.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:47
And are those in this Champlain exchange of employers like you just referenced the student who went to Thailand right to for his experience. Yeah. Are those all local employers? Are they global? Are they US employers? Like, what makes up the Champlain exchange?

Alex Hernandez 22:08
Yeah, it’s, it’s all of the above. It’s very heavily Vermont, because one of the best things you can do for an experience is you bring people in person on campus to interact. And that’s really amazing. And you know, this idea of helping students bring their ideas to life, Vermont’s an important part of that, because, you know, this is a state that came up with Ben and Jerry’s that Burton came out of. It’s been this incredibly innovative place. And so as students are going through their own journeys of how do we take our passions and move them forward? This is the environment we have a partnership with a technology or with a with a startup accelerator called hula, which works with 60 to 80 companies at any given time. And so our students come to Vermont, and they become part of that community. Now, of course, you know, we also use the Champlain exchange to develop our relationships in Boston, in Pittsburgh and the West Coast other things, but it’s a combination of both, having the breadth of opportunities. But also, you know, what is that community? What is that local set of supports that are supporting these really in person experiences for our students? Because a big reason why we think you come to Vermont is because of this innovation community that’s

Lisa Marker-Robbins 23:34
been built here. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Now you have me hungry thinking ice cream. Jerry, thanks a lot, Alex. So you know, you guys, how many students go to Champlain? Is it just

Alex Hernandez 23:50
we have about 1500 and then we have a couple 1000 online.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 23:53
Okay, so it’s a small college, and it’s going to be perfect fit for a lot of students who want that small college experience with that’s focused on career outcomes? If we have a listener here who’s like, oh, you know, my kids looking for rah, rah. You know, university research, university, a large school like there, you know, there’s a whole there’s something for everybody as far as what added to offer. But I agree with you that we really are best supporting our students when we’re thinking career first, when we’re thinking career development across all four years. So I’m curious if we have a listener who’s like, yeah, that’s way too small for my kid or Vermont, we live in California. No way am I sending my kid all the way across the United States? You know, there’s lots of different ways of thinking about this, but how would you encourage you’re a parent, like, how would you encourage another parent who’s supporting a high school student or an early college student to evaluate other college options that you know might be a better fit for them, as far as, like, if they want you know, a campus of 30. 1000 students or whatever, to still evaluate if a school’s truly integrating career development, what should they be asking themselves and asking of the colleges, I guess, when they’re getting on campus and doing visits or emailing or whatever that looks like,

Alex Hernandez 25:14
first of all, ask yourself, What are students doing when they graduate? When I first got introduced to Champlain. I met a one of the top CEOs in the area, and he said I had 900 employees, 300 of the Champlain grads. They’re my best employees. And we have a employer partner who has such a strong relationship new harbor security, they actually opened a office on our campus next to our Leahy center of cyber security, because at one point, half of their grads were Champlain half of their employees were Champlain graduates. And so you’re looking for evidence of kind of these really strong indicators of success. And what you’ll see is, most colleges, they’ll report these really high employment rates. But then where you need to look at as a parent is well, what percent of the class did they survey? And often times it’s well, 90% we surveyed 25% or we surveyed 35% our students have 90% career success within six months of graduation, but we survey over 80% of our students, so you’re getting actually a whole view of so I think that’s one thing. But secondly, I think it’s just what’s the approach that you want? And I think, first of all, there’s a great college for everyone. So let’s be clear about that. There’s a sense of college can you can just check a box and we’ll do what the way College has always done, and, you know, we’ll get kind of those outcomes. But if you’re thinking about, how do you make the most of your four years, and how do you start, you know, how do you dive into your interests early? How do you engage early? How do you develop these human skills in a digital age that are going to be really, really important. We’re just offering a different type of education. We’re offering a different type of model that’s designed to support students in this moment during a period of rapid change. And we think actually higher education needs to look different. And so I think that’s the exciting thing for parents and families to see. Well, it is possible for my student to be ready when they graduate. And they say you have to be ready when you get here, but when you leave, you’re gonna be ready, yeah. And we designed a very different type of college to make that possible, yeah.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 27:34
Well, it sounds like I need to visit Vermont and come, come on campus and take a look, you know, one of the as you’re talking about that, and I’m thinking about supporting, obviously, you can’t enroll, you know, even all of our listeners. But how to think differently a family could go do, I don’t know, a virtual Champlain visit and take good notes to think about, then critically apply how you guys are doing virtual visits or in person visits, even if they go like, Champlain’s too small for me or we’re not going to Vermont like, but even just looking at how you guys talk about these things will help a family develop a list of like, what I can then take and go to a go look at another school and assess This career development aspect, regardless of what else you want the college or university experience to look like.

Alex Hernandez 28:26
Yeah, I mean, as a parent, the so our market’s changing a lot right now, and and it’s going to even change more than we can even imagine. And so you’re really looking for an institution that’s going to be really nimble, that’s going to be really thoughtful, that is going to think about those skills that are going to matter, and that’s going to some skills are really timeless, and other skills higher education hasn’t really been good at paying attention to, like some of these human skills that are really valued in the workplace, but you often don’t get much attention in academic environment, like, how do you communicate? How do you work in teams? My wife is a CEO, and she was interviewing some Champlain students for an internship, and she turned to me, she said, every one of them could talk about what it meant to work in teams in some really compelling ways. And they all had experience looking at data. And so it was just really interesting how these kind of themes popped up. Because you have a different kind of college recurring students in different ways. And you know, while the regardless of the size of the college or the size of the state when you’re when you’re an experience based institute like the world is your classroom, and so our students are all over Burlington, they’re all over Vermont, they’re all over the northeast, they’re all over the country. As I said, you get through our Freeman Fellowships are going to Asian cities to do not not to study abroad, but to do internships abroad, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:58
Big difference there, because I. Talked a lot of study abroad. I was talking to a kid who graduated from an ivy who did had a spectacular study abroad experience, and and when we got real, because he was career confused, coming out of college, right? Had zero idea what he was aiming for. And I’m like, what were you thinking about while you’re in there? And it was just about having a good experience. And the study abroad was, well, I got my classes down to, like, two days a week, and then I traveled all over Europe the rest of the time. And while it’s a fantastic experience, it’s a year, almost a year later, and he’s living at his parents house, unemployed right now, right?

Alex Hernandez 30:40
And I mean, I’ll contrast that as I think about putting my parent hat on. We had a student a couple years ago who transferred into Champlain, and she was from the Northeast, and she said My dream is to work in Japan in a creative field. And lots of students have those aspirations that not always the world, kind of sometimes puts people on a different path. And she came in our upside down curriculum, and she dove into her major, and she took advantage of this Freeman fellowship in Japan, and she built things with her classmates, and she just kept putting stuff out in the world. And one of her games got recognized by a magazine, and six months after you graduate, she said, Actually, my dream just came true. I just got out Japan working in a creative in a creative field. And so these are, as a parent, it’s okay to expect and and and to go to an institute that helps your students further their dreams and aspirations, yeah, and it’s okay to hope, yeah, yeah. It’s okay to dream. It’s okay to bring your ideas

Lisa Marker-Robbins 31:47
to life. My favorite part of what you’ve said today is when you said, especially for kids that are like, or the parents were like, well, they can’t know what they want to do, it’s okay just come and start doing something. Right? Yes, it’s going to be flexible. Career Development, I believe, is lifelong. We’re not asking these kids to make a forever decision, but like, just do something, because really traction comes from taking action instead of just absorbing more data and information. Information is not going to create the direction. It’s actually action that does. And you guys are clearly very action oriented up there. Absolutely.

Alex Hernandez 32:26
Go out and try something. Don’t just read about it. Go out and do it. Don’t just watch the outside world go out, the outside world. That’s what we mean by experience, including a Champlain College education.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 32:38
I love it. Alex, thank you so much for taking time. I I think that not only are we celebrating the great things that you guys are doing, you’re innovative, like you said, workplace is changing rapidly, and higher ed needs to continue to evolve and change rapidly, because a lot of schools are getting left behind. You guys are a fantastic model. I celebrate that. Thank you for helping our parents just think of different ways to think about this experience and how to evaluate what their options are.

Alex Hernandez 33:08
Well, thank you for supporting our family as we all do that as Terrence and really grateful to be on the show.

Speaker 1 33:14
Thanks, Alex.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 33:20
What stood out most to me in this conversation is Alex’s reminder that students do not have to have it all figured out before they begin. They just need to start somewhere. This is true whether your child is choosing a college Exploring Majors, or trying to connect who they are to what they might want to do next. The challenge for many families is not motivation, it’s just knowing what that next step should be. So if you heard Alex say, just start somewhere, and your immediate thought was okay, but where do we start? I want to help. Go to flourish, coachingco.com, forward slash video and opt in for my free training on my career confidence framework. It will help you understand the framework for identifying the right first step so your child can start building clarity with action, not just more information. And my friend, if this episode helped you think differently about how to evaluate colleges for career readiness, send it to a friend who’s in the middle of college visits or trying to help support their young person find a clearer path. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you again next week.