{"id":11375,"date":"2024-10-07T09:37:26","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T14:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=11375"},"modified":"2024-10-07T09:37:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T14:37:26","slug":"experiential-learning-unlocks-students-employers-potential","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/experiential-learning-unlocks-students-employers-potential\/","title":{"rendered":"Experiential learning unlocks students\u2019, employers\u2019 potential"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
The number of employers that appeared at a School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences career fair in 2022 shows their high level of interest in UW graduates. One way for employers to get a look at prospective future employees, and for students to get real-world experience, is to take part in experiential learning courses. Photo: Bryce Richter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peter Daly was a fourth-year student at UW\u2013Madison in fall 2020 when he took the first Computer Sciences capstone course taught by Amber Field.<\/p>\n

Field had selected Daly and 25 other CS majors to participate in this pilot experiential learning class, pairing companies with self-selected teams of students to work on real-world problems.<\/p>\n

Daly found himself on a team working with Capital One, based in McLean, Virginia. He admits that, not knowing how technically advanced the company was at the time, \u201cit wasn\u2019t a company that was necessarily on my radar as a place to work.\u201d As a graduating senior, however, he paid close attention to his Capital One mentors, who \u201chad nothing but praise for the company and then generously offered to act as a referral for my application. I ended up applying and I got the offer, and the rest is history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Daly, who continues as a Senior Associate Software Engineer at Capital One, serves as a mentor for current CS capstone students. \u201cThe fact that the university is offering what is essentially an internship to these students is great,\u201d says Daly.<\/p>\n

Experiential learning at UW\u2013Madison, whether a practicum, an internship, or a capstone course, is more than a classroom concept. It\u2019s a transformative approach that prepares students for the professional world and provides employers with fresh insights. Hands-on learning experiences found in nearly every discipline on campus set up students and partner companies for success.<\/p>\n

Here are two examples, from UW\u2013Madison\u2019s School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) and the Wisconsin School of Business (WSB).<\/p>\n

Computer Sciences Capstone<\/h3>\n

Field, who now teaches the Computer Sciences capstone course twice a year, has been a software engineer and manager for her entire career at companies including IBM, Capital One, and National Geographic, and most recently as vice-president of software development at Singlewire Software.<\/p>\n

The capstone has grown to about 100 students per semester. They work in groups directly with partner companies, from start-ups to well-known industry leaders.<\/p>\n

A UW\u2013Madison CS alumna herself, Field launched the class to help students prepare for the work world by building skills that employers most needed\u2014in her case, agile software development skills.<\/p>\n

Rohan Ayyagari, a Computer Sciences major from San Ramon, California, who took the capstone course in spring 2024, says, \u201cWith a class like this, you know right from the get-go this is how companies do it. And I\u2019m hearing from people in the field that I should know this in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get involved:<\/p>\n

Employers<\/strong>: Find out about\u00a0current opportunities<\/a>\u00a0to participate as an employer from UW\u2013Madison\u2019s\u00a0Office of Business Engagement<\/a>\u00a0(OBE). For more information, subscribe to\u00a0OBE\u2019s email updates<\/a>\u00a0or follow them on\u00a0X<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Students:<\/strong>\u00a0Contact your advisor or your school or college\u2019s\u00a0career services<\/a>\u00a0office to find out which classes provide opportunities for experiential learning.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Field structures the class to replicate the work environment as closely as possible. \u201cWe welcome into the class product management MBA students and UX Master\u2019s students as well,\u201d she says. These students allow the teams to be cross-functional and create better final products.<\/p>\n

Each partner company provides a unique experience based on its own needs. Daly, of Capital One, participates in part to help ensure students learn marketable skills that they might not learn elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a moment probably\u00a0three or four months into my job at\u00a0Capital One where something just clicked for me,\u201d recalls Daly. \u201cAll of a sudden, you see the vision and realize, \u2018Oh, this makes sense now.\u2019\u00a0And after I had that moment, I thought to myself, \u2018If this is such a critical part\u00a0of being a software engineer,\u00a0why did I not learn it in school?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Daly adds, \u201cFor me,\u00a0what I want most is for the students to have\u00a0that moment click\u00a0before<\/em>\u00a0they\u2019re a full-time employee at a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with Daly and Capital One, Ayyagari and his fellow students created a full stack banking application. He was attracted to the project because it would allow him to learn about the entire software development process, including front-end and back-end programming and cloud deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us had ever built a web app from scratch,\u201d Ayyagari said. \u201cIt helped me understand how these apps not just come to be, but the whole process that comes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building the application, paired with lectures on the agile development process from experienced guest speakers, gave Ayyagari \u201ca good insight into how businesses actually work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Madison-based Last Lock, another capstone partner, has deep origins at UW\u2013Madison and a commitment to experiential learning that reflects the company\u2019s nature as a startup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe give students projects, resources and mentors and then just let them just try to get it done as fast as possible without getting in their way,\u201d says Last Lock founder and CEO Jack Ryan, a UW\u2013Madison electrical engineering and economics alumnus originally from Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Students who work with Last Lock focus on projects that have a realistic chance to become part of the company\u2019s product roadmap. This rare opportunity, which is highly attractive to many students in the course, illustrates the win-win nature of experiential learning. \u201cMentors provide a great deal of value to students through their knowledge and real-world experience,\u201d says Ryan, \u201cwhile companies have the opportunity to evaluate them as potential employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last Lock has found CS capstone students a great match for their needs\u2014both before and after graduation. \u201cThey\u2019ve been hiring several students pretty much every semester,\u201d notes Field. \u201cNot all students will get a job offer from the course, but I love it when we have students that go directly from the course to one of our partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Master\u2019s in Business Analytics Consulting Practicum<\/h3>\n

This past spring, 18 companies worked with 23 teams of Master of Science in Business Analytics students from the Wisconsin School of Business. This one-year master\u2019s degree program attracts students from a wide variety of backgrounds, in part because it\u2019s focused on key skills employers need.<\/p>\n

MSBA students start their consulting practicum, which is a required course, in a three-week \u201cconsulting boot camp\u201d led by faculty with decades of consulting experience.<\/p>\n

Halley Jones, manager of corporate outreach for master\u2019s programs at WSB, notes that employers \u201ccome in understanding that their role is to be a project guide and a mentor, but very quickly realize that\u00a0these students have skills that are unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more than 100 students in the 2023-24 MSBA program had at least 20 distinct undergraduate backgrounds, ranging from finance and economics to computer sciences and neuroscience.<\/p>\n

Robert Behnke, co-founder and president of Madison-based organic clothing company Fair Indigo, worked with a team of MSBA students this spring. He notes, \u201cThe project flow, the team members, the final output exceeded my expectations by a not immaterial factor.\u201d He was impressed with their ability to \u201cpresent data lingo to a non-data person\u201d like himself, an especially useful skill in a smaller company where leaders might have varied roles and responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Jay Page, director of experiential learning for WSB\u2019s master\u2019s programs, emphasizes that MSBA students bring not only technical expertise, but also essential \u201csoft skills,\u201d including \u201cworking effectively in teams, confidently expressing their viewpoints, becoming increasingly comfortable with presentations, and creating effective slide decks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spring 2024 MSBA graduate Luqman Godil worked on a team with Madison-based Fetch. Fetch (formerly Fetch Rewards) wanted to understand why Spanish-speaking users used their app differently than English-speaking users. Given access to data and a wide degree of latitude, Godil\u2019s team, in his words, \u201csolved a very big problem for them\u2026 getting those insights\u00a0[into] what exactly is happening,\u00a0and then presenting it in\u00a0a form that is helpful for them to take action,\u00a0and then constantly getting feedback from\u00a0them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Godil appreciated being presented with \u201creal challenges that you would face in the workplace,\u201d he said. He also valued the networking opportunity, as did Fetch; in fact, Godil recently started there as a permanent employee.<\/p>\n

Why does it work so well?<\/h3>\n

Justin Hines is director of corporate relations at the School of Computer, Data, and Information Sciences (CDIS), home of the Computer Sciences department. He reminds employers, \u201cWe\u2019re not just solving your problems and walking away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best partners, according to Hines, are those that understand \u201cthe product that they get at the end isn\u2019t necessarily going to solve the future of their organization, but it is going to give them new insights, provide real-world experience to the students and help them start to identify if these students are hirable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industry partners across the board are happy at the end of the semester after working closely with students, Field says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere you\u2019ve got almost four months, longer than a regular internship over the summer to evaluate various students,\u201d giving employers far more information about the students\u2019 potential as employees, Field says.<\/p>\n

She adds that she\u2019s \u201calways impressed by the quality work that the students put out at the end\u2026. They care deeply about doing something meaningful for their partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience is invaluable for students. MSBA alumnus Godil says, \u201cThese kinds of projects are really\u00a0helpful because they get you that\u00a0opportunity to showcase\u00a0your ability and then it\u00a0gives you the confidence that, OK, you have it in you\u201d to be successful.<\/p>\n

Ayyagari\u2019s experience convinced him that \u201canyone who wants to go into CS should take the [capstone] class.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/h3>\n

The future of experiential learning is bright. According to Jones, WSB Dean Vallabh Sambamurthy has said that by 2028,\u00a0all business undergraduates will complete at least one experiential learning experience as part of their education.<\/p>\n

Field says regarding the CS capstone, \u201cI am actively trying to scale this course and eventually would like every single comp sci major to be able to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really does not matter whether they [the partner] are in person or not,\u201d adds Field. \u201cWe make it work for both.\u201d Capital One has always participated remotely, as have companies such as Schneider in the Green Bay area, GE HealthCare in the Milwaukee area, and startups in California and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

More Information<\/h3>\n

Find out about\u00a0current opportunities for experiential learning<\/a>\u00a0from UW\u2013Madison\u2019s\u00a0Office of Business Engagement<\/a>\u00a0(OBE).<\/p>\n

\n

Written by Jason Gohlke<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/experiential-learning-unlocks-students-employers-potential\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Daly was a fourth-year student at UW\u2013Madison in fall 2020 when he took the first Computer Sciences capstone course taught by Amber Field. Field had selected Daly and 25 other CS majors to participate in this pilot experiential learning class, pairing companies with self-selected teams of students to work on real-world problems. Daly found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":11377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-11375","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/11375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=11375"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=11375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}