PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES

Co-Founder, Program Designer, Director

 

Increasing questioning of the value of a college education and a need to find competitive advantage gave rise to the Professional Practices (P2) program. Students were demonstrating a struggle to connect academic concepts, techniques, and exercises with professional opportunities. This challenge presented us with a pressing urgency for a compelling solution at Memphis College of Art.

 

As faculty and director of the program, I collaboratively developed a comprehensive initiative to rally the school around a set of values, outcomes, and programming directly linked to professional success. This initiative knitted together the whole curriculum with career development and creative economic opportunities sprouting up throughout the city, which simultaneously was declaring a deep devotion to innovation.

 

As a comprehensive approach to student professional development, the P2 program includes key learning outcomes, a vertical core curriculum of coursework designed to boost professional potential, components in every college course developing transferable skill sets, four year career development programming, and external partnerships offering collaborative learning and earning professional opportunities. The goal of P2 inside the college is to create reasonable stepping stones towards radically improving the viability of a creative livelihood for every student. The larger goal of the P2 initiative is focused on raising the perceived value of creativity in the Memphis community and regional economy.

 

As a founding member of the P2 committee, faculty member, Director of Professional Practices Program, and Director of Career Partnerships, I successfully crafted the concepts, shaped implementation plans, developed institutional learning outcomes, designed core curriculum, integrated Design Thinking, shepherded faculty and administration adoption, launched partnerships, and led innovative external professional programming.