Transitions Program
Making the transition into their future
Mays has implemented an innovative program that lasts students' entire undergraduate careers and arms them with business and life skills that go beyond the technical know-how learned within disciplines. Called "Transitions" because it shepherds the transition into college, through college and on to students' professional lives, the program will be offered to all 850 incoming freshman in fall 2006.
The Transitions learning community, first piloted at Mays in fall 2005 with a group of 72 Business Honors freshmen, gives participants a new way to measure their progress towards business learning goals in a online portfolio called AggiE-folio. The first class in the series introduces freshmen to a matrix of business competencies — from the ability to communicate and create new opportunities to the ability to manage and act ethically — and ways to document achievement, through class assignments and extra-curricular artifacts, in each of those areas.
Transitions gives participants a look at how all the things they're learning work together to advance their preparation for the workplace and beyond. "As I'd sit and start to write things for my portfolio, I'd connect it all together," freshman Jenni Mares says. "I'd realize, gosh, how did I not know these things were related before?"
That's what program leader Tim O. Peterson, director of undergraduate learning assurance at Mays, likes to hear. Texas A&M already does an incredible job of teaching students their disciplines, so they come out well qualified to work in their fields, he says. "But there's another set of vital skills that industry wants and they're not part of the majors — what some people call 'life-long employability skills,'" Peterson explains. "When they leave here, we want our students to be prepared with these skills as well."
For more information about the Transitions Program, visit their website.