Vision
Ohio State will set the national standard for a unified, human-centered career ecosystem — one that connects learning with the future of work, removes friction across systems, and makes pathways to opportunity simple, inclusive and navigable for every student.
Mission
The Career Center of Excellence (CCOE) integrates people, data and tools across the university to reduce unnecessary complexity, improve access, and enable students, staff, faculty and employers to navigate career pathways with clarity and confidence.
Scope and Phased Focus
This strategic plan prioritizes undergraduate, degree-seeking students during the initial five-year period while remaining inclusive of graduate students, online learners and other populations as systems, partnerships and capacity mature. Future phases will intentionally expand services, data integration and programming in alignment with institutional priorities.
At its core, this plan is about helping students recognize and articulate how their academic experiences translate into life after graduation, while making it easier for faculty, staff and employers to support that journey.
Strategic Priorities
Priority 1: Expand Work-Based Learning
Ohio State aims to steadily grow the number and quality of meaningful work‑based learning (WBL) experiences — internships, co‑ops and applied research — while closing participation gaps. In this plan, meaningful WBL aligns with Ohio State’s Graduation Survey definition and includes internships, co-ops, practicums, apprenticeships and academic major-related work experiences reported by graduating students.
Five-Year Focus
- Establish a reliable baseline using Graduation Survey data.
- Incrementally increase access to high-impact career experiences.
- Strengthen employer-supported pathways.
- Ensure access for Pell-eligible, first-generation and regional campus learners.
- Achieve a sustainable 80% WBL engagement rate among graduating students.
Examples of meaningful WBL may include internships and co-ops aligned to academic programs, faculty-supervised applied research, short-term project-based experiences or stipend-supported opportunities that reduce financial barriers.
Key Performance Indicators
- WBL Participation Rate: 80% of graduating students will report at least one WBL experience (internship, co-op, etc.). Participation targets will be grounded in an established baseline and refined over time to ensure consistency, credibility and alignment with peer institutions.
- Access to WBL: Reduce the participation gap for Pell-eligible, first-generation and regional campus students by 50% from the overall university rate.
Priority 2: Build a Coordinated Career Ecosystem
The CCOE will standardize career data and reports across colleges to improve accuracy, transparency and efficiency. An advisory council will guide best practices, and the CCOE will manage the technology and review systems for automation. This priority focuses on the infrastructure that enables the unified career ecosystem described in the center’s Vision, supporting consistent data, reporting and decision making across the university.
Five-Year Focus
- Create shared data definitions and a campus-wide reporting map.
- Integrate the Graduation Survey into the unified reporting system.
- Deploy dashboards that deliver near real-time decision insights for campus leaders, aligned with official reporting timelines and guided by shared data governance standards.
- Automate and streamline reporting, reducing manual effort.
- Establish a fully-integrated, centralized data ecosystem by Year 5.
Examples of decision support insights may include participation trends by student population, employer engagement patterns by industry, completion rates for career surveys or progress toward access goals across campuses.
Key Performance Indicators
- Adoption of Shared Taxonomy and Definitions: 100% of colleges use the shared career data definitions and taxonomy in reporting and systems.
- Automated Reporting Implementation: Reduce manual reporting tasks by 50% through system automation.
Priority 3: Make Employer Engagement Easy
The CCOE will streamline employer engagement processes and scale opportunities through coordinated outreach, shared systems and consistent service standards.
Five-Year Focus
- Implement a university‑wide employer tiering and triage model that includes clear pathways for employers of varying sizes and capacities.
- Build shared visibility through a unified Client Relationship Management (CRM) protocol and coordinated calendar.
- Incentivize cross-college partnerships.
- Automate parts of employer onboarding and service workflows.
- Retain top‑tier employer partners and build a national reputation for seamless engagement.
Examples of streamlined employer engagement may include clear entry points for multi-college hiring, tiered engagement pathways by employer size, shared visibility into employer interactions or coordinated recruitment events by career field.
Key Performance Indicators
- Employer Tiering Model Adoption: All academic colleges (or relevant units) implement the employer tiering/triage model with defined pathways that support employers of all sizes, including small and emerging businesses.
- CRM Build and Adoption: Build and launch a new CRM system — a significant technology and process‑change effort for the university — and reach 90% adoption among employer‑facing units after launch.
Priority 4: Build Skills Across Campus and Lead Nationally
Ohio State will become a learning community focused on career readiness — advancing faculty capacity, staff data literacy in support of informed career advising and decision making, and national thought leadership.
Five-Year Focus
- Deliver scalable faculty/staff training and resources.
- Formalize Communities of Practice across academic and industry areas.
- Host regional and national convenings.
- Demonstrate measurable improvements in student readiness.
- Establish Ohio State as an external leader in career education.
Examples of skill building and capacity development may include faculty resources for integrating career reflection into coursework, staff training on data-informed advising, shared-skill frameworks for students or cross campus communities of practice.
Key Performance Indicators
- Faculty/Staff Training Reach: At least 1,000 faculty and staff complete CCOE-led training modules on career readiness and/or data literacy.
- Student Career Readiness Growth: Increase student career readiness scores (via Graduation Survey or another validated tool) by 10% over baseline.
Partnership Principle
The CCOE exists to enable, elevate and connect existing career services across colleges and campuses — not replace them. Its role is to reduce duplication, provide shared infrastructure and scale what already works while preserving the relationships, expertise and trust built across the university. Implementation will begin with listening and identifying effective existing practices to ensure new efforts build upon established strengths.