Career Skillet Website Bridges Professionalism Gap Between Faculty and Students

How many times has a student come to your class with a paper due and asked for a stapler? Many faculty members think this is irresponsible while students tend to disagree. There is a vast disconnect between what faculty and students believe is irresponsible.  The Career Skillet website was developed to bridge the professionalism gap between faculty and students. 

Dr. Michelle Sherwood and her colleague, Dr. Jill Bowers from the University of Illinois, launched Career Skillet in July 2013.  Dr. Bowers has a research interest in emerging adulthood and Dr. Sherwood has two children who are emerging adults. With the help of some focus groups, the two combined their knowledge to develop the user-led Career Skillet website.

Dr. Sherwood began focusing on her children and the struggles they have had understanding professionalism and commonly used buzzwords that go along with it. She began looking into the classes she taught and asked her students to describe professional words, like networking. Many students would respond with: “We know we are suppose to do it, but what is it exactly and how do we do it?”

Screenshot of Career Skillet Website

The Career Skillet website is self-funded and targets emerging adults (students from high school to university) and is filled with information based on what they have been told by the emerging adults and the needs those emerging adults have identified. There are also sections related to the Family and Consumer Sciences field, including what FCS is, what FCS has to offer, jobs you can get specific to FCS, and FCS-related professional organizations.

Dr. Sherwood incorporates the use of the website in her graduate courses as well. Her Adolescents and the Family (FCS 5852) course and Current Issues and Trends in Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS 5460) course have focused activities which teach her students to apply research to everyday life. If the activities are of high quality, they can publish them on the Career Skillet website. Anytime there is a guest author on the site, it is very likely to be a student from her course or perhaps a student from the University of Illinois.

Professional presentations are developed and given by Drs. Sherwood and Bowers regarding the Career Skillet website as well. They have presented at the Illinois Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, the National Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, and the Illinois Council on Family Relations.  They also use the presentations in their undergraduate core classes as an informational resource. “As we have done presentations to students about this website, their feedback has been fascinating,” Sherwood stated. “There are just basic things they do not know and when you stand in front of them as a faculty member, it makes you realize the gaps in what they did not know.”

Dr. Sherwood has also received some funding through Eastern to pay for photos and hosting.  She has also recently received a Winkleblack grant which will help fund the next idea they want to add to the website called “Nailed It, Failed It.” Her idea is to have students sit in on a mock interview where she can provide feedback after the interview and it can then be posted online. Viewers will then have the chance to vote if the student nailed the interview or failed the interview. The grant will help provide the video equipment and capabilities needed for this undertaking.

“Research shows that emerging adults want to participate in things. They want to be able to interact,” Sherwood added. “We are trying to make it fun and incorporate Buzz Feed articles, things of that nature to add to it.”

For more information visit the Career Skillet website (www.careerskillet.org) or contact Dr. Michelle Sherwood via email: mlsherwood@eiu.edu.