The emphasis is on future potential. From this beginning, the workshop engages students in exercises and discussion that highlight the skills they have acquired and developed through their good academic experiences. It ends with students describing their skills and accomplishments in an interview role-play and then learning about the next steps they can take to put the concepts learned in the workshop into practice. The approach used in the workshop draws from the Dependable Strengths Articulation Process developed by Bernard Haldane, in which good experiences are examined to identify strengths or motivated skills. The Major Skills workshops are co-facilitated by career counselors, who have been trained to facilitate the Dependable Strengths Articulation Process, and departmental advisers.
Departmental advisers present portions of the workshop and help tailor the content for their majors.
The idea for the Major Skills workshop originated from Kelli Jayn Nichols s conviction that, if students leave the university unable to articulate what is distinctive about what they have learned through their academic experiences, then one of our most important tasks as educators, counselors, and advisers has been left undone. In the workshop, students identify and begin to appreciate the nuances their choice of major has given to the general transferable skills they develop in college. Most college students increase their analytical and problem-solving skills. Nichols contends that history students, for example, gain an appreciation and understanding for the importance of establishing a chronology of events and the role contingency plays in human affairs. These nuances put a special stamp on their analytical and problem-solving abilities which can be compelling when articulated clearly to an employer or a graduate school admissions committee.