How the University of Illinois Springfield is Developing Job-Ready Students

Dr. Jorge Villegas is an Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing, College of Business and Management, at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). Recently, he participated in an exclusive panel interview with Kaplan’s university partners, sharing his insights on meeting students where they are, enhancing career readiness, and the impact of a program creating new opportunities for student success. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.

Tell us about the University of Illinois Springfield and what makes your student community unique.

Dr. Jorge Villegas: The University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) is one of three universities in the University of Illinois system and we have around 4,700 students. What makes us different is that about 50 percent of our students are graduate students, usually schools are closer to about 20–30 percent. Around 42 percent of our students are enrolled in online programs. As you can see, we are quite different from traditional universities. Our population is a bit older, for example, our average age of an undergraduate student is 26 years old, which compared to other universities is closer to the lower twenties. We have 981 Pell Grant recipients and 72 percent of our full-time undergraduates receive financial aid. We serve a variety of populations in Illinois.

Student success can have a lot of different definitions depending on your lens. How do you define what true student success looks like and how are you building that into your core priorities?

Dr. Jorge Villegas: For us it's very important to remember that we need to meet the needs of the student where they are, not where we want them to be before they start. Or this image that some have of students that ‘you did high school, now you're going to go to college and you're going to be here for four years and you're going to finish. You will have the resources to finish. You will have the ability to get a job almost on your own.’ These are all things that we took for granted 20 years ago and that don't exist anymore. We need to make sure that we understand each student.

At UIS, we can give a very personalized service to students. We now have a role at the provost level who is going to be working on student success for the focus of the position. So we are trying to figure out how to configure the university to really have the student outcomes that we want, and what the student wants. It's not about what we want, it is really about what the student needs.

If the student needs more than four years to graduate, that's fine. We have students that work full time, they have kids in school. They're taking classes online, doing everything on the weekends. We cannot expect the same type of services for one student compared to the other, or to someone that is here full time as a student and is 19 or 20 years old. To each one, student success means different things and we have to offer different ways to retain them and ways to help them get jobs.

You recently launched Kaplan’s All Access License^® at the University of Illinois Springfield through the state’s Prepare for Illinois' Future program. What was your initial reaction to hearing these resources would be available to your students?

Brittany Wampler, Kaplan: To set the stage, Kaplan’s All Access License was created several years ago as a result of us wanting to work with their partners in new and profound ways to address student success and the barriers that they experience. Ultimately, one of the state legislators in the state of Illinois heard about the program and started learning more. This began conversations across the legislature about putting together the Prepare for Illinois’ Future program.

The program creates the opportunity for students to take industry-leading test preparation for admissions exams, licensure, credentials, and skills development programs to enhance a student's skills to complete their undergraduate education or be more confident once they enter the workforce. They get all of those resources and test prep opportunities for free. And this is available across 17 campus partners, including all 12 of the Illinois public four-year institutions as well as a pilot with 5 community colleges. This means 200,000+ students now get these resources free to them. Illinois is changing the game in how we give students access to what they need to be successful when they enter the workforce.

» Related News: Illinois Student Assistance Commission and Kaplan Announce Free Test Prep Courses

Dr. Jorge Villegas: My first reaction was remembering the times of myself taking the GMAT^™ and GRE^® and the accompanying anxiety of the tests. I used Kaplan resources to survive those exams. I thought, “They are back in my life!” But now in a good way.

Before I knew what exactly was being offered, I thought maybe Kaplan was sending us books or some resources online. But when I saw for the first time what students see, and the original price then being crossed out to $0, that was amazing. Students say, “Oh, my gosh! We can take all these courses just like a regular student.” There are no shortcuts, it is 100 percent the same course as someone paying full price. That was an amazing experience. And that's when I decided I really need to make sure that people know about this at UIS.

» Related News: UIS Students Gain Access to Free Test Prep Through the New Prepare for Illinois’ Future Program

Response from students after launching the All Access License program in Illinois has been remarkable. What kind of feedback have you received on the impact this makes in their lives?

Dr. Jorge Villegas: One of our student workers has an office right outside of mine. It just so happened I saw her taking a course one day and I found it very interesting to see that impact up close.

Besides the graduate admissions test prep courses, I think our students really like the idea of the certifications courses. For example, the course in project management is huge among our students. I think it's because our students are realizing that getting their first job out of college is not going to be that easy this year in particular. This year is going to be a difficult market for many of our students. The fact that they can learn a bit more before they graduate, or one year before they graduate, that will give them a leg up compared to other students that are out in the marketplace.

And when you see what UIS students are posting on LinkedIn, you can see students saying “I just finished this certificate,” or “I'm doing this other certificate.” So they're writing about it and you can see that they are using it to leverage their opportunities whenever they are about to go into the workforce.

When we think about implementing new initiatives such as this, do you have advice on how to get key departments on campus on board? How do you approach building collaboration?

Dr. Jorge Villegas: When launching the program, I had a wonderful marketing contact helping us, Heath Bruce, our Assistant Director of Marketing. He happened to be my former student because I teach marketing. But also, I think what we've done is say, ‘what is the mission of this university? It is to be student focused.’ This program couldn't be a better example of staying student focused. I always go back to the mission. I always ask people, what does it say if we teach only people that are highly prepared, and who have the resources to be successful?

If it's in our mission, then we need to make sure that everybody is on the same page, that everybody has the same ability to graduate on time, the same ability to find a job, or to go to grad school, law school, medical school, whatever it is. That helps to bring the idea that if our mission is to be driven by students regardless of their ability to pay or whatever it is, we should be able to offer this and make sure that everybody knows about it.

» Related News: Fast Company Names Kaplan’s All Access License as a Winner in Its 2024 World Changing Ideas Awards

Career readiness is a central conversation in higher education right now. Beyond offering Kaplan’s All Access License to your students, which is a huge boost in making them work ready, what other innovative programs are you implementing in the student experience at UIS?

Dr. Jorge Villegas: In our case, we believe that knowledge is becoming a commodity. It's very easy to just spout knowledge. Really, our job is to make sure that they have experiential learning opportunities that make them better understand what kind of abilities they need to be successful in the workforce. For example, how to be an entrepreneur by learning from companies and from other entrepreneurs, and see not only in the classroom, but outside of the classroom how they can learn mostly by themselves. The world is changing so fast that what we teach you today will be different after they graduate, so we need to make sure that students learn how to learn.

Prepare your students for a successful future with Kaplan’s All Access License.