January 29, 2025
Business Instructor Kristy McDonald and her students shop for thanksgiving meal items as part of an experiential learning project.NMC now has an answer for student job seekers who confront an enduring conundrum: Employers want experience. But how do you show experience if you haven’t had a job yet?
The NMC Experience Transcript, or nEXt, will give students a way to demonstrate that they’ve gained experience during their education, particularly in sought-after soft skills like communication, teamwork and problem solving.
“It presents evidence around that,” said Jennifer Ewing of Human Resource Partners in Traverse City. She likened the nEXt endorsement to a portfolio, a standard for fields like graphic design or architecture.
“It’s really giving the student a way to go into the employer and demonstrate what they’re learning in a more tangible way,” said Ewing, who’s worked in HR for more than 30 years.
Debuting as a pilot this semester, nEXt will roll out collegewide this fall. It’s a project of NMC’s Experiential Learning Institute, created in 2019. Led by faculty members Kristy McDonald and Brandon Everest, the Institute formalized NMC’s commitment to experiential learning, which actively engages learners through relevant, hands-on experience, critical problem solving and reflective practices.
Emma Herrington is a member of the pilot cohort. The 2024 Traverse City West High School graduate has taken three EL classes with McDonald so far, starting as a dual-enrolled high school student, and said they affirmed her desire to open her own business after she graduates this fall.
“I’ve never heard of a school doing this much hands-on learning before,” Herrington said. “A lot of universities will just make you do the textbook information. You can’t apply that to the workforce until you’ve graduated or had an internship.”
In addition to taking EL-designated classes, students must earn points for the nEXt endorsement from four different domains which make up the EL cycle: discovery, exploration, mastery and reflection. Options include presenting at a conference, being a member or leader of a campus student group, conducting community research, mentoring, honors projects, independent study, registered apprenticeships, internships, community service and campus or community events.
Kenzie Kazim, another member of the pilot cohort, looks forward to the variety. Thanks to a contact she made with a commercial real estate first through her EL class, Kazim plans to get her real estate license this summer and hopes to get an internship there.
”It felt like a more meaningful learning experience to me, instead of feeling I had crammed all this information from a textbook and forgotten it as soon as I had a test,” Kazim said.
“I fully support it. I wish more schools would do that,” said Jennifer Anderson, HR at Traverse City manufacturer Tentcraft. “I really think it gives students an edge, having that extra learning piece and have it for their interviews later on.”