Welcome to INTER-LS 215
215 Communicating About Careers
Spring 2021 / 3 cr Comm-B
This three-credit Comm-B course explores the meaning and value of your liberal arts and sciences education for careers in the global, technological, and multicultural workplace of the 21st century -- no matter what your major.
Through a series of individual and collaborative research and communication assignments, you will learn to critically analyze the career and education implications of a diverse and digital workplace, and to critically reflect on your own strengths and values as you prepare to connect your college work with lifelong career success.
Level: Elementary
Gen-Ed: Fulfills Comm-B requirement
Breadth: Social Science (S)
Requisites: Must have satisfied Comm-A requirement. Open to all students regardless of year or major.
Instruction mode: Online (Some Classroom)
Lecture: Tuesdays, 2:30pm-3:45pm central time -- live in-person in 3650 Humanities and simultaneously streamed online at go.wisc.edu/n6986j for remote viewing. (Selected online-only sessions held through BBCollaborate Ultra.) All lecture sessions recorded for later viewing on Kaltura.
Discussion: Thursdays, times vary -- online synchronous 75-minute sessions, using Zoom (consult TA for Zoom address).
Credits: Three credits.
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Professor DIS 301 - Thu 2:30pm-3:45pm central time
Teaching Assistants DIS 303 - Thu 11am-12:15pm central time
DIS 302 - Thu 11am-12:15pm central time
DIS 304 - Thu 11am-12:15pm central time
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Career Advising Career Education Coordinator
Not an L&S Student?
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How does this course work?
In Spring 2021, INTER-LS 215 is being taught in a mode which provides both online access and in-person options for students, depending on their circumstances during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
- Monday career readings and assignments. To start each week, students must turn in that week's career Assignments online through Canvas. We usually ask students to also post selected reflections about those assignments to the online text Discussions board for their section. These career assignments are always due Monday at midnight.
- Tuesday lectures. Lecture meetings are held Tuesday afternoon from 2:30pm-3:45pm, and may be in-person or online, depending on whether the student originally registered for the course as an in-person or an online course. (However, any in-person student may choose to attend the online section instead.) All in-person lectures happen in Humanities 3650, and are live-streamed at go.wisc.edu/n6986j for students who registered for the online lecture. (These lectures will also be recorded for later viewing if you miss them live.)
- Wednesday scholarly readings and reflections. In the middle of of each week, students must read one or two scholarly articles, and complete a written reflections Assignment -- submitting the reflections through Canvas and posting about those reflections to their online text Discussions board for their section. In addition, on most weeks two students from each section will prepare a special 5-minute speech on one of the week's articles, to be performed live the next day in their Zoom discussion section meeting. These reflection and speech assignments are always due Wednesday at midnight.
- Thursday discussion sections. Discussions are held at selected times either Thursday morning (11am central time) or Thursday afternoons (2:30pm central time). All discussion section meetings occur synchronously and online through the Zoom web video conferencing tool. Your TA will provide you with the section Zoom room address. (You can also find the live discussion links on our Zoom Rooms page.)
- Friday essay assignments. Finally, on Fridays each week, students work step-by-step through two four-page essay assignments -- one on technology in the modern workplace, and one on diversity/inclusion issues in the modern workforce. These essay assignments are always due Friday at midnight.
Special COVID-19 practices for in-person lecture
Our in-person lectures happen on Tuesday afternoons in 3650 Humanities. This is a lecture hall that normally holds nearly 500 students, but we will be seating no more than 75 students a time to preserve physical distancing.
Remember to follow these safety practices in lecture:
- Students should fill seats from the front center of the lecture hall outward, in order, and sit six feet away from each other. (Appropriate seating will be marked.)
- Free cleaning supplies will be available for students to clean their hands and seating areas.
- Students should wear face coverings at all times.
- And -- if you feel ill, please do not come to in-person lecture, and instead view it online, either live or recorded.
See more COVID-19 related information here.
Learning outcomes
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Understand, evaluate, and communicate arguments about the nature of work in contemporary global, digital, and multicultural society, with respect to a specific target career community.
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Develop and communicate a compelling personal career narrative about your path through a liberal arts and sciences education, with respect to a specific target career community.
Syllabus on one page
(Click on the image to download this syllabus as a one-page PDF)
Textbooks
We use five textbooks for the course. The first three are printed books available at the University Bookstore and also at online retailers (they should cost about $20 each):
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Katharine Brooks, You Majored in What? Designing Your Path from College to Career, revised ed. (2017) Links to an external site.. This book is a comprehensive guide to the job search process, written by an expert in career advising and targeted to liberal arts and sciences university students. It should remain useful to you throughout your time at UW-Madison and beyond.
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Don Clifton, Clifton Strengths for Students (2017) Links to an external site.. This book has a unique code in it that allows you to take an online strengths assessment for one of your assignments. If you do not have a copy of this book, or if you purchase this book as a used copy, you will need to spend an extra $12 to directly purchase access to the online assessment.
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Wayne C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 4th ed. (2016) Links to an external site.. This guide to researching and writing scholarly papers of any length -- from the four-page essays we practice in this class to an undergraduate research thesis of fifty-pages -- is a classic resource that you can use all throughout your college career and beyond.
The last two textbooks are freely available online:
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Greg Downey, Working Toward Success: Building a Career in the Liberal Arts and Sciences (2019)
Download Greg Downey, Working Toward Success: Building a Career in the Liberal Arts and Sciences (2019) . This 200-page PDF textbook is freely available to download chapter-by-chapter here.
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UW-Madison Writer's Handbook. This free online resource, developed here at UW-Madison, contains valuable guidance on improving your writing.
Scholarly articles
In this course we read and reflect on several scholarly articles, all available for download below (and also in the Modules section of this site):
Practice article
- Ashley Finley, "The future has gone soft on skills: Why campuses should be working harder to cement personal and social development with learning," from Moner, William, et al., Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) Download Ashley Finley, "The future has gone soft on skills: Why campuses should be working harder to cement personal and social development with learning," from Moner, William, et al., Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).
Speaking guide
- Sullivan, Jay. "See it. Save it. Say it. Delivering from notes and visuals," from Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Download Sullivan, Jay. "See it. Save it. Say it. Delivering from notes and visuals," from Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Technology articles
- Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, “The triple revolution Download The triple revolution,” in Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future (W.W. Norton, 2017).
- Ilana Gershon, “Didn’t we meet on LinkedIn? Download Didn’t we meet on LinkedIn?” in Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017).
- Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, and Garth R. Andrus, "The future of work Download The future of work," in The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation (MIT Press, 2019).
- Allison Scott, Freada Kapor Klein, and Uriridiakoghene Onovakpuri, Tech Leavers Study Download Tech Leavers Study (Kapor Center for Social Impact, 2017).
- Atul Gawande, "Why doctors hate their computers Download Why doctors hate their computers," The New Yorker (Nov. 12, 2018).
- Cal Newport, "Can remote work be fixed? Download Can remote work be fixed?" The New Yorker (May 26, 2020).
- Alex Rosenblat, "Driving as glamorous labor Download Driving as glamorous labor" in Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2018).
- Simon Head, "Big brother goes digital Download Big brother goes digital," The New York Review of Books (May 24, 2018).
Writing guide
- Richard Marius, "Kinds of writing" in A Writer's Companion, 3rd ed. (1995). Download Richard Marius, "Kinds of writing" in A Writer's Companion, 3rd ed. (1995).
Diversity/inclusion articles
- Thomas J. Sugrue, “Less separate, still unequal: Diversity and equality in ‘post-civil rights’ America, Download Less separate, still unequal: Diversity and equality in ‘post-civil rights’ America,” in E. Lewis et al., eds., Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society (Princeton Univ. Press, 2016).
- John Palfrey, “The case for diversity Download The case for diversity,” in Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education (MIT Press, 2017).
- Christianne Corbett and Catherine Hill, selection from Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women's Success in Engineering and Computing Download Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women's Success in Engineering and Computing (AAUW, 2015).
- Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince, Diversity Matters Download Diversity Matters (McKinsey & Company, 2015).
- Karyn R. Lacy, "Black spaces, black places: Strategic assimilation and identity construction in middle-class suburbia Download Black spaces, black places: Strategic assimilation and identity construction in middle-class suburbia," Ethnic and Racial Studies 27:6 (2004).
- Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, "The Black plague Download The Black plague," The New Yorker (April 16, 2020).
- Lauren A. Rivera, “The paper Download The paper,” in Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs (Princeton Univ. Press, 2015).
- Laura Hamilton, Josipa Roksa, and Kelly Nielsen, “Providing a ‘leg up’: Parental involvement and opportunity hoarding in college Download Providing a ‘leg up’: Parental involvement and opportunity hoarding in college,” Sociology of Education 91:2 (2018).
Action guide
- Eric Deggans, "'Not racist' is not enough: Putting in the work to be anti-racist," National Public Radio (August 24, 2020). Download Eric Deggans, "'Not racist' is not enough: Putting in the work to be anti-racist," National Public Radio (August 24, 2020).
Grading policies
- Final grading scale. Semester grades are computed out of 100 possible points on the standard A-F scale:
93-100 = A
88-92 = AB
83-87 = B
78-82 = BC
73-77 = C
63-72 = D
0-62 = F
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Absences from discussion section. Students are expected to attend and participate in each discussion section in order to earn full points for that section. A TA may occasionally grant a student an excused absence (no points deducted) for an emergency or medical reason. Students should request any excused absence within 48 hours of the section meeting date.
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Late assignments. Students are expected to turn in all assignments complete and on time. Incomplete assignments, or assignments not turned in by the deadline, will earn zero points. A TA may occasionally grant a student an extension on an assignment (no points deducted) for an emergency or medical reason. Students should request an extension within 48 hours of the assignment due date.
- Make-up assignments. Students may choose to complete up to ten points of make-up assignments to compensate for points missed on regular assignments or points missed due to unexcused absences. These make-up assignments are listed at the bottom of the Assignments page. All make-up assignments must be turned in by the last day of instruction in the semester, before final exam week begins.
- Multiple absences, missed assignments, and/or lack of communication. Students who miss two discussion sections in a row, or who fail to turn in two assignments in a row, will be emailed by their TA (with a copy to the professor) out of concern for their well-being. If a student does not respond to us about their plans for making up missed work within 24 hours, our next step is to contact the Dean of Students office.
Students tend to earn high grades in this course, by completing all of the assignments on time and with integrity. However, you will only get out of this course what you put into it. Many of the assignments cover tasks like reflecting on your experiences, putting together a resume, and setting up a LinkedIn site, which you'll have to do anyway -- so why not get some guidance and credit along the way?
Supporting Your Academic Success
If you find yourself needing additional support, please look through the support resources below to help you be successful.
- Academic Support: See all of your options for tutoring, writing help, study skills assistance, and more in one place.
- 2020-2021 Student Planner: Download a PDF copy.
- McBurney Disability Resource Center - Apply for Accommodations
- Netiquette Guidelines: Review the set of guidelines for online behavior.
- Tips for Virtual Learning
- UW Libraries: Make an appointment, request materials for in-person pickup, or access tons of resources online.
- Writing Center Writer’s Handbook: Citation style guidelines and examples, writing style guides, and more!
Testimonials
I want to tell you how I will be graduating in May and received a job offer all the way back in October to work at Epic starting in June. I feel that a big reason I got the job was not only because of the interview techniques I used that I have already mentioned, but also because of the networking I did. Before even applying for the job at the job fair in the Fall, I used LinkedIn to search for UW alumni who work at Epic (as you showed us), reached out to them to see if I could speak with them, conducted informational interviews with them, and then used what I learned in speaking with these current Epic employees to improve and tailor my responses during my phone and onsite interviews. I have no doubt that both the interview techniques I learned in your class as well as the ability to use informational interviews and network with others played a critical role in me getting hired!