Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • February 4, 2019 • Hartford Business Journal 15 The Bushnell ' s Annual Gala supports The Bunell's arts--education and communy pact iniatives. Saturday 2 Mar BUSHNELL.ORG /OVAT IONS OVATIONS 2019 INTERESTED IN CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP? Contact Marta Ostapiuk at mostapiuk@bushnell.org or 860-987-6009. among students in coming years and they want to cater to market demand. In 2016-2017, there was 400 percent growth in job postings related to the blockchain industry on LinkedIn, fol- lowed by 700 percent growth in 2017- 2018, USJ said. According to Indeed. com, 25.5 percent of all postings for "blockchain engineer" are between New York City and Boston. "I think increasingly we will see stu- dents wanting to build strength in a career-related discipline like actuarial science or accounting, but then also continuing their preparation in the liberal arts," Free said. That's not novel thinking, said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Col- leges & Universi- ties (AAC&U). The associa- tion, which aims to advance the vitality and public standing of liberal- arts education, recently enlisted Washington-based Hart Research Associates to conduct a survey of 501 CEOs and 500 hiring managers at Fortune 500 companies to find out how they view the higher-education backgrounds of prospective hires, she said. Pasquerella said there's a discon- nect between executives and hiring managers in the premium they place on a liberal-arts education. "CEOs of Fortune 500 com- panies have said, 'Oh we love liberal-arts majors, we want people who have majored in the humanities,' but do your hiring managers know that? Are they actually hiring people with these degrees?" Pasquerella said. "There's been a false dichotomy in the narrative that disconnects curriculum to career, and there's nothing inconsistent about a liberal-arts education and career preparation." Core mission As liberal-arts schools seek to promote themselves as places where students can re- ceive job training, they should be cautious about drifting away from their core mission, which could alienate staffers and stu- dents, said Louis Soares, chief learning and innovation officer at the American Council on Education, a higher-ed advo- cacy group. However, there are ways in which institutions can have their cake and eat it too. Partnering with businesses on intern- ship programs fits this bill, Soares said. Liberal-arts schools can find businesses that connect with their curricula, and set up internship and apprenticeship programs, Soares said. Then students develop work skills as they advance soft skills studying the humanities. That's the direction Mitchell College in New London took two years ago, when President Janet Steinmayer in- troduced a career-immersion model. "It's a progressive involvement with our 50 local partners so that (stu- dents) begin to understand how their strengths and their interests and their coursework connects with what they'll do in the business market," said Steinmayer. "Day one, they're … visiting our local partners and they're under- standing, like at the Mystic Aquarium, that it's about sci- ence and oceanography, but it's also about having an HR department, and a marketing department." Participating partners from the Mystic Aquarium to Mohegan Sun offer stu- dents experience in a broad array of industries, Stein- mayer said. Another challenge in add- ing job-training programs can be professors' aversion to it, said Georgetown's Carnevale. But while some faculty may fret the idea of watering down liberal-arts studies, the job market favors graduates with specific skills. For smaller liberal-arts schools without the benefit of broad name recognition, embracing the swing toward higher education as a job-training system — at least to some degree — will be necessary to their survival, he said. "It matters less and less where you go, it matters more and more what (courses) you take," Carnevale said. "You can educate the hell out of people, but if they end up living under a bridge, you've failed." Janet Steinmayer, President, Mitchell College The Trinity College-Infosys partnership The partnership between Trinity College and Infosys will launch its first jointly developed training program this month. It's for new Infosys employees who have a general liberal-arts background and will be starting as entry-level business analysts in Hartford. The pilot program will launch in mid-February as Infosys continues to grow its downtown Hartford presence, where it occupies office space at Goodwin Square and has pledged to hire 1,000 new workers in the next four years. In exchange for meeting those hiring goals, Infosys will receive up to $12 million in state grants and $2 million in training funds. Dubbed the "Business Analysis for Digital Transformation," the Trinity course will include training in basic business analysis for enabling digital transformation, human-centered design principles, and how to apply critical thinking and analysis, leadership principles and com- munication skills to this new setting. The program will be offered regularly to Infosys employees. Trinity and Infosys also plan to co-develop other programs that attempt to bridge the liberal arts and the future of digital technology.

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