The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) has announced an upcoming professional development event tailored for educators, administrators, and institutional leaders within its member network. The organization will host a specialized webinar titled “Measuring What Matters: Embedding Career Readiness Assessment into the Undergraduate Business Curriculum and Student Experience,” scheduled for November 19, 2026, at 1 p.m. Central Time.
The virtual session is designed to address a critical priority in contemporary higher education: how colleges and universities can systematically evaluate and enhance the professional preparedness of their students before they transition into the workforce. As higher education institutions face increasing pressure to demonstrate the tangible value of an undergraduate degree, particularly in professional fields such as business, the webinar aims to provide attendees with actionable methodologies for tracking student progress, refining academic programs, and ensuring long-term career mobility.
Registration for the HACU-member webinar is currently open, and interested participants from member institutions can secure their virtual seats by accessing the registration portal online. The event forms a core component of HACU’s ongoing webinar series, which regularly highlights innovative practices, institutional success stories, and strategic initiatives aimed at supporting Hispanic-serving institutions and advancing the academic and professional success of their student bodies.
The core of the upcoming presentation will focus heavily on a real-world case study drawn from the Dominican University of California. Specifically, the session will explore how the institution has pioneered the implementation of a comprehensive pre- and post-assessment strategy directly within its undergraduate business curriculum. Rather than treating career development as an extracurricular add-on or a service handled exclusively by a separate career center, this innovative academic model integrates career readiness metrics directly into coursework.
During the webinar, attendees will learn how this intentional curricular integration allows faculty and administrators to meticulously measure student growth across several key developmental pillars. These core areas include overall career readiness, the ability to build meaningful professional networks and relationships, the cultivation of life design mindsets, and measurable indicators of long-term career mobility. By capturing data at both the beginning and the end of a student’s academic engagement with the curriculum, the institution can observe direct trajectories of professional and personal transformation.
Furthermore, the session will move beyond the theoretical benefits of assessment to provide participants with concrete, practical strategies for embedding similar evaluative frameworks into their own institutional environments. Higher education professionals often collect vast amounts of student data that remain underutilized; this webinar will address how educators can harness the resulting data to gain a deeper, more accurate understanding of student growth over time. Additionally, the insights derived from these assessments can be leveraged to identify persistent gaps or areas for curricular improvement, ultimately informing future program decisions and strategic resource allocation within business schools and undergraduate departments.
Guiding the discussion will be two prominent figures deeply involved in the intersection of higher education, curriculum design, and professional development. The presentation will be led by Giulia Welch, who serves as the director of internships and professional development as well as an adjunct professor at Dominican University of California’s prestigious Barowsky School of Business. Welch brings direct, hands-on experience in managing student transitions from the classroom to the professional sphere, having worked closely with undergraduate business majors to cultivate practical skills, secure meaningful internships, and navigate the complexities of modern job markets.
Joining Welch as a co-presenter is Marieli Rubio, partner and vice president of impact at Career Launch. Rubio brings an external, analytical perspective focused on measuring outcomes, tracking institutional impact, and scaling effective career readiness interventions. Together, Welch and Rubio are expected to offer a comprehensive, dual-lens perspective that bridges the gap between daily academic instruction inside the university classroom and broader organizational strategies for measuring student success and institutional accountability.
The inclusion of this session within the HACU-member webinar series underscores the association’s ongoing commitment to fostering excellence, innovation, and equity in higher education. HACU represents more than 500 colleges and universities committed to Hispanic success in the United States and abroad, and professional development programming of this nature is vital for equipping member institutions with the tools needed to prepare diverse student populations for leadership roles in the global economy.
As higher education continues to evolve in response to changing employer expectations and economic shifts, events like the upcoming HACU webinar provide a collaborative forum for educators to share best practices, examine successful models like the one developed at Dominican University of California, and adopt data-informed approaches that prioritize student outcomes. Institutional stakeholders interested in transforming their undergraduate business curricula and enhancing the comprehensive student experience are encouraged to register for the November 2026 event ahead of the scheduled date.
