The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) has announced an upcoming professional development event tailored for educators, administrators, and institutional leaders across its member network. Scheduled for November 19, 2026, at 1 p.m. Central Time, the virtual session is titled “Measuring What Matters: Embedding Career Readiness Assessment into the Undergraduate Business Curriculum and Student Experience.” The online event aims to address a critical and growing priority within higher education: how institutions can systematically evaluate, document, and enhance the professional preparedness of their undergraduate students before they enter the workforce.
As colleges and universities face mounting expectations from students, families, and employers to demonstrate clear return on investment and tangible employment outcomes, academic programs are increasingly tasked with moving beyond traditional classroom instruction. Institutions are now seeking reliable methods to integrate career development directly into the academic journey. This HACU-member webinar is designed to provide participants with concrete frameworks for meeting that challenge, using a real-world institutional case study to illustrate how assessment strategies can be seamlessly woven into everyday coursework and broader student programming.
Registration for the webinar is currently open, and interested faculty members, department chairs, deans, and career services professionals associated with HACU member institutions can secure their virtual seats by accessing the official registration portal provided through Zoom. The session forms part of the ongoing HACU-member webinar series, which regularly highlights innovative practices, institutional success stories, and strategic initiatives designed to support Hispanic-Serving Institutions and foster student success nationwide.
At the core of the upcoming presentation is an in-depth look at the pioneering work currently underway at the Dominican University of California. Specifically, the webinar will explore how the institution is successfully implementing a comprehensive pre- and post-assessment strategy within its undergraduate business curriculum. Rather than treating career preparation as an extracurricular activity or an afterthought addressed only during a student’s final semester, the Barowsky School of Business at Dominican University of California has integrated career readiness metrics directly into the academic experience.
Through this strategic approach, the institution aims to measure student growth across several crucial domains that traditional academic grading systems often fail to capture fully. These areas include tangible career readiness, the intentional development of professional relationship-building skills, the adoption of life design mindsets, and overall career mobility. By capturing baseline data at the beginning of a student’s engagement and comparing it with assessments conducted later in the curriculum, educators and administrators can gain a clearer, empirically grounded understanding of how academic programs influence professional growth over time.
Participants attending the November webinar will walk away with practical, actionable strategies for embedding similar assessment frameworks into their own institutional curricula. Furthermore, the session will address how colleges and universities can effectively analyze the resulting data. Understanding how to interpret assessment outcomes allows academic leaders to measure student growth accurately, pinpoint specific areas within the curriculum that may require revision or enhancement, and make informed, data-driven decisions regarding future program development and resource allocation.
Sharing these valuable insights will be two distinguished professionals who bring deep expertise in academic administration, student professional development, and impact measurement. 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 the Barowsky School of Business at Dominican University of California. Welch brings a hands-on perspective rooted in daily interaction with business students, employer partners, and faculty members, offering attendees a realistic view of how curricular changes are designed, implemented, and sustained in a university setting.
Joining Welch as a co-presenter is Marieli Rubio, partner and vice president of impact at Career Launch. Rubio brings an external, specialized perspective focused on outcomes measurement, programmatic impact, and scaling strategies that bridge the gap between higher education and the modern professional landscape. Together, Welch and Rubio will combine academic operational experience with specialized assessment expertise, providing webinar attendees with a well-rounded understanding of both the pedagogical “how-to” and the broader institutional impact of measuring career readiness.
The webinar is offered exclusively as part of the HACU-member webinar series, reflecting the association’s ongoing commitment to providing high-value professional development resources to its extensive network of colleges and universities. By spotlighting innovative institutional models like the one developed at Dominican University of California, HACU continues to foster collaborative learning and the sharing of best practices among member institutions dedicated to advancing educational equity, professional mobility, and student achievement.
