Earning Criteria

• SCADforward is a fulfilling and challenging 10 week program. Successful completion requires participants to engage in 10, 1.5 hour synchronous participatory sessions, complete and submit assigned independent work, and deliver a capstone presentation.
• Orientation: Participants meet, identify the expectations of the course, and establish the rules for engaging and supporting each other through the program. They practice and compare attentive listening and empathic listening as strategies for creating a space that encourages self-reflection, allows participants (as well as new connections) to feel heard, and supports their ability to take action.
• Session 1: The Journey to This Moment: Connecting the Dots, Looking Back: This session provides an introduction to the journey map. Participants reflect on their life’s journey and create a map to examine the path that has led them to the present moment, to reframe this moment as success, to identify the people, strategies, experiences and circumstances that facilitated their present moment, and support their self-efficacy.
• Session 2: Future Journeys: Connecting the Dots, Looking Forward: Participants create journey maps to envision the multiverse that lays ahead. They are encouraged to lean on their past experience and successes to identify the people, resources and strategies they can use in the present to achieve the future they imagine. This exercise is the basis for the capstone project.
• Session 3: Personal Identity Statement: Identify Your “Why”: Participants reorder their view of themselves around a centralized mission or purpose that can guide them in skill development and project conceptualization.
• Session 4: Personal Alignment: Identifying Your Values & Strengths: Participants identify their strengths and values and examine how they relate to the purpose they have identified for themselves. Then they examine the alignment and/or the discrepancies between their skills, strengths, and their Why.
• Session 5: Aligning Identities: Community & Employer Perspectives: Having established their own grounding centered on purpose, participants research and align themselves within desired spheres of influence, professional organizations, or institutions.
• Session 6: Engaging your Professional Community: After understanding the basic elements of alignment, participants identify their professional communities and practice engagement within their networks through gratitude.
• Session 7: Building Relationships: Participants explore and implement strategies to foster and grow connections into lasting professional relationships. They draft outreach messages to request informational interviews with a SCAD alum or another professional of their choice.
• Session 8: Narrating Your Experience: Participants learn the importance and elements of sharing personal narratives to better communicate their skills, values, and alignment with others. They revisit their outreach for an informational interview and incorporate personal narratives where relevant.
• Session 9: Student Capstone Presentations: The capstone project includes a visual component and an oral presentation. This is the culmination of the participant's work during the program.