Redesigning Our Curricula to Foster Career Readiness
Benjamin RifkinUndergraduate majors are not engraved in stone; curricula have been adjusted and changed over the course of the history of higher education and now is the time to change our curricula once again. This article proposes a reconceptualization of the undergraduate major in Russian away from the framework of “coverage of the humanistic canon” to a framework focusing on the development of transferable or durable skills, i.e., skills that can be deployed in numerous employment contexts throughout an individual’s career trajectory to support career-readiness, in accordance with powerful frameworks offered by prominent educational organizations. This approach helps us support the goals of our institutions’ missions for undergraduate education to prepare students for meaningful lives and fulfilling careers as citizens of local, regional, national, and global communities.