Your students are doing the work. They just don't know how to explain it.

Service hours, leadership, and community engagement are building real capability. We translate that into language students can use in applications, internships, and jobs.

Bring this to your program →

What your students write	What they can use
"I completed 120 hours of community service through my scholarship."	Sustained direct community engagement across an academic year. Demonstrated reliability and long-term commitment. Documented.
"I led my service-learning group project."	Coordinated team deliverables and maintained project momentum across stakeholders. Adaptive Leadership: demonstrated.
"I organized events for our campus organization."	Planned and executed student programming with cross-group coordination. Initiative and project management, named and ready to use.

This is what student engagement looks like in professional language.

The problem

Your students are not behind. They are undertranslated.

NACE's 2025 employer survey found a 30%+ perception gap between how proficient students believe they are in career-readiness competencies and how employers actually rate them. The students in your program are building exactly the capabilities employers rank highest. The gap is documentation.

30%+

Perception gap between student self-assessment and employer rating for leadership. NACE 2025.

65%

of employers now use skills-based hiring. GPA is a filter for only 38%. NACE Job Outlook 2025.

1,000+

Student and professional experiences translated using this framework.

What your program receives

Two deliverables. One for each student. One for you.

Each student receives

A ranked, evidence-based capability profile built from their specific experiences. Professional language for their service work, campus leadership, and community involvement. Resume bullets, interview language, and roles their capabilities qualify them for.

Your program receives

A cohort aggregate report with capability distribution data, pre/post movement tracking, and program-level recommendations. Structured for grant reporting, accreditation documentation, and federal performance requirements.

Real student responses

This is what your students already have.

"At Madonna Mission, I took initiative when planning ESL lessons for adult women. There wasn't a set curriculum, so I had to figure it out on my own."

Designed programming from scratch. Adapted content for adult learners across language and cultural differences.

Initiative. Cross-Cultural Competency.

"I organized a trip to LA for our club to make it financially possible for student members, many of whom had never traveled for a professional event."

Removed access barriers. Coordinated fundraising, travel logistics, and stakeholder communication across a student organization.

Equity-centered project management. Systems Thinking.

"I coordinated with our director and planned an event at DePaul in collaboration with Sigma Lambda Gamma and Enlace Chicago."

Managed a multi-organization partnership from concept to execution. Navigated institutional, cultural, and logistical coordination.

Community Leadership. Collaboration.

"I'm white, and work with exclusively Black children from West and Southside neighborhoods. Since hearing students say all the volunteers look the same, I've been more intentional about how I show up."

Recognized a systemic dynamic and adjusted her approach in response. Self-awareness meeting cross-cultural competency, in action.

Self-Awareness. Cross-Cultural Competency.

These are real responses from CSS scholars at DePaul University.

How programs use this

Three ways to work together.

Speaking and Workshops

Single sessions or multi-part series delivered to student cohorts, program staff, or both. Student-facing sessions are experiential. Participants leave with professional language for at least one documented experience. Staff-facing sessions focus on applying the translation framework in advising and course design.

Format: single session, half-day, full-day, or multi-session series.

Cohort Year Engagement

The longitudinal model for programs with two to four years of student access. Baseline assessment in year one. Mid-program check-in. Graduation-year profile build. Curriculum integration at each stage.

Built for TRiO programs, scholarship cohorts, service-learning minors, honors programs, and any program with mandatory sustained student participation.

Student Capability Profile

Individual capability profiles for your entire cohort. Same 12-capability framework, assessment calibrated for service-learning and community-based experience. Each student receives their profile. Your program receives the cohort aggregate report.

Available for pilot cohorts now by inquiry.

The research foundation

Built on frameworks your institution already uses.

The 12 capabilities are grounded in NACE Career Readiness Competencies and WEF Future of Jobs 2025 research, the frameworks employers and institutions use to define professional readiness. The proficiency framework draws from deliberate practice research. Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer's 1993 work on expert performance established that extended consistent practice produces qualitatively different capability than occasional demonstration. The thresholds are not arbitrary.

Presented at the Campus Compact national conference, Chicago, March 2026. Active institutional partnerships in the United States and Australia.

About

Developed inside a scholarship program. Refined over two years going on three of institutional use.

This framework was built inside a cohort-based scholarship program at DePaul University's Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning.

The students doing the most meaningful work were the ones struggling most to explain it. The framework was originally built to close that gap.

Two years going on three of use with those cohorts, institutional work in the United States and Australia, and presentations at Campus Compact and international higher education conferences confirmed the same pattern across programs.

It was built for the students your program is already serving.