Career connectedness as a co-curricular approach for technology programs

Technology employers continue to report a gap between graduates’ technical preparation and their professional readiness for workforce entry (NACE, 2024). In response to the limits of episodic career preparation, this paper presents a practice-based case study of TECH + BITS, a career-connected co-curricular approach developed across technology programs at a regional university over eighteen months. The program comprises two integrated layers: TECH (Technology Engagement for Career Horizons), organized through Special Interest Groups, community-of-practice infrastructure, career-connected extra credit, a speaker series, and identity-formation courses; and BITS (Business and Industry Technology Solutions), a faculty-supervised student consultancy through which teams deliver technology solutions for local organizations. We describe the design, implementation, and descriptive outcomes from its first eighteen months. These include a +0.42 gain in self-reported career readiness in a student experience survey (N = 64), computing employment for 14% of active participants, internships for 11%, and an institutional ranking of 8th nationally in the Spring 2026 National Cyber League Power Rankings among more than 500 institutions. The paper’s contribution is practical and design-oriented: a replicable framework for making career readiness more cumulative, visible, and professionally legible in technology programs.