In College of Business & Public Policy (CBAPP), the largest drop in retention occurs during students’ first year (CSU Student Success Dashboard, 2023); a time when most students have yet to take courses in CBAPP. The new CBAPP Belong Series was developed to foster student belonging by creating a fun and culturally affirming space for students to develop an academic identity linked to their major and goals. Anchored by the CBAPP Student Success Center, the goal is to contribute to a “unified community of support” (Holcombe & Kezar, 2020) that leverages recent structural changes to university advising and draws on partnerships with existing University support services, including the Peer Mentor program through the OFSYE, the Writing Center, the Toro Testing and Learning Center, and the CBAPP Internship program. Garcia et al.’s (2019) multidimensional framework of “servingness” at Hispanic Serving Institutions will guide the curriculum development and assessment process for the CBAPP Belong Series. Better student retention can be achieved by engaging students in the CBAPP community, connecting their coursework and university experience with their future goals, and holistically supporting them with an intentional network of advisors, peer mentors, faculty, staff, alumni, and other university resources.

Citation is often taught to students as an arbitrary list of mechanics to memorize and then replicate. Students themselves frequently refer to citation practices as a way to avoid punishment for plagiarism and as a source of anxiety for their grade. This presentation will reframe citation instruction as a rhetorical information literacy practice. The library faculty presenter will highlight activities and strategies to teach reading citation, scholarship as a conversation, and referencing as a potential site of social justice as a way to uplift marginalized authors and creators. Citation practices reflect our values and we can do better than replicating existing power structures in our works cited pages.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have historically been associated with STEM, but are expanding into other fields. CUREs may benefit undergraduate business majors, but some students do not perceive “doing research” as part of business. The authors ask whether a business CURE can lead students to begin self-identifying as researchers. Particular attention is paid to explicitness: Do students report different self-identifi- cation outcomes if they are explicitly told they are doing research? Survey data are collected from a required entrepreneurship course in which an instructor explicitly talks about her research career and authentically characterizes normal course activities as “scientific research” in some course sections but not in others. Pre- and post-course surveys show statistically significant growth in student self-identification as researchers only in the “explicit CURE” sections.

Americans generally believe that college should provide specific, workplace-related skills, however, less than half of college students graduate from college with the career goal of finding a job that would put their college degree to use. This mismatch of education to career goals challenges the Human Capital Theory that suggests that underemployment is involuntary and if not for circumstances beyond one's control, such as labor market dynamics and economic fluctuations, they would be more adequately employed. Nevertheless, most college graduates willingly become underemployed as they navigate post-college employment. Students who choose to be voluntarily underemployed are worth learning more about how students identify their career goals and the correlating factors to their decision.
Original research completed as part of a CSU Ed.D program, uses Social Cognitive Career Theory to present how students' characteristics interact with their engagement opportunities through their curricular, co-curricular, and work experiences and how they shape their post-graduation career intentions. College is a critical time for identity formation and career identification. By assisting students in understanding they have what it takes to reach their career goals, we can help the next generation of leaders to achieve their full potential and impact our communities.