Institutions are playing a more hands-on role in preparing young people for greater things after earning their degree. At the 2024 University Innovation Alliance National Summit, we heard from two speakers spotlighting two very different initiatives, each striking a similar chord of mentoring and supporting young people to launch their careers. Arizona State University’s (ASU) Brandee Popaden-Smith spoke about the intentional learning embedded in her school’s Work+ program, and University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Dr. Ryan Goodwin shared his growth as a higher education leader through the UIA Fellows Program.
Early-Stage Professional Development for Students
Arizona State’s Work+, originally called the Working Learners Program, started when ASU was awarded the University Innovation Alliance’s Bridging the Gap From Education to Employment (BGE) grant. Director Popaden-Smith was there from the beginning, bringing her career development expertise to the project:
We spent hours in empathy interviews with students and alumni. We talked to first-year students, graduate students, students who were first in their family to go to college, students from families where a college degree was an expectation. We listened for ideas for improving our career development support. And students were saying, "We're not waiting until graduation; we're working now." The majority were doing it because they had to. And we heard that our students weren't seeing this work aligning with their major or preparing them for what they wanted to do after graduation. We knew about internships and other work-based learning opportunities. There was no shortage of data about the value of these experiences from employers and alumni, but the students we talked to didn't feel like they had easy access to these kinds of opportunities.
The team quickly realized that ASU itself could model those ideal opportunities.
In fall 2020, we launched the Working Learners Program. We had students working in part-time jobs in colleges and units across the university as we explored how might we redesign these experiences for our students and better support the supervisors coaching, guiding, and leading these students. A critical question was how might our entire university benefit from student employment as a part of our student success strategy?
ASU’s Work+ Program: A Work in Progress
Director Popaden-Smith reflected on a four-year journey that was far from linear:
How many times has our team asked ourselves, "Why in the world didn't we think about this in the last iteration?" But what we’ve done is ensure that the 12,000 students working for ASU annually had an opportunity to engage in an intentionally designed, high-quality work experience, that they weren't having to go outside of the institution to find real-world opportunities.
We want to understand these problems in all their nuances. We're not tied to one set of solutions. We're constantly improving and iterating based upon what we're learning from our students and supervisors. We know that it's important to partner and learn from others outside of Arizona State University. And that led us to engage and connect with institutions across the country to understand what student employment looks like on their campuses, because we were not the only ones who saw student employment as a ripe opportunity for transformation.
In 2023, ASU launched the Work+ Collective, a national initiative for institutions with shared values around working learners. Director Popaden-Smith concluded:
I invite you to join over 25 institutions who are in the middle of redesigning what student work looks like on their campus. Unintended consequences shouldn't scare us. They’re actually very exciting. We can't wait for innovation to be perfect before we act. Our millions of students are counting on us to act now.
Supporting Successful Leaders From the Beginning
At another session of the UIA Summit, Dr. Ryan Goodwin shared his experiences with a very different type of mentored learning: the UIA Fellows Program. While rising higher ed leaders are working professionals with a more specialized focus than undergraduate students getting an early start on the college to career track, both groups benefit from structured, intentional support by organizations invested in helping them succeed. For Dr. Goodwin, a member of the first UIA Fellows cohort, this meant joining the University of Central Florida in 2015:
UCF saw my potential and gave me the opportunity to work in the president's office at one of the nation's largest universities. It was my first job post grad school, and I had no idea what I was doing. Over nine and a half years, I've had the privilege to witness and contribute to monumental shifts in how we support our students at UCF. I started with an office in a closet and was named founding director of the Center for Higher Education Innovation. The center didn't have many resources, but I had the most important one: confidence in me and my future from UCF leadership and from the UIA. I was given the chance to hire our second UIA fellow. I aced that test. Dr. Anna Drake Warshaw, my first hire, is excellent at everything I'm terrible at, and she went on to become president of the Associated Colleges of the South.
Since outgrowing his closet office, Dr. Goodwin has served as assistant vice president, assistant dean, and senior assistant vice president for strategic initiatives and chief of staff in UCF’s Division of Student Success and Wellbeing. He said:
I'm honored to lead a team of about 200, including UCF's academic success coaches, training and development team, academic advocates, communications and marketing, and our innovation initiatives. Our work impacts all 60,000-plus UCF undergrads.
How the UIA Fellows Program Drives Student Success
Dr. Goodwin’s work stands as an ongoing example of the UIA’s objectives to prioritize student success:
The UIA’s partnership pushed us to innovate and collaborate to reshape UCF's strategy, culture, and results. It has helped spur other critical partnerships, such as with the National Institute for Student Success (NISS). Together, we've scaled a student success chatbot used by over 250,000 unique users, re-imagined advising analytics, implemented and scaled completion grants, innovated the college-to-career experience, and launched one of the largest advising reforms in the nation, shifting from decentralized to a fully centralized model. By assigning our UCF students an academic success coach, we’re empowering them to thrive and transform their aspirations into achievements.
UCF’s accomplishments speak for themselves:
We're proud of our nearly 93% retention rate. And while our four-year graduation rate was 40% ten years ago, now it's 58.7% – nearly a 70% increase in the last decade. We have our sights set on helping our students achieve a 65% four-year graduation rate by 2027.
Dr. Goodwin reflected that, rather than happening in a single moment, transformation is a continuous process:
It's the cumulative impact of small daily actions by leaders who care deeply and invest in people on the ground. I've seen this firsthand, from our provost, president, and many other UCF leaders who are willing to champion collaboration and innovation. UCF invested in my success because they saw someone passionate about student success, and then they did that 100 times over with other folks who are passionate about student success and a consistent commitment to collaborative innovation. The work that transforms careers and institutions is led by people who are willing to take bold risks, invest in collaboration, and drive incremental yet powerful change through daily intentional efforts to innovate and uplift. And when we do that together, we not only change institutions, we change lives.
Beyond the First Steps
The most obvious outcome of a student success initiative is enabling more young people to complete their academic programs, walk the stage, and collect their diplomas. While that’s no small accomplishment, it can and should be just the first step in a lifetime of success for those graduates. ASU’s Work+ program offers an emerging model for how institutions can provide students with an onramp to the skills they’ll need after graduation. And for those choosing a career in higher ed leadership, the UIA Fellows program continues to mentor young professionals working and growing at institutions that are innovating to help even more students succeed.
Note: These episodes of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast originally aired on March 31 and May 19, 2025. The podcast appears live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Brandee Popaden-Smith
- Ryan Goodwin
- Work+
- UIA Fellows Program
- Arizona State University
- University of Central Florida
- National Institute for Student Success
- Bridging the Gap From Education to Employment: A Playbook for Transforming College-to-Career, UIA, 9/8/22
- Our First Decade of Innovation: The UIA’s 2024 Annual Report, UIA, 1/29/25
- Chatbots and AI in Higher Ed, UIA, 4/27/23
- The Future of Academic Advising, UIA, 6/23/22
- Completion Grants: Innovative Financial Aid for Today’s Students, UIA, 11/3/22
- Innovate With Us at the University Innovation Alliance’s National Summit, UIA, 4/11/24
- Dr. Anna Drake Warshaw (former UIA Fellow currently serving as president of Associated Colleges of the South)
Watch the Archives
Bios of Guests and Host
With over two decades of experience in higher education, Brandee Popaden-Smith is a higher education leader specializing in career development and exploration, experiential learning, and work-integrated learning. She is committed to advancing equity and opportunity for underserved populations, including first-generation students, students of color, and those from high-need backgrounds. As Senior Director, University College at Arizona State University, Director Popaden-Smith oversees the Work + Learn unit in addition to college-wide grants and projects. By leveraging emerging technologies and forging innovative partnerships with universities, EdTech, and industry leaders, she has driven transformative change across the higher education landscape. With a BA in interpersonal communication from University of Central Florida and a Master’s in higher and post-secondary education, Director Popaden-Smith is dedicated to reshaping higher education to meet the needs of today’s learners, scaling impact through a steadfast focus on access, inclusion, and opportunity.
Dr. Ryan Goodwin is the assistant vice president for Strategic Initiatives. He serves as a member of the executive team for UCF’s Division of Student Success and Well-Being. He also oversees the Center for Higher Education Innovation and the Office of Data and Strategic Projects and supports divisional efforts to create an ecosystem in which all students thrive. Dr. Goodwin’s research and practice focus on higher education innovations that improve access, success, and completion for all. A native Hoosier, Dr. Goodwin earned a B.S. in Elementary Education from Indiana University Bloomington and continued his education at the University of South Carolina, where he earned a Master’s in Higher Education and Student Affairs with a concentration in Higher Education Administration. Later, he was awarded the Erickson Research Fellowship to attend Michigan State University where he completed a dual Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. After leaving MSU, Dr. Goodwin served as UCF’s inaugural University Innovation Alliance Fellow and as the founding director of the Center for Higher Education Innovation.
Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
As a trusted advisor to university presidents and policymakers, Dr. Bridget Burns is on a mission to transform the way institutions think about and act on behalf of low-income, first-generation, and students of color. She is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, a multi-campus laboratory for student success innovation that helps university leaders dramatically accelerate the implementation of scalable solutions to increase the number of college graduates.
About Innovating Together
Innovating Together is an event series that happens live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a higher education luminary about student success innovations or a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of leadership. We hope these episodes will leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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