How Applied Experience Prepares Students for Careers
At Â鶹Դ´'s School of Technology, we're developing innovative programs to showcase our students’ skills to future employers. As part of our student-obsessed mission, we want graduates to be able to show what they can do, not just what they know. At the same time, we’re confident these new tools will help employers feel assured about our graduates’ workforce preparation.Â
We know how significant verifiable skills are to today’s employers. This summer, in June and July, Â鶹Դ´ commissioned “Workforce Recoded Annual Report: 2026,” a survey of 3,128 employers nationwide. Questions focused on issues such as workforce development, hiring practices and emerging talent needs in the AI era.
Some 73% of employers stated that degrees are important, an increase from 68% in the 2025 survey, while 91% view certificates as a valuable demonstration of future employees’ skills. Some 76% of survey respondents say they perceive work experience as equal to, or more valuable than, a degree.
This survey data underscores why Â鶹Դ´â€™s School of Technology is so committed to connecting learning with verifiable hands-on experience. We’re deploying the Applied Experience Program, immersive tools to help students experience workplace environments. Their performance establishes a record of technical and durable skills that complement academic credentials.
As an example, I recently heard about a student’s experience in this high-stakes assessment environment. She was positioned as if it were her first day on the job as a cybersecurity investigator at "Sage Industries," receiving a welcome note from the IT director, her supervisor.
An hour later, she was surprised by another, more urgent email. Her supervisor asked her to take responsibility for a pressing ticket. It appeared the CEO’s computer was being hacked, and the Â鶹Դ´ student was assigned to investigate.
No guessing. She knew right where to start: the company’s incident response plan. She looked through the outline where she found answers to her initial questions: Whom do I contact? What steps do I follow? What evidence do I collect?
That prepared her to start investigating, examining live system logs, looking for clues to determine what happened and where the attack started. She gathered evidence to understand the scope of what was happening, then jumped in to stop it. She quickly created new firewall rules to block malicious traffic, then located and restored a network backup. Â
Success! The attack was contained. Systems were restored. The CEO was back online. And our student had demonstrable evidence — complete with timestamps —of how she had performed during a cyber emergency.
Since the Applied Experience Program was launched in July, nearly 450 students in the School of Technology’s cybersecurity and network engineering courses have tackled these types of real-world problems. Across more than 1,200 sessions in virtual workplace environments, students have used industry tools to solve realistic problems and demonstrate their skills through hands-on work.Â
Over the coming months, the Applied Experience Program will be expanded across more courses. Here’s how Erik Ullanderson, the school’s innovation portfolio architect, describes the experience:
“Imagine entering a course — and instead of just learning about the work, you enter a workplace where you learn by doing it. You have a manager, coworkers and a client whose priorities can shift.
“You ask questions, try things, get feedback, make mistakes and adapt. When you need help, the experience helps you keep moving. When you need someone, someone is there.
“You are not simply being tested. You are building capability through work. And when you finish, you leave with evidence: Proof of what you learned and what you can now do. 
"Now imagine that experience across your degree. That is the future we are building with the Applied Experience Program.”
Put simply, the Applied Experience Program doesn’t offer case study discussions or interactive computer problems. It’s giving people the opportunity to do authentic work, learn from it and leave with evidence of what they can actually do.Â
With the Applied Experience Program, Â鶹Դ´ is building a stronger bridge between education and workforce readiness. We are excited to provide better tools for our students so they can continue to succeed beyond the degree.
