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How do higher education institutions prepare students for novel career paths, leverage physical location and interdisciplinary collaboration, and build agile credentials alongside industry partners? We talk through these with Lutalo Sanifu the Director of Community Engagement and Interim Director of Marketing and Communications at University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit. This episode explores how universities can embrace change as a vital meta-skill, co-design flexible workforce programs with community stakeholders, and use urban innovation centers as testing grounds for evolving career pathways.
Building the Adaptive Campus: How Higher Education Can Design Programs for Unpredictable Career Paths
The traditional higher education blueprint—where a student selects a single major, completes a linear sequence of courses, and steps directly into a lifelong career—is rapidly becoming obsolete. Rapid technological advancements, evolving industry needs, and shifting economic landscapes demand a fundamental rethink of how colleges and universities prepare learners for the future.
To thrive in this shifting landscape, higher education institutions must move toward interdisciplinary models, community-rooted partnerships, and flexible micro-credentials. By rethinking curriculum design and mastering the skill of adaptability, institutions can create resilient education models that empower students to navigate an uncertain career landscape.
The Shift from Fixed Majors to Interdisciplinary Learning
For generations, academic programs operated in strict silos. A student studied business, engineering, or design in isolation, rarely crossing organizational boundaries. However, today's most urgent challenges and emerging career fields exist precisely at the intersections of these traditional disciplines.
Consider the field of urban technology. Managing smart cities or modern infrastructure requires an understanding of data informatics, robotics, urban planning, and business operations. When higher education institutions co-locate diverse academic units and foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, students gain a broader toolkit. They graduate not just with isolated technical knowledge, but with the ability to draw on multiple fields to solve multifaceted problems.
Embracing Change as a Core Meta-Skill
While hard technical skills and durable soft skills—such as critical thinking, collaboration, and communication—remain essential, they are no longer sufficient on their own. In a world where emerging technologies can alter job requirements overnight, the single most critical capability a student can develop is adaptability.
Reframing change as a learnable meta-skill helps students overcome the fear of the unknown. Rather than viewing career shifts or technological disruptions as obstacles, learners trained in adaptability view them as opportunities for growth. Higher education must foster a lifelong learning mindset, instilling the confidence to continually acquire new competencies throughout a professional life.
Co-Creating Education with Industry and Community
Preparing students for modern career paths requires moving beyond internal academic research to design programs directly with external stakeholders. Effective program design requires early and active participation from both industry leaders and local community members.
Co-creation ensures that educational offerings align directly with market realities and real-world needs. Effective collaboration involves asking critical questions early in the development process:
What specific capabilities and practical knowledge do employers need?
What program formats and timeframes work best for non-traditional learners?
What credentials or badges provide immediate value in the workplace?
By engaging local employers, municipal leaders, and community organizations, institutions ensure their programs deliver immediate, tangible value to learners while strengthening the regional economy.
Modular Credentials and the Power of Career Prototyping
Not every learner requires a traditional four-year degree or a two-year graduate program to advance their career. Mid-career professionals looking to pivot, as well as youth seeking foundational business skills, benefit immensely from flexible, stackable credentials.
Micro-credentials and targeted certificates allow individuals to "prototype" new career paths without committing to long-term degree tracks. A professional can earn a digital badge in basic coding, live event management, or small business development, immediately expanding their opportunities. These stackable credentials create accessible entry points for lifelong learning, enabling individuals at any age or career stage to continuously upgrade their skill sets.
Institutional Sandboxes: Testing the Future of Education
To support these innovative educational formats, institutions need dedicated environments to experiment, iterate, and refine new approaches. Establishing urban innovation centers, interdisciplinary hubs, or regional extension sites serves as an institutional "sandbox."
These spaces allow universities to test non-traditional programming, host joint initiatives with corporate partners, and gather immediate feedback from community members. Operating as agile test beds, higher education leaders can discover what works in real time, scaling successful initiatives across the broader campus ecosystem.
Preparing students for novel career paths requires more than minor adjustments to existing syllabi. It calls for an institutional commitment to flexibility, multi-disciplinary integration, and deep community engagement. By viewing change as a core strength rather than a disruption, higher education can ensure that every learner is equipped to navigate and shape the future.
Episode 129 Transcript
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Lutalo A Sanifu: The programs that we've developed particularly the workforce programs, have been developed in partnership with industry as well as community. So we not only ask what should the class be? What do you wanna take away from it? What should people know when they leave? But how much should it cost? How long should it be? What is the credential that should come from it? We spent a lot of time on the front end figuring out what it's gonna look like and what are the needs, so that on the back end we can meet those needs.
Elliot Felix: That was Lutalo Sanifu, director of community engagement and interim director of marketing and communications for the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit. We had a great conversation about creating and preparing students for new career paths and the role that location, collaboration across disciplines, credentials, and partnerships play in that. We also talk about going beyond the typical durable skills like teamwork, problem-solving, and communications with the one meta skill that we all need to navigate an unknown future. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and the way they're organized to enable student success. Join me for insightful interviews with higher ed innovators, sharing the stories, stats, and strategies to create better connected colleges and universities. Welcome, Lutalo. I'm so excited about our conversation on how you're inventing and preparing students for novel career paths. With so much changing, it just makes so much sense to be thinking that way, and I can't wait to hear how you're thinking about this and doing it at Michigan.
Lutalo A Sanifu: Thank you for having me, Elliot. I look forward to talking about it.
Elliot Felix: I think a great place to start is hearing how you did. Tell us a little bit about how you got started in higher ed and what you're up to today.
Lutalo Sanifu: I'll tell you, it was a winding path. This is my third time working for the University of Michigan. My first time was working in the English composition space. That would've been back in the '90s. I then came back for grad school, and I was a graduate student instructor in urban planning. And now I am the director of community engagement and the interim director for marketing and communications for the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit. So doing a lot of new things, reinventing myself every time.
Elliot Felix: I think the winding paths are the most interesting ones, and sounds like you're walking the talk of invention and reinvention along your own path and for students and the communities you engage. That's really cool.
Lutalo Sanifu: It's exciting work. I think about my path, like thinking about all the times that it wasn't a clear, linear solution. It wasn't a clear direction. There are things that warm my heart that I wanted to do because of the impact that it has on community, because of the impact that it has on the city of Detroit, but it wasn't a linear path, and I think a lot of us struggle with that. It's like you set yourself on a path, and then you get stuck at this glass ceiling. It's what I love about what we're doing at the University of Michigan, rethinking what education looks like, making it multidisciplinary so that people don't get stuck in, "I was on this path, and now it's kind of dead-ending," or there's some new technology that makes some of what I do obsolete. It forces people to think and rethink and reinvent themselves.
Elliot Felix: So much of that is resonating with me. I see every day the power of planning and design as educations that enable you to do lots of things. Like you, I started off in architecture, and then found my way into strategy. And instead of designing spaces, I'm designing strategy and structure and staffing models and systems for a world that's changing. And it's great to see how those skill sets play out and how you end up doing things that aren't what you imagined in a good way. Some of it you get prepared for, and some of it you learn along the way.
Lutalo Sanifu: I will tell you, that path that you went on, so similar to mine. I think the things that you learn in that path, some of them take you back to the beginning. So I grew up in a household where my father was a salesman. He sold things. He sold cable, he sold insurance. He was always selling something. I didn't have any background in marketing and communications before I started this position. But because I grew up in a household where I knew what sales was because I felt it every time my father tried to explain something to me. So that was there. And then growing up in an environment and getting into educational spaces where you are taught to research things and do your due diligence. So you have the personality of my father telling me always be closing, mixed with taking the time to do the research so that you do the best job you could possibly do, mixed with an education from the University of Michigan Taubman College that taught me a lot about community engagement, some of the things that needed to be in place in order to make that successful. But I think out of all of that the best skill you can have is the skill that allows you to rethink your position and to not be stuck. That lifelong learner mentality, those are the careers of the future.
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Elliot Felix: Do you think that's like maybe the biggest misconception about career planning and development, that there is one path for people as opposed to resetting expectations that you're just gonna be constantly learning and relearning, thinking and rethinking?
Lutalo Sanifu: I think people are afraid of change. Change is just generally scary. But if you can master change, you can have the most amazing, rewarding life, not just career. If you start thinking about what could happen differently, how could I improve this circumstance and not get stuck on what I've been doing and what I know... Experience teaches you something, and then you latch onto it and try to make that what it is. But life changes, and what do you do with that? Sometimes it's you that's changing, but sometimes it's the world around you. How do we make sure we're doing that next thing that keeps us relevant?
Elliot Felix: It's so interesting because when you hear about all these skills colleges and universities are trying to help students build, whether it's soft skills or durable skills. People talk about critical thinking or problem-solving, communication, collaboration, those are all great, but in a way, I just love this point about change as maybe that meta skill, right? If you can get good at change, what can't you do? That's such an amazing point.
Lutalo Sanifu: We have to be comfortable with change, and it's so hard, right? You set a routine for yourself. You're comfortable in that space, and then here comes life telling you gotta do something different. And I'll give you an example of why change is so cool. When I was a kid many moons ago, somebody decided that they were gonna take a spray paint can, a couple of turntables, a cardboard box, and create hip-hop. They invented something with basically nothing. And it was innovative, and it changed everything. It changed how we think about fashion, it changed how we listen to music, it changed how we dance. It changed a lot of things. It changed the Super Bowl. Think of all the things that were touched by somebody's decision, and it's constantly evolving, right? So it's not what it was in 1979. It's something different today. When I think about how we're leveraging tools like artificial intelligence today, we're treating it like super Google, right? "I just use this to ask questions better." But when we start thinking about how can I leverage these tools for the advancement of humanity and all of the different things that we'll be able to task a system with to reinforce our ability to be professionals, it is extraordinary.
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Elliot Felix: I would love to hear how you're making the extraordinary possible and you're helping students master the meta skill of change. Tell me a little bit about how you're inventing and preparing students for these new careers.
Lutalo Sanifu: Sure. So first off, I can't take all the credit. The University of Michigan is doing this wonderful thing. We've got a 200,000 square foot innovation center being placed in downtown Detroit, walking distance from where all of the creative activity happens, where sports is, where theater is, where all of that is going on. And we created this space where there's interdisciplinary learning. So instead of coming through a program that is fully focused in one area, you would be able to have urban planning and robotics and the business school all working together on a program for a student. Think of all the different paths you get out of that. So even though your degree may be a master's in urban technology, you'll walk away with some skill sets and network that are in business, that are in robotics, giving people different outcomes and different pathways. I think one of the things that drew me to urban planning in the first place was the diversity of the job pool, the ability to do a whole bunch of different things. This is creating a space where everybody gets a chance to dip their toe in all the things, figure out what works for them, and then go that way. And not just at the graduate level, but at the workforce level and at the youth level. So imagine you're 52 years old, you've been doing the same job for 10 plus years. You haven't seen any advancement. You wanna pivot. Is there a workforce program that I can participate in that will help me advance my career either where I am now or somewhere else? It's very scary. People stay at jobs because they don't know what's gonna happen if they take a chance.
Elliot Felix: They haven't mastered change, right?
Lutalo Sanifu: They have to be okay with change.
Elliot Felix: Yeah.
Lutalo Sanifu: The alternative is that you stay where you are, and you already know what that brings you, right? So if we can figure out a way to help people experience change and success, even if it's at the micro-credential level. I got a badge that says, "I know how to do this thing. Now I know some base level coding." Okay, now that I know that I can learn, what else can I get? How can I stack those credentials? How can I create this career that I want? I really enjoy live events. I'd love to get into live events management, but that's not my background. Take a live events management course. Try it out. I think the coolest part is how we try to tie in industry so that people aren't just taking a class for taking a class's sake, but that they could actually work with industry so that when they're done, there may be a job lined up.
Elliot Felix: It sounds like you've got a winning formula for this career invention, reinvention preparation. You gotta be located where everything's happening. You gotta bridge across disciplines. You've gotta create new kinds of programs and credentials. And then to do all that, you have to have these partnerships and relationships. So I would love to hear how do you bring in industry and set students up so that the project leads to an internship or a position?
Lutalo Sanifu: So the first thing is, and not to sound boastful, but we're the University of Michigan, so we have this global reputation in the region that we're going to bring the best students. We're going to bring you people who are thinking at a very high level, who are ready to put in the work to make things go. We've also been very fortunate to have a really strong director's advisory board with folks who are captains of industry in the metro Detroit area and more broadly. So when you start talking to folks using that live events management as a reference point. Okay, you're interested in doing live events. We've got Carl Siebert from the Ilitch Holdings company, so maybe you can do the live events and be tied into all of the different live events that are coming through them, through the Fox, through the new ballpark. Fifth Third Park, you can get to it. Industry is not so far away. So if you're doing a program with us that is focused on leadership and energy, we've got someone from DTE on our board, so you can tie in immediately, right? That's what it's about, building some of these relationships, understanding the importance of the city of Detroit and how you do things, connecting with the city, its residents, as well as the people who are running the city, and that might be industry folks, that might be government folks, but really trying to get at the heart of what change looks like.
Elliot Felix: What have you had to change internally to make that happen, right? To have these programs that are in emerging fields and are more industry aligned and looking beyond the classroom, engaging with the community that doesn't sound like business as usual. What did you have to change to enable that?
Lutalo Sanifu: There's so many different things that we've had to do. The first thing we had to do was acknowledge that the product that we already have, graduate degrees, doesn't cover the full spectrum of people who need programs. We had to acknowledge that there has to be workforce programs, there has to be youth programs. How are we making sure that we're incorporating those things? The other thing is, get ready for this, we have planning sessions where we had all of these different units talk to each other and say, "Here's what I can bring. Here's how I can help in the development of this student." So it's like, how do we co-develop things? How do we work together? And then on the industry side being able to reach out to folks and say, "We can custom design the thing that you want." So we can do the traditional course where the students all come together and they come up with a program that can work for your business, or if there's a group of potential students at your office that you wanna bring in and have them participate in cohort learning, we can design around that. So designing for industry instead of designing because this is what I wanna work on, this is what my research tells me I should be working on. Design for industry.
Elliot Felix: And it sounds like it's designed with industry, right?
Lutalo Sanifu: Correct.
Elliot Felix: Back to the Detroit mantra of nothing about us without us.
Lutalo Sanifu: That's it.
Elliot Felix: And so outreach, engagement, what are the needs, what are the emerging fields, roles, skills, creating it together.
Lutalo Sanifu: And to that point, the programs that we've developed, particularly the workforce programs, have been developed in partnership with industry as well as community. So we not only ask what should the class be? What do you wanna take away from it? What should people know when they leave? But how much should it cost? How long should it be? What is the credential that should come from it? And to have real conversations about, okay, if you ask everybody how much should it cost, you know the answer's gonna be free. But also explaining, okay, with free means what? Or if it's absolutely the cheapest class you can find, there may be 100 people in the room just to make it pencil out. What is the right size for you to get as much one-on-one as you feel you need, and that you walk away with something useful?
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Elliot Felix: I'd love to hear some examples of these. You mentioned urban technology and business. What are some examples of these intersections where you've created things together or a workforce or a youth program with industry?
Lutalo Sanifu: Sure. So we've been working with a group called Youth Tank Detroit. We're co-developing a youth entrepreneurship track. And we started with founders at Newlab actually. And we asked them, "What are the things you wish you had known before you started your business? What are those critical skills that a founder is going to need?" Then we asked the kids, "What do you need? What kind of supports need to be in place? Where do your interests lie? What kind of skills do you have?" Then we had another session, and we talked to folks who were from the business support community, founders, and the youth all together, and we broke it up by industry. So we had a food and beverage section. We had a technology section. We had a fashion and retail section. And we went down into the deep weeds about what are the things that you need in order to be successful in those particular pockets. When we were done, we came back, fully shared the information with everyone. This is what we heard. This is what you told us. And when we did that, what we found were the founders had very specific things that they wished that they had known ahead of time. Great. We can incorporate that with the kids. The kids said they want us to believe in them. They want us to actually support their business and not just treat it like an afterthought. Like really believe in us, really provide the support.
Elliot Felix: It's a real thing, yeah.
Lutalo Sanifu: It's a real thing and they wanna be treated as an entrepreneur. And then in the business support side, we got into the details. What does it mean to have a business that is a brick-and-mortar retail shop? It means you probably got a lease. It means you probably need an LLC. It means you need a business bank account. Like all of the things that we had to talk about.
Elliot Felix: There's no surprise that one of the Squarespace slogans is, "A website makes it real," right? Because these are the forcing functions for you to develop your concept and make something real.
Lutalo Sanifu: So when we were done, we came up with a strategy that includes the first portion of the activity that was gonna happen with the kids, Youth Tank has taken the lead on. So this is teaching them how to solve problems, teaching them how to create a product, teaching them how to figure out how to get it to market. And then our responsibility would be to teach them those hard, every business has to have this skills. Helping them to develop a business plan, helping them to get their business bank account, helping them to decide is it an LLC, is it a partnership? Like, how should your business exist? And pushing that forward. So we spent a lot of time on the front end figuring out what it's gonna look like and what are the needs, so that on the back end we can meet those needs. So that kinda gives you an idea. And we've done the same—we have a leadership course that we did. We did the same thing. And the people who taught that course were from Ann Arbor. They're from the College of LS&A. They're from the Ross Business School. This is not me teaching the class. This is us facilitating so that they can get the answers that they need to give you the best class they can give you.
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Elliot Felix: We've been talking about change as a meta skill and really an approach to creating these better connected programs that are with government, with community, K-12, across disciplines. As we wrap up, as you shine up your crystal ball and you think about change for folks that are trying to prepare students in the broadest possible definition of that—learners—for an uncertain future and careers that don't yet exist, how is that itself changing? And what advice do you have for institutions to adapt to change?
Lutalo Sanifu: Yeah, I think that we are the sandbox for that. Like, how are we figuring out what change looks like? We're still figuring out a lot of this stuff ourselves as we iterate, but one thing I have always told students is if you're doing the same thing as the person next to you, you are not the best applicant. Always find another thing that you can add on. Always learn something new. That change and learning should go together. It shouldn't be, "Oh, the world has changed and I'm where the world used to be." I know people who were nurses, and when computers came into the hospitals, they retired because they didn't understand how to use the computer in that hospital context. And then I know other people who learned and kept their career going and even were able to advance themselves into leadership roles because they understood the systems. It's really gonna come down to how do you position yourself to be the best? How do you do that? And part of that is being okay with knowing that you don't know everything, learning things, and then figuring out how is it applicable to your life.
Elliot Felix: At scale, having a sandbox, having a test bed or having this place where you can prototype the future is a key part of it. It comes back to Alan Kay, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." It seems like you are living every day as the sandbox, as you put it.
Lutalo Sanifu: That is exactly it. How do we design this new thing that didn't exist before? The Masters of Urban Technology, it's brand new. It doesn't exist anywhere else. We invented it. But the intersection between informatics and the built environment, being able to tell this is where there are a lot of traffic accidents and why based on the data, that is not what urban planning was when I was coming up. Things have evolved and changed and we should be the people that invents what that future looks like. So I'm really excited to be a part of this project. This could be my last stop in this career.
Elliot Felix: And no matter what, it's gonna always be changing, right?
Lutalo Sanifu: Of course.
Elliot Felix: Lutalo, thank you so much for a great conversation about change and in preparing students, careers, and ourselves for careers in a world that doesn't yet exist.
Lutalo Sanifu: It was a pleasure speaking with you, Elliot. Anytime.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Go to Elliotfelix.com for more information about my book, The Connected College, articles I've written, and talks I've given. There's also tools you can download, information on upcoming events, and information on booking me to speak at your institution or organization. Please support the podcast by rating it and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where all students succeed.