Episode 97: Brandee Popaden-Smith on Integrating Working and Learning Experiences
How can you continuously increase and communicate the value of higher education by integrating work experience within it? We dive into this question with Brandee Popaden-Smith, Senior Director at Arizona State University's University College. We talk through two answers: integrating experiential learning with corporate and community partners in the curriculum at scale and redesigning student employment to provide real structure, skills, and supervision.
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In the traditional higher education model, graduation was the ultimate finish line. We measured success by how many students crossed it and how quickly they got there. But today’s learners are asking a much harder question: "Is this worth it right now?"
In a recent episode of the Connected College Podcast, Brandee Popaden-Smith, Senior Director at ASU University College, joined host Elliot Felix to discuss a transformative shift in how we approach the ROI of higher education. The secret doesn't just lie in the degree itself, but in Work Integrated Learning, a strategy that blends real-world experience directly into the academic journey.
Redefining the ROI of Higher Education
For decades, the return on investment (ROI) for a college degree was viewed as a long-term promise—a better job and a higher salary years down the road. However, for the modern "working learner," that promise is too far away.
Brandee argues that we must move from focusing on "time to degree" to focusing on time to value. Students are making micro-decisions every semester about whether to stay enrolled. If they don't feel their life is improving in real-time—perhaps through a promotion at their current job or the acquisition of a tangible skill—they are more likely to step away. The ultimate bottom line for ROI is simple: a better life, both during and after college.
The Power of Work Integrated Learning
Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is an umbrella term for experiences where students address real-world challenges with active employers. While internships have long been the "gold standard," they are often inaccessible to first-generation students or those who can't afford to leave a steady part-time job.
ASU is pioneering a more inclusive approach by integrating employer-led projects directly into the curriculum. This means students don't have to find "spare time" for career development; it is baked into the credits they are already earning. When a student works on a project designed by a nonprofit or corporate entity within their classroom, the barrier between "student" and "professional" begins to dissolve.
Redesigning Student Employment as a High-Impact Practice
One of the most overlooked assets on any campus is the student workforce. At ASU, over 10,000 students work part-time jobs. Traditionally, these roles were transactional—answering phones or swiping IDs. Brandee and her team are leading an initiative to redesign these roles into "Work Plus" experiences.
By treating the university as a high-quality employer, ASU ensures that every campus job helps students build transferable skills. This involves:
Lowering supervisor ratios to allow for actual mentorship.
Creating leadership tiers so students can move from entry-level tasks to supervisory roles.
Integrating reflection, helping students learn how to articulate the skills they are gaining to future employers.
Scaling Success through the WIL Ecosystem
No single institution can solve the "value gap" alone. ASU is building a National Work Integrated Learning Accelerator, a coalition that brings together higher ed, industry partners, and ed-tech innovators. The goal is to create a scalable ecosystem where small and medium-sized businesses can easily engage with students, providing a diverse range of professional exposures.
By questioning traditions—like the idea that students can't supervise other students—and leveraging technology partners as learning collaborators, colleges can ensure that every student, regardless of their background, leaves with a resume as strong as their transcript.
Summary: A Life-Long Resource
The future of the "Connected College" is one where the silos between the classroom and the workplace are dismantled. When we prioritize work-integrated learning, we stop asking students to choose between their education and their livelihood. Instead, we provide a learning journey that offers immediate value, leading not just to a degree, but to a measurably better life.
Episode 97 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: That was Brandee Popaden-Smith, Senior Director at ASU University College, where they’re integrating work into learning and redesigning student employment. Two initiatives we dive into in our great conversation. We talk about the ROI of higher ed and how students need to see the value in real time because it’s not just that they’re making one decision to enroll and can see the payoff years later, but they’re making ongoing decisions to stay enrolled only if they see the value.
Brandee: I think early on there was certainly a huge focus on retention and persistence. My thought on that ROI has extended much beyond just getting them here, keeping them here and graduating. It’s also what they’re doing after. And how to confidently say that their life is better because of the multiple forms of investment they made.
Elliot Felix: So the ultimate bottom line for ROI is a better life.
Brandee: It’s pretty simplistic in some ways, but I actually think it needs to be simplified. If that level of investment necessitates that your life is better on the other side of it. And we have a responsibility within higher education to ensure that the experience we’re curating and designing is going to do that for our learners.
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Elliot Felix: What’s your definition of student success?
Brandee: The definition has evolved over time to incorporate post-completion success. We’re at a point that we no longer, in higher education, can simply focus on the percentage of our students that we’re getting to graduation. Graduation needs to be embraced as a milestone, a really important milestone, but simply one of many.
Brandee: We used to have this focus on time to degree and shortening time to degree. I think we’re now at a point that we have to focus on this concept of time to value. Our students are making decisions every semester about is this worth it to me right now?
Brandee: They have to feel the value now, and part of feeling the value now is exposing them to experiences where they are actively developing skills. They’re actively applying what they’re learning in the classroom. They’re actively getting a chance to understand what are work and career opportunities for me post-completion.
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Elliot Felix: I’d love to hear about the work you’re doing at ASU with the Work Plus program and Work Integrated Learning. What is Work Integrated Learning?
Brandee: We see this as a way where any type of experience where a student is getting that exposure to real-world work, addressing real-world challenges, that there is an active employer that is a part of that experience.
Brandee: Our hope is that every learner before graduating ASU has the opportunity to engage in multiple work integrated learning experiences. We have to stop forcing decisions on students where they have to leave a part-time job to do an internship. We have to figure out how do we redesign the experience they’ve already said yes to, so that this stuff is baked in.
Elliot Felix: I love that you’re focusing on it. Three words, work integrated learning, but the integrated is the key part. It’s because that’s when it’s not extra. It’s not, oh, go to career services in spare time that you don’t have. It’s knitting it all together.
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Brandee: The other area for us was student employment. Our institution employs over 10,000 students in part-time jobs every year. We are the employer. We had a really big opportunity to offer high-quality, intentionally designed experiences that would help students actually build skills.
Brandee: How could we transition to a place where we can confidently say it doesn't matter what your major is, it doesn't matter what you wanna do when you graduate, and it doesn't matter what job you have on campus? Your on-campus experience will absolutely help you build transferable skills.
Elliot Felix: That really resonates with me. Whenever I’m doing projects and we’re creating a new service model, invariably you run into some structural or bureaucratic or policy barriers.
Brandee: Another success point is helping departments actually build out those layers. How are we actually building in leadership roles for a student to grow into? That helps with the supervisory and the coaching capacity too. We've seen huge success with student moving up into a leadership and supervisory capacity. Functionally, peer-to-peer coaching and support is what it is.
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Elliot Felix: What are the big things that are changing how you do all this? As you see around corners, what are the changes you’re mindful of in this area?
Brandee: I think that there’s certainly a question mark of how we can grow the accessibility and the engagement. Higher ed isn’t the only factor at play here. There’s an employer, there’s an industry partner, and oftentimes there’s an educational technology partner who serves as an intermediary.
Brandee: We’ve just started on some work that we refer to as the Work Integrated Learning Accelerator. We’re actually engaging industry partners and ed tech partners because this triad hasn't gotten together to actually co-design models and test models of how to scale work integrated learning.
Brandee: We are in the process of building and testing some models in the next year to two years that we’re hoping can actually shed light on how to really scale work integrated learning across a wide variety of institutional types and industry partners.
Elliot Felix: Really great stuff. I think it’s really inspiring to hear work integrated learning. Three simple words with a transformative impact.