The RU-N Braven Experience
The Braven Career Accelerator is a 3-credit course for all RU-N students. It prepares you for your future career by helping you identify personal leadership and career assets, co-create career plans, and expand your social networks. You will team up with 5-8 other RU-N students from a variety of majors, allowing you to connect with peers and form connections outside your academic area of study. The course provides career mentoring from experienced professionals and prepares you for experiences such as internships.
Course components
Identify Strengths
Students work to identify personal leadership assets and key skills such as leadership, working in teams, and operating and managing. Students create their personal narrative and connect their individual strengths with relevant career path opportunities. Students learn how to build a career roadmap and use their insights to create a tentative pathway for their own careers.
Networking and Communication
Students build a strong resume or refine a pre-existing resume. They develop their interview skills by engaging in mock interviews, and they conduct informational interviews with professionals. Students learn to communicate their stories and strengths clearly and succinctly verbally and in writing and get extensive feedback on their cover letters and mock interviews. They get a chance to practice their skills at networking events.
Mentorship
Students in the RU-N Braven Career Accelerator connect with Leadership Coaches who are working career professionals from a variety of industries who provide valuable feedback and insights. Students meet with their coaches during Learning Labs and in one-on-one meetings. After the course, Braven continues to offer 1:1 mentoring to students until graduation.
Capstone Challenge
Each semester, Braven partners with an employer for our Capstone Challenge, a 5-week engagement where Fellows develop a solution to a real-world challenge proposed by the employer using design thinking. Fellows get to present their solutions to the employer partner, and develop teamwork, leadership, project planning, and public speaking skills.
FAQs about the Braven Career Accelerator course
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Everyone! RU-N believes that the 3-credit RU-N/Braven Career Accelerator can enhance the education of all of our undergraduates. That is why we have chosen to enroll all students in the course automatically.
Starting with the Fall 2024 semester, undergraduates will be auto-enrolled in the Career Accelerator course in their sophomore year. In most cases, undergraduates who enter as transfer students will be auto-enrolled for the course in their first semester at RU-N.
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View a sample syllabus here to give you an idea of the course goals, components and expectations.
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Students can take the Braven Career Accelerator at any time. All RU-N students will be auto-enrolled in either their sophomore year or early in junior year to ensure that you have enough time to get a strong internship experience before your senior year. This will give you more time to apply the skills, confidence, and networks gained during the course to inform your choices in college and beyond, and make the most of the rich opportunities that RU-N has to offer.
You will be enrolled automatically based on this recommendation, but you may decide in consultation with your advisor that it will be better for you to take it at a different time. You can opt out of this enrollment if you prefer to take the course at a later time or even not at all. Evidence shows that this course will greatly benefit all students, so we strongly encourage you to participate at some point in your time at RU-N!
We recommend that RBS students complete Foundations for Your Career Journey (29-011-301, the first part of the Business Forum sequence) before enrolling in the Braven Career Accelerator.
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After completing the course you’ll continue to be a Braven Fellow. As a Braven Fellow you’ll have access to ongoing opportunities to build your leadership, skills, and networks. Join the Braven student organization at RU-N; connect to internship, job, and volunteer opportunities with Braven and employer partners; and receive additional career coaching and mentoring. Read more about it here.
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All students enrolled in the Leadership and Career Accelerator course are called Braven Fellows. Since the Braven experience is one that students at other select universities can participate in, it’s the language that unites all Braven participants across campuses and throughout the amazing Braven network!
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You may feel that the course is not right for you - or not right for your schedule at a particular time. If you do not believe that this will be a valuable experience for you at this time, or you are in doubt about it, we recommend that you discuss this with your academic advisor.
If you have consulted with your advisor and decide to opt out, you can make a schedule change via WebReg.
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The RU-N/Braven partnership is an important part of providing students with opportunities to prepare for their future careers. The RU-N/Braven Career Accelerator course works in conjunction with and enhances the work of other important campus resources, including the Office of Career Resources and Exploration and major-specific career courses.
The Office of Career Resources and Exploration (CRE) can help you with career exploration and planning throughout your undergraduate career at RU-N. In addition to assisting students with general career planning, the CRE also offers a range of identity-specific resources with information and guidance oriented towards students’ particular identities, such as race or ethnicity, first-generation status, LGBTQ+ identities, or disability.
We encourage you to make use of the full range of career resources offered at Rutgers University-Newark.