Microcredentials empower students at The University of Texas at Austin

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Molly Feldner had nearly everything she needed to pursue a career in her dream field: astrobiology, where she hopes to study human colonization of space and maybe live there herself one day.

She had the grades. The passion. The plan. The one missing piece? Undergraduate experience in a research lab.

“I had been in the lab courses. I had read the textbooks and the protocols. I knew how to do it. I had practiced it, but I hadn’t put it to work, basically,” recalled Feldner, a University of Texas at Austin senior majoring in molecular biology and anthropology.

One interaction with a professor directed Feldner to a breakthrough opportunity. The professor told her about a new molecular sciences skill-up program that allowed Feldner to train intensely for four weeks on lab protocols, earn a skills badge to recognize what she had learned, and qualify for a paid opportunity in a research lab that typically hires only graduate students.

“When I applied to this lab, I basically had a whole new resume with that microcredential on it, too, as the crown jewel,” said Feldner, now an undergraduate research assistant in molecular biosciences professor Arlen Johnson’s lab, where she helps study how cells manufacture ribosomes.

The badging program at UT Austin is part of the University of Texas System’s embrace of microcredentials. Funded in part by Strada Education Foundation’s Beyond Completion Challenge, nine UT campuses have embarked on their own microcredential offerings designed to meet the regional needs of their student populations.

The program is one example of how universities are looking to close the gap between the skills employers need and how those students learn and develop in a degree program. Rather than place the responsibility on students to find opportunities to develop practical skills related to their education — such as internships or work-based learning opportunities — credentialing programs like the UT System’s add a layer of training onto their degree studies that helps students signal to employers their readiness to apply their education.

UT Austin was trying to solve dilemmas like Feldner’s when it launched its Biotech Skill-Up program, targeted at undergraduates who need lab experience to develop the fundamental skills required to work professionally in a lab, but struggle to get those opportunities because they lack the very skills they are looking to develop. The badging program provided another avenue to develop those skills, helping to catapult them to their next level — in a first biotech industry job, into graduate studies, or into a work-based learning opportunity in a research lab.

The program offers distinct, verifiable skills on topics that might be introduced in a bachelor’s degree program but not specifically taught and tested — skills such as how to properly use a pipette, a tool commonly used in chemistry and biology to transport a measured volume of liquid.

“Often there are these career-level skills that slip through the cracks of the curriculum a little bit,” said Art Markman, vice provost for academic affairs at UT Austin. “To help our students to bridge the gap between the things that they’re learning in a class and the things that they might need on day one when they enter a company, we have a variety of different programs that students can participate in.

“By participating in those and demonstrating that they’ve reached a particular competence,” Markman continued, “they then get a badge that they can display to prospective employers.”

In Austin, the badging program targets undergraduate students in biology and chemistry. Unlike their higher-earning STEM field counterparts in engineering and computer science, UT Austin students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology or chemistry earned an annual average salary of $40,000 five years after graduation.

The program was born during a period of curriculum reform at UT Austin. “We were talking to alumni, we were talking to industry partners, we were talking to current students about their experiences,” said Cynthia LaBrake, a professor of instruction at UT Austin who leads the molecular sciences badging program on campus. “What we were hearing was, ‘I wish I would have had more time in the lab. I wish I would have developed more skills.’

“We talked to our local industry partners and asked them, ‘What skills would you like to see a B.S.-level person coming to your company with? Will you work with us to develop those skills?’”

The intensive training and digital badge awarded upon mastery of the skill are primarily designed to open doors, she said. What comes next: a paid opportunity to further practice the skill in a lab environment. Of the nine students who participated in the pilot program in spring 2023, five earned paid lab placements for the summer.

“Most students have to work,” LaBrake said. “They couldn’t even start to participate in our skill-up if there wasn’t a guaranteed paycheck for the summer. With this four-week skill-up, you’re skilling up to something — an opportunity to step foot in a door that would be closed otherwise.”

The microcredentials program was made possible through earnest conversations with the university’s faculty governing body. While curriculum changes continue to receive robust scrutiny and review, the microcredentials program can be more agile and reactive to employer needs.

Both LaBrake and Markman call the microcredentials program “a sandbox” where they can try new things.

“Universities change slowly, and for good reason. We don’t want to change with the tides. We want to be providing knowledge that stands the test of time,” Markman said. “But there’s also a need to be able to adapt to workforce needs, to be able to adapt to new technologies that are coming out.”

With access to the lab experience she needed,, Feldner is making the most of the opportunity.

“The scope of the program really helped me improve my lab skills,” Feldner said. “It’s really important to me because I want to work in the lab. That’s kind of how I want to spend my life — if I don’t end up in space.”