12/01/2025
SUNY Cortland will partner with the State University of New York in transforming select English Department courses to prepare students to earn the kind of industry-recognized credentials that new graduates need in today’s U.S. workforce.
Cortland is among a chosen handful within the 64-campus system to participate in a second cohort of the Embedding Industry Credentials in Academic Coursework (EICAC) initiative.
Supported by the SUNY Chancellor’s Economic Development and Upward Mobility funds, EICAC represents a partnership with the National Association of Systems of Higher Education, Google and University of Texas at Arlington. The latest EICAC initiative, which rolls out next semester and continues through the end of spring 2027, supports SUNY campuses as they work to embed industry credentials into multi-disciplinary coursework with specific emphasis on students in arts, humanities and social sciences majors.
Titled “Career-Ready Graduates in the Humanities: a Coordinated Approach to Embedding UX Design and Generative AI Certificates in SUNY Cortland’s English Department Programs and Courses,” Cortland’s pilot project will receive the maximum grant for $50,000 to adapt its three bachelor’s degree tracks — adolescence education: English (7-12), professional writing and English — to contain the career-boosting elements that will help future graduates.
The grant also supports recruiting three undergraduate researchers to help expand the initiative’s reach.
A 2022 survey conducted by Coursera found that 86% of U.S. students agree that earning an entry-level professional certificate could help them stand out to employers. American employers agreed, with 86% believing industry certifications strengthen a prospective employee’s application.
“Our students take a wide variety of literature and writing courses which prepare them to think critically, pull together complex ideas and analyze complex situations,” said Laura J. Panning Davies, professor of English, one of three co-principal investigators and author of the successful proposal.
“Students in our major programs graduate with deep reading, critical thinking and flexible writing skills,” she said. “It can be hard, though, for students to make these skills visible as they apply for entry-level positions. These credentials might help make students’ skills and expertise more legible on the job market.”
Cortland’s project will integrate elements from three Google Essentials industry credentials — Google UX Design Professional Certificate; Google AI Essentials; and Generative AI for Educators with Gemini — into four English Department course offerings.
Kati Ahern, associate professor, and Noah Wason, instructor, are co-principal investigators with Davies. Both the English Department faculty members also serve students across the disciplines in the university’s Composition Program and Writing Intensive Courses program.
Ahern, whose scholarship is focused on sound studies, sonic rhetorics and digital writing, will incorporate modules from Google’s Universal Design into two of her courses, PWR 210: Digital Writing with Data, and PWR 375: Digital Storytelling.
Wason, who researches digital rhetoric and algorithmic technologies, will adopt modules from the AI Essentials certificate in PWR 310: Surveillance, Rhetoric and Technology.
Davies will bring Gemini for Educators, an introductory generative AI course for teachers, into AED 408: Teaching Writing in Secondary Schools, a course that’s designed for Cortland’s adolescence education: English (7-12) majors. These future teachers also will benefit as they observe real classrooms through a school/university partnership Davies has with Cortland Junior-Senior High School.
“They’ll be having conversations with the English language arts teachers at Cortland Junior-Senior High and the students at the school,” Davies said. “My goal is that this will enrich that fieldwork experience for them.”
Given free rein, the trio decided Google certificates will be the best fit.
“We really looked at our courses and our own expertise and interests as we were deciding the modules to embed,” Davies said. “We also thought about the kinds of jobs that many of our English Department students go on to pursue. We thought that universal design and generative AI make a lot of sense for these careers.”
In December, the three faculty members will be trained by SUNY and collaborate with instructional design teachers to document the alignment of course learning outcomes with Grow With Google certificates. They also will develop a plan for integrating the certificates into course syllabi or program outcomes and create an assessment plan to measure student achievement of these outcomes.
SUNY’s first Embedding Industry Credentials cohort was established in 2024-25 in partnership with the National Association of Systems of Higher Education (NASH) and Google. Eleven campuses joined a Community of Practice moderated by the University of Texas at Arlington and supported in part by the Strada Education Foundation.
In that pilot, faculty members integrated content from a wide range of certificate programs — such as UX design, project management, data analysis and cybersecurity — into graduate and undergraduate courses and programs including business management, emergency preparedness, homeland security, marketing, computer technology and IT support. These campuses rolled out their pilot offerings this past summer. A more comprehensive rollout began this fall.
The overall EICAC initiative is outlined in SUNY’s Office of Workforce Development and Upward Mobility Strategic Plan 2025.