UT College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies Partners with ETS and AWS to Help Students Design Careers for a Future Still Taking Shape

The University of Tennessee College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies (CECS) has joined ETS's Futurenav pilot program, bringing a data-informed career design platform to students preparing for careers that may not exist yet.

Futurenav is ETS's career exploration and assessment platform. It is launching at CECS through the Amazon Web Services Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance and will be provided to CECS students at no cost.

CECS was founded three years ago on a simple premise: the workforce is changing faster than the structures built to prepare students for it. The college organizes its programs around emerging fields, including applied artificial intelligence, data science, and applied cybersecurity, and builds each one with industry leaders at the design table from the start.

That same philosophy shapes how CECS approaches careers. Career design at CECS begins on day one and looks well beyond the first job. Every CECS student starts with CECS 101: Design Your Career, Design Your Degree, a course open to all UT students in which students map the future they want and build a degree pathway to reach it. Futurenav is being piloted within that course, and CECS faculty have been trained to use it.

"Our students will graduate into a workforce that emerging technologies, such as AI, is reshaping in real time. Many of them will hold jobs that have not been named yet," said Vice Provost and CECS Founding Dean Ozlem Kilic. "We prepare them for that reality by teaching them to design their careers, and their degrees, around where the workforce is going. Futurenav gives students a data-informed view of the skills they have, the skills the future demands, and the pathway between the two. As a pilot, we will assess how students use the tool, learn from that experience, and share the results."

Futurenav draws on assessment results, coursework, work experience, and co-curricular activities to generate personalized career and skill recommendations, and it brings real-time workforce data into students' planning. The result is a living map of where each student stands and where the future of work is heading, one that students can revisit as their interests and the market evolve. The platform helps students see the skills they already have, the skills tomorrow's careers will require, and how to build the bridge between them.

The pilot also reflects a partnership that has been part of CECS since the beginning. Amazon Web Services has supported the college since it launched in 2023 as an intercollegiate incubator for future-ready curriculum, a model in which more than 350 industry leaders help define what students need to learn, working alongside more than 200 faculty from every college on campus. Futurenav's launch through the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance is the latest expression of that collaboration.

"As an advisory board member for UT's College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies, I've seen firsthand the demand from students and faculty for tools that bridge the gap between academic preparation and career readiness. This pilot is a model for what's possible when education, technology, and workforce solutions come together," said Faisal Hanafi, Director of Education and State and Local Government at Amazon Web Services.

Added Kilic: "AWS has been with us since the day this college opened its doors. Industry partners at CECS do more than advise; they help design. This pilot shows what that kind of engagement makes possible for our students, and how technology can strengthen the way they design their own futures."