The Far North Center of Excellence (COE) recently completed a job posting analysis to help Shasta College better understand how student learning outcomes (SLOs) align with occupations. The COE worked with the Shasta College Attainment and Innovation Lab for Equity (SCAILE). SCAILE is working to enhance communication regarding social science and humanities disciplines and their learning outcomes. The COE analysis supports SCAILE’s collaboration with the Rural College and Design Academy with the Education Design Lab to address a critical need: effectively conveying the tangible learning outcomes of these academic fields to students, prospective students, and employers while demonstrating clear connections to sustainable career pathways.

Using student learning outcomes (SLOs) from Shasta College’s Sociology Department, the COE employed a targeted keyword search methodology across online job postings in the Far North region to surface occupations where those skills are explicitly sought. Rather than relying on broad occupational categories, the approach analyzed each SLO skill individually to generate a ranked list of occupations most frequently aligned with multiple competencies.

The findings highlighted several middle-skill occupations in the Far North region that regularly seek skills associated with social science education, including:

• Medical and Health Services Managers
• Registered Nurses
• Sales Representatives (Wholesale and Manufacturing, Non-Technical)
• Customer Service Representatives
• First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
• Marketing Managers

This research underscores how institutions can apply a data-informed approach to clarify the workforce relevance of their academic programs. Other departments and colleges can adopt similar methods to identify which occupations are aligned with their own SLOs—enhancing student advising, curriculum development, and employer engagement efforts.

For more information about this analysis or to explore how your program’s SLOs can be mapped to the labor market, contact the Far North COE.