Late spring brought a flurry of opportunity and activity to the College's undergraduate applied degree students. With events honoring excellence and building skills, partnering with industry and showcasing talent, the focus is clear: advancing student growth and career readiness. What follows is a recap of their experiences.
Honoring Excellence: Upsilon Phi Delta Induction
On April 22, the Healthcare Management program celebrated the inaugural CCAPS chapter of Upsilon Phi Delta (UPD) Honor Society inductees. Twenty-three students and recent alumni, along with two faculty members, received official certificates, pins and honor cords as part of the ceremony.
Accredited by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, UPD is a national honor society recognizing students, faculty and professionals who contribute to the healthcare management field. Its name is derived from the Greek words Upsilon (Health), Phi (Care) and Delta (Lead).
Membership is a prestigious distinction that recognizes outstanding academic achievement, service and leadership in the field. CCAPS students must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.750 on a 4.0 scale to be eligible. Learn more about this year's inductees on the UPD Member website.
Strengthening Skills: ITI User Group Event
Even with finals, projects and summer internship prep in full swing, more than 70 Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) students participated, both in person and online, in a hands-on user group event on April 21.
Let’s Talk Shop brought students face-to-face with the practices and perspectives shaping today’s tech landscape, while offering direct access to instructors, advisory board members and industry professionals.
The event emphasized practical learning through a mix of formats: faculty-led presentations with live demos and real-world workflows; fast-paced lightning sessions packed with practitioner insights; and more intimate roundtable discussions exploring topics like data in modern systems, bridging business and technology, enterprise IT delivery and identity and access management.
Each session tied back to one or more of ITI's five expertise-based subplans, helping students see how their coursework translates to the complex problem-solving that characterizes the field. These include: Applied Data Science; Cybersecurity and Governance; Development, Security, and Operations and IT Project Management; Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence; and Network and Cloud Infrastructure.
"Let’s Talk Shop was designed to create a more applied, practitioner-driven space where students engage directly with instructors around real workflows, tools, and industry challenges," shares Faculty Director Colin Miller. "As our first event, it gave us a strong foundation to build on, and we intend to continue fine-tuning the format moving forward."
For many students, the experience offered both immediate takeaways and a broader perspective — tools they can use now in the classroom and for graduating seniors, in the transition to their budding IT careers.
Showcasing Talent: Spring Competitions
Student competitions are a hallmark of spring for the Construction Management program, and this spring continued that tradition. Following February’s National Association of Home Builders Student Competition, students went on to compete in four additional events throughout April and May.
Judged by industry professionals, these prominent competitions consistently connect classroom learning with real-world application. They include the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks University Challenge (running since 2003), Quiz Bowl (since 2012), the Pursuit Competition (since 2016) and the Golden Pen Award (since 2007).
Explore highlights from each competition — including the teams, their projects, and the results — in this Competition Season Roundup.
Anastasia Faunce is a writer and content strategist with the College of Continuing and Professional Studies, where she covers pre-college, ESL, long-term care, applied undergraduate degree programs and alumni and development initiatives. A former director of several CCAPS programs, she previously served as director of public relations for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and continues to collaborate regularly with artists and designers. Connect with her via LinkedIn.
