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Wave-Maker Success Framework
A framework for achieving college, career, and life goals
Making Waves Foundation’s Wave-Maker Success Framework is meant to open a pipeline for student success in college, career, and life by making explicit the supporting intentions, actions, and resources in ways that are authentic to Wave-Makers’ sense of self and community.
Discovering Inner Forces
Identity
- Who am I?
- Who do I want to be?
Purpose
- What am I passionate about?
- What do I want my contribution to the world to be?
Agency
- How do I make intentional choices to shape my life path?
Strengthening Competencies
Achievement
For realizing goals
- Adaptability
- Growth Mindset
- Planning and Prioritization
- Resilience
- Responsibility
- Self-Efficacy
Cognitive
For independent thinking and application of knowledge
- Creativity
- Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
- Curiosity
- Decision-Making
- Intellectual Humility
- Judgement
Interpersonal
For productive and supportive relationships
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Interdependence
- Leadership
- Networking
- Self-Awareness
Navigating College Life
Academics
- Mapping a path to timely graduation
- Navigating the rigor and demand of college level courses
- Studying, class participation, projects, exams, etc.
- Deciding on a major
Career
- Exploring career options
- Professional networking
- Pursuing internships, jobs, and graduate school
- Preparing for applications – resume, interviewing, etc.
Community and Connection
- Developing a “home away from home”
- Building new relationships
- Getting connected on campus
- Navigating relationships and life happenings with friends, family, coaches, professors, mentors, etc.
Scholarships and Finances
- Creating a college budget
- Managing scholarships and loans
- Managing day-to-day scholarship payments
Wellness
- Establishing practices and routines that support balance, bring joy, and facilitate physical and emotional health
Making Waves and Wave-Maker Partnership
Making Waves recognizes that students’ experiences, emotions, knowledge, and skills do not exist independently of each other – particularly as Wave-Makers transition into this stage of young adulthood.
Through coaching and integrated supports, Wave-Makers and coaches and team members develop a relationship that is rooted in agency toward long-term positive outcomes. Wave-Makers partner with their coach to reflect on making meaning of their experience and charting a path forward toward their goals.
Wave-Makers…
- Have the agency to choose their postsecondary pathway and whether to engage with coaching
- Bring tremendous talent, skills, and experience by virtue of who they are
- Commit to setting authentic, manageable goals to guide the coaching partnership
- Engage with a willingness to reflect openly, learn, and grow throughout their college journey
- Maintain regular communication with their coach and financial services coordinator based on an agreed upon schedule
CoachES and team members…
- Continuously build trust and connection with Wave-Makers
- Bring an asset-based approach, affirming and leveraging Wave-Maker strengths and diverse identities
- Listen and ask questions to support Wave-Maker sense-making as they progress through growing their knowledge; awareness of how they are navigating their experience and needs; and practice in their new environment
- Strategize with Wave-Makers toward personal goals
- Maintain regular and responsive communication with Wave-Makers
- Review holistic data to inform differentiated Wave-Maker supports
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Glossary of terms
| Concept | Definition |
| Adaptability | Being flexible when things change |
| Agency | Making intentional choices and adjusting course as needed to derive a course of action |
| Collaboration | Working with others, including people with different backgrounds, values, points of view |
| Communication | The ability to synthesize and share information in a way that is received by the audience |
| Creativity | Thinking of new solutions; perceiving the world in new ways, finding hidden patterns, making connections between seemingly unrelated things |
| Critical Consciousness | Recognizing oppressive social forces shaping society and taking action against them (integration of identity, purpose, and agency) |
| Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving | Careful consideration based on synthesized evidence, directed to a goal |
| Curiosity | Wanting to know more |
| Growth Mindset | Believing you can improve your abilities |
| Identity | Having a sense of internal consistency of who I am across time and multiple social identities |
| Intellectual Humility | Recognizing the limitations of your knowledge |
| Interdependence | Having the drive to pursue goals and the wisdom to ask for support when I need it |
| Judgment, Decision-Making | Evaluating options and making deliberate and thoughtful choices |
| Leadership | Guiding and assisting a group in meeting goals |
| Networking | The ability to connect with other people |
| Planning & Prioritization | Creating a road map to reach a goal or complete a task; making decisions about what is and is not important to focus on |
| Purpose | Clarity of and commitment to making a meaningful contribution to the world |
| Resilience | Passion and perseverance for long-term goals, including managing through failure |
| Responsibility | Owning actions and outcomes |
| Self-Awareness | Understanding your feelings and using them wisely |
| Self-Efficacy | Belief and confidence in one’s ability to influence their own motivation and actions |
Wave-Maker Success Framework PDF
References
In crafting this success framework, Making Waves Foundation team members drew on decades of insights, expertise, and experiences from college coaches, financial services coordinators, and Wave-Makers. We are deeply grateful for those insights and for feedback provided on early drafts. Key references from youth development research, higher education standards, and career readiness frameworks that informed this work include:
- Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework from The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research
- Career Readiness Framework from The Chicago Jobs Council
- Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) Learning and Development Outcomes
- Professional Competencies Rubrics from ACPA-College Student Educators International and NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
- Character Lab, a non-profit organization that connects researchers with educators to create greater knowledge about the conditions that lead to social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being for young people throughout the country
Additionally, Making Waves Foundation partnered with Project Evident during spring 2022 to develop an aligned measurement framework. Through that process Project Evident supported with additional refinement of the success framework as we further clarified program priorities to inform metrics.
Stories and Resources That are Making Waves
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