InSight Program

The InSight Program—an essential part of Champlain’s required education—will teach you how to market yourself, care for yourself, and manage your finances.

Ready for Life

Each semester, you will complete milestones by certain due dates. You’ll need to have all your milestones completed by their due dates before you can register for the next semester’s courses. For specific dates, detailed instructions, and to sign up for any action item, log in to Canvas, our learning management portal, and choose the InSight Program course.

Sample Milestone Road Map

Staff presents the Game of Life to first year students

Due August–September

  • Complete Incoming Wellbeing Assessment
  • Complete Career Profile & Upload Resume
  • Complete Incoming Financial Assessment

Due September–October

  • Create Wellbeing Action Plan

Due September–March

  • Attend a Wellbeing “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Career “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend Game of Life & Create Personal Budget
Students chat on stage at Sophomore Summit

Due September

  • Attend Sophomore Summit

Due September–October

  • Complete Activity on Helping Peers in Distress
  • Create a Professional Resume
  • Create a LinkedIn Profile

Due September–March

  • Attend a Wellbeing “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Credit Review Session & Complete a Credit-Action Plan
student talks with a smugglers notch representative at a career fair

Due September–March

  • Attend a Wellbeing “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Financial “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Career “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Career Fair
  • Attend a Salary Negotiation Activity & Complete Cost of Living Analysis
  • Attend Work-Life Balance Activity
  • Complete a Cover Letter Activity
A faculty member advises a student in their office.

Due September–October

  • Complete an Exit Wellbeing Assessment
  • Complete an Exit Financial Assessment
  • Produce a 90-Second Self-Pitch Video

Due September–March

  • Attend a Wellbeing “à la Carte” Activity
  • Attend a Career Fair

Due September–April

  • Attend a Student Loan Repayment Activity & Complete a Personal Repayment Action Plan

Due April

  • Complete an Exit Career Survey

Benefits of InSight

  • students, professors and client collaborate and problem solve
    Impactful Coping Skills

    When you arrive on campus, you will complete a Wellness Assessment that will explore your overall wellbeing and identify opportunities for improvement and practice. Workshops, events, and regular meetings with your mentor are where you’ll address issues and challenges you will inevitably encounter in your college career. You will graduate with a personal plan to continue your self-care practices that will serve you for life.

  • students talking with potential employers at the Career Fair
    Career Connections

    Champlain College hosts Fall and Spring Career & Internship Fairs, where you are able to connect with professionals to discuss full-time jobs, internships, part-time jobs, seasonal jobs, professional development opportunities, employer information, and more. Plus, you’ll go on site to global companies to learn how different industries function, pitch ideas, connect with alumni business leaders, and learn from the greatest minds in business, education, and nonprofit organizations.

  • student and professor working on a laptop in a classroom
    Peer Coaches

    Peer Coaches are your career, wellbeing, and personal finance mentors who can assist you with everything from a job search to achieving your InSight milestones. They help you locate programs and resources that align with your personal goals and needs, career aspirations, and will work with you to refine your career marketing and finance skills.

    Stop by for drop-in hours: Monday–Friday,11:00AM–4:00PM at the Garden House.

InSight Themes

Wellbeing

InSight’s Wellbeing theme offers a tangible response to today’s need for students to learn effective coping strategies against personal and environmental stressors. At Champlain, we proactively teach and integrate comprehensive wellness and self-care practices into the activities of students’ lives while in College. First-year students complete Champ 101 as part of their first-year InSight wellbeing milestone.

To best prepare students for life after college, students will need to learn sophisticated wellness-related life skills that improve their adaptability, resilience, resourcefulness, and confidence no matter the situation and circumstances. Students will graduate with a Self Care Action Plan and be able to recognize symptoms of stress or burnout, and how to intervene for their own wellbeing.

You will develop skills including:

  • Social connectedness
  • Self-management and personal accountability
  • Help-seeking behaviors
  • Work-life balance

Career Readiness

What is career readiness and why should you care? Career positioning is a more expansive, holistic, and effective approach to career preparation than the traditional “career development.” It’s about understanding what employers are looking for and presenting yourself as a compelling candidate.

Even before you arrive, you will start learning these important career positioning skills through the InSight program. Why? We start preparing you immediately to be marketable so you can land the best internships. Over the course of your four years at Champlain, you will continue to hone the skills that will set you apart in the marketplace.

By graduation, you will produce a:

  • Career profile with a competency-based statement of your skills
  • Professional résumé and cover letter targeted to your position/career goals
  • Polished, up-to-date LinkedIn profile
  • 30-second “elevator” pitch that answers, “why should we hire you?”

Personal Finance

A key component to success in the real world is the ability to make smart decisions with money. That’s why we make sure all Champlain students graduate with four years of practical, hands-on learning specifically in managing their personal finances.

Starting in your first semester, you begin learning fundamental personal finance skills. Over the course of your education, you will learn how to negotiate your salary (including benefits and evaluation of compensation packages), create and follow a budget, establish credit, manage debt, invest your money, and more.

You will also create the following:

  • Personal financial assessment report that marks your progress from first year to fourth year
  • Budget allocation report based on projected salaries for careers related to your major
  • Cost-of-living analysis based on geographic location of your prospective job
  • Credit action plan identifying steps you can take to improve your credit profile and standing
  • Personalized student loan repayment plan

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Yes! All undergraduate students at Champlain—including you—are required to participate in InSight throughout your four years at the College.

  • You’ll have an assigned list of milestones to complete each year, starting your first year. These milestones are completed outside of the classroom, and you often have several in-person and virtual options to complete each milestone. You’ll have access to an InSight course in Canvas (our learning management portal) that will serve as your self-serve tool for all things InSight. There, you can track when milestones are due, see which ones you have already completed, and what options you have for each pending milestone.

  • Every week, you will receive emails about upcoming events, programs, and activities. Additionally, you’ll get reminders when milestones are due. Be on the lookout for Canvas notifications, emails from Career Collaborative or your Career Coaches, and the weekly Career eCalendar.

  • Because participation in the InSight program is a required part of your education at Champlain, you must have completed all your milestones assigned for the year before you can register for classes for the next semester. Avoid any registration issues by staying on top of your InSight milestones

  • Log in to your InSight course in Canvas to access your InSight milestone tracker. Click on each of your first-year milestones and complete them as soon as you can. Be proactive! You can complete them all early.