Feb 22, 2025  
Dallas College Catalog 2025-2026 
    
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Dallas College Catalog 2025-2026

Marketable Skills

What are Marketable Skills?

Often referred to as durable, employability or transferable skills, marketable skills include interpersonal, cognitive, and applied skill areas that are

  • primary or complementary to a major
  • intended to help students market themselves to employers

Marketable Skills are essential for Dallas College students because:

  • Students want to know how college will pay off for them, while employers want to know what skills students possess. Dallas College Marketable Skills work to ensure everyone is on the same page.
  • According to a recent Inside Higher Education Student Voice survey, Gen Z students expect their college experience to result in being career ready - but students often have a hard time connecting the work they do in Core Curriculum classes with the skills that employers want.
  • It’s not a real skills gap, but rather, as Forbes notes, a “skills awareness gap.” That means Dallas College students learn valuable, foundational skills throughout the Core but might have a hard time explaining what they’ve learned to potential employers. The Dallas College Marketable Skills initiative is designed to reduce this awareness gap by purposely identifying and aligning Core assessments with specific marketable skills.

Dallas College Marketable Skills are interwoven in the Core Objectives

Students learn and practice marketable skills as they accomplish the Core Objectives. Therefore, students should understand that as they progress through the Core, their courses are offering them opportunities to refine the following skills:

Critical
Thinking
Communication
Teamwork
Leadership & Personal Responsibility
Global Awareness & Social Responsibility
Empirical & Quantitative Skills
Analyze Issues Effective Written Communication:
Clearly and effectively articulate
complex issues/ideas in written form		 Fulfill team expectations:
Accept responsibility for role on a team.		 Self-Motivation and Initiative:
demonstrate time management
and attention to detail		 Community Awareness:
Demonstrate awareness
of community issues		 Data visualization and presentation:
Communicate results using
tables, charts, graphs.

Complex/Creative Problem Solving:
Anticipate problems, solutions, and
consequences.

 Effective Oral Communication:
Clearly and effectively
articulate ideas orally		 Effective Collaboration skills:
negotiate team roles and responsibilities		 Ethical behavior:
Demonstrate ethical
behavior and decision-making.		 Global awareness:
Demonstrate awareness
of global issues		 Contextualize
numeric
information/data

Knowledge Application:
Apply knowledge to make
decisions

 Facilitate discussion,
using active listening
and interviewing skills		 Team management:
Make collaborative decisions,
manage team conflict		 Growth Mindset:
Learn and grow from mistakes.		 Demonstrate empathy:
recognize the emotions
and perspectives of others		 Demonstrate
logical thinking
Pattern Detection:
Detect patterns/themes/
underlying principles		 Effective Presentation Skills:
Present Ideas to an audience		 Provide
and/or
receive
useful
feedback		 Demonstrate Adaptability
and flexibility		 Develop civic responsibility:
demonstrating good citizenship		 Experimental Design:
Design an experiment or model
Research:
Gather proper
resources and
information to
conduct research		 Synthesizing Ideas:
Summarize information
from diverse sources		 Embrace Perspectives:
Work effectively with people
from different backgrounds.		 Team Leadership:
Lead and manage teams		 Develop cultural competency:
Learn from diverse cultures,
races, genders, religions, etc.		 Data Inference:
Draw inferences from data,
use data to formulate conclusions
Analysis & Interpretation:
Analyzing & Interpreting data
to synthesize information		 Effective Interpersonal Communication:
clearly articulate to diverse groups		   Respect:
Demonstrate consideration
and courtesy to others.		 Demonstrate Inclusivity:
foster a sense of belonging		 Mathematical Reasoning:
Use appropriate calculations
to solve problems.