The CPS Storytelling Initiative
Your story belongs to you. We just help it travel.
These inspiring stories showcase how students from diverse backgrounds and career stages have leveraged experiential learning opportunities to achieve their professional goals and transform their futures.
Your Story. Your Community.
This is first and foremost a community platform. A place to elevate the diverse voices that make up our entire CPS community of students, faculty/staff, alumni, donors, and the many external partners in industries, communities, governments, and non-profits who help make our work possible. Trust is the cornerstone of ensuring that community platform remains authentic and valuable for all who participate.
Who Should Participate?
Everyone belongs here. You decide how.
Participation in the CPS Storytelling Initiative is open to any member of the CPS community — current students, faculty, staff, alumni, organizational partners, and community collaborators. There is no application process, no selection threshold to clear before you can raise your hand, and no single right way to participate.
You can come forward on your own. You can nominate someone whose story deserves to be heard. You can participate as a group — a cohort, a research team, a community organization — and tell a collective story together. If you are part of this community in any meaningful way, you belong in this conversation.
The only thing we ask is that participation be willing. Stories told under pressure are not the stories we want to tell.
FOR
Current students, faculty, staff, alumni and other partners at any stage of their CPS journey
PURPOSE
Provide visibility for the full spectrum of human experience at CPS, not just its best-case outcomes
AUDIENCE
Prospective students, current community members, and anyone evaluating whether CPS is the right fit for them
CHANNELS
CPS Website, LinkedIn, Email Newsletters, Social Media
Five Storytelling Channels
Different voices. Different audiences. One community.
Each channel is designed around a specific storytelling relationship. Who is telling the story, who needs to hear it, and what kind of trust it builds. Find the one that fits your story!
Community Voices
Faces of CPS
The people who make up CPS are the most compelling argument for it. Faces of CPS collects short-form profiles that are meant to share the real paths, the unexpected pivots, the reasons people came here or decided to partner with us and what they found when they arrived. These are not success stories engineered for marketing. They are honest portraits of a community in motion.
| FOR | Current students, faculty, staff, alumni and other partners at any stage of their CPS journey |
| PURPOSE | Provide visibility for the full spectrum of human experience at CPS, not just its best-case outcomes |
| AUDIENCE | Prospective students, current community members, and anyone evaluating whether CPS is the right fit for them |
| CHANNELS | CPS Website, LinkedIn, Email Newsletters, Social Media |
| YOU GET | Published profile with full attribution, shareable LinkedIn asset, and advance approval of final content |
Community Voices
Grads of CPS
Graduation is not the end of the story — it is the moment when the story becomes useful to someone else. Grads of CPS captures what alumni did while here and what they are doing next: the career moves, the unexpected applications of what they learned, the distance between who they were when they started and who they are now. Real paths, told in full.
| FOR | CPS alumni, at any point nearing or post-graduation |
| PURPOSE | Show prospective students and potential employers where a CPS degree actually leads — through the specific, not the aspirational |
| AUDIENCE | Prospective and current students evaluating program outcomes; employers and partners |
| CHANNELS | CPS Website, LinkedIn, Alumni Communications, CPS Newsletters |
| YOU GET | Published alumni profile, shareable content, and a standing invitation to update your story as it evolves |
Expert Voices
Thought Leadership
CPS faculty are practitioners, researchers, and field-shapers — not just instructors. Thought Leadership creates a structured pathway for faculty to share their expertise and perspective publicly, in ways that build their own professional identity as much as the institution’s. Participation is entirely opt-in, and editorial control stays with the faculty member.
| FOR | CPS faculty who want a public-facing platform for their ideas and expertise |
| PURPOSE | Position CPS as a hub of applied expertise — and position faculty as the experts, not the institution |
| AUDIENCE | Industry practitioners, prospective students, peers, and media |
| CHANNELS | CPS Website, LinkedIn, Industry Partners |
| YOU GET | Bylined publication, editorial review rights, and amplification through CPS channels — on your terms |
Expert Voices
Student Research
Student research at all levels at CPS is practitioner-led, problem-driven, and organizationally grounded — which makes it interesting to people outside academia. The Student Research channel translates doctoral work and other student research projects into accessible narratives for professional audiences, making research visible to the communities it was designed to serve.
| FOR | Students who have completed research either as part of their coursework, a professional/academic poster session, or doctoral dissertation defense. This can include recent grads who are applying their research in their real world roles. |
| PURPOSE | Make CPS student research visible as applied scholarship and core to experiential learning — not just academic output for its own sake |
| AUDIENCE | Organizational leaders, practitioners, prospective doctoral students, and policy audiences |
| CHANNELS | CPS Student Research Hub, LinkedIn, Partner Organizations |
| YOU GET | Accessible summary of your research with full attribution, and a shareable asset that extends your work’s reach |
Video Series
Voices of CPS
Loosely defined on purpose, this is our video-first platform inviting all members of the CPS community to share insights into issues that matter to them where CPS plays a role. It could be a short interview between a student and their professor about a topic they are discussing in class. It might be a less formal conversation amongst peers about trends or challenges or opportunities. Or simply a brief snippet of insights on a recent project or event. Try to keep it short, and make it tangentially related to CPS — think of it as a slightly more nerdy TikTok.
| FOR | Organizational partners, community collaborators, employers, and industry allies with a genuine stake in CPS’s mission |
| PURPOSE | Build connections by showing CPS’s role in a broader ecosystem — told by the ecosystem, not the institution |
| AUDIENCE | Prospective partners, community stakeholders, donors, and students considering applied or employer-partnered programs |
| CHANNELS | CPS Website, LinkedIn, Partner Networks, Community Media |
| YOU GET | Co-authored story with full framing approval, organizational attribution, and amplification through CPS’s network |
The Process
What Happens When You Say Yes?
Three Steps. No Surprises. Your story stays yours from the first click to the final post.
1
You’re Invited. Not Recruited.
A faculty member, a program coordinator, or this page puts the idea in front of you. No pressure, no obligation. You choose the channel that fits your story and submit an expression of interest.
2
You See It Before Anyone Else.
We draft the story, send it to you for review, and wait for your explicit approval. You can request changes. You can withdraw entirely. Nothing publishes until you say yes to the version in front of you.
3
It Travels With Your Name On It.
Your story is published and shared across the channels you agreed to. You receive a shareable version for your own use. We let you know where it lands and will tag you in any posts should you wish it.
That means we have an obligation to earn that trust structurally, not just through good intentions. The following commitments are not aspirational. They are the operating conditions of this platform. If we cannot meet them, we do not collect your story. We believe institutions that ask for community voice must first answer for how they will use it. Below is our answer. Read it before you decide to participate. And hold us to it.
You approve before anything publishes.
Every story is reviewed and approved by you before it goes anywhere. Not editorial authority. Approval authority. You see the final version. You say yes or no. We do not publish without your explicit sign-off.
Participation is a fair exchange, not a gift.
You should get something real out of sharing your story. That means professional visibility, portable content you can use on LinkedIn or your professional portfolio with clear attribution. We will tell you exactly what you receive before we ask for anything.
Your story. Your words. (Mostly)
Because we collect these stories through Q&A forms that you fill out, the content we build is based on the content you share. We may minimally edit for clarity or formatting, but the goal is to retain your voice as an authentic member of our community.
Share Your Story
Ready? Not Sure? Both are fine starting points.
You don’t need a polished story or a clear idea of what you want to say. You just need to be willing to start. We’ll figure out the rest together. Questions? Contact [email protected].
Do I have to be a success story?
No. In fact, stories that show the real path — including the hard parts — are the ones audiences trust most. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for honesty.
What if I change my mind after I submit?
You can withdraw at any point before publication. If you’ve already approved and the story has been published, contact us and we’ll discuss your options. We take withdrawal requests seriously.
How are stories selected?
We select stories that reflect the range of the CPS community — different programs, backgrounds, career stages, and perspectives. We prioritize stories that represent groups or experiences underrepresented in previous content. We do not select based on prestige, outcomes, or institutional marketing priorities alone.
I already tagged CPS in something I created. What happens to that?
We do our best to monitor tagged content to re-share but if you want to make sure we see it, you can contact us at [email protected].
