THE COLLECTIVE 2023
CONFERENCE
SCHEDULE
Atlanta, GA
April 25 - 27
BREAKOUT SESSION OVERVIEW
Click on session title to drop down to session details
Engaging First-Year Students: Campus-wide Initiative Connecting Students with Careers & Vocation
Laura Kestner-Ricketts | Augustana College
A Career Plan for Every Student – Made Easy
Gary Boling and Mary Claire Dismukes | Belmont University
RJ Holmes-Leopold | Carleton College
The Importance of Understanding Career Motivation
Maggie Tomas | Carlson School of Management/University of MN, Alumni Career Services
Networking for Good - Experiential Interviews
Kristin Williams and Michelle Adkins | Kent State University
Shayna Smith and Tekeia N.K. Howard | Miami University
Making it Possible and Doing it Well: Institutional Responsibilities in Experiential Learning
Emily Carpenter and Dale Leyburn | Nazareth College
From Admit to Alum: Envisioning One System that Propels Students Through the Engagement Lifecycle
Chris Harris and Zach Plaza | Santa Clara University
Dave Merry | Suffolk University
Career Clinics: Meeting Students Where They Are
Tiffany Cullen | Savannah College of Art and Design
Beyond First Destination: Strengthening Campus Systems for Career Learning Assessment
Faith McClellan and Sarah Resnick | Smith College
Driving Career Outcomes through Early Student Engagement
Emily McCarthy and Megan Forecki | University of Arizona
Leveraging Collaboration and Partnerships to Strengthen Student Exploration and Development
Brett Jones, Melissa Leffin, and Kelly Newbold-Boudreau | University of Wisconsin - School of Business
Haley Sims | Virginia Commonwealth University
Centralization, A Survival Guide
Mandy Devereux | Willamette University
Empowering Marginalized Students in Social Capital Creation
Edward L. Cruz | Tulane University
A New Model for University Career Services and Stakeholder Engagement
Adrian D. Ramirez | Southwestern University
Actualizing "Career as Everyone's Business”: Integrating Career Education into Student Experiences
Jenifer Laird and Adam Helgeson| University of Delaware
Culture is a Shared Responsibility
Karyn McCoy | University of Saint Thomas
The Employer Leadership Summit - Engaging External and Internal Leaders to Elevate Career Everywhere Models
Eileen McGarry | University of Nevada, Las Vegas
From Access to Equity: A Conversation About the Future of Our Work
Jennifer M. Neef | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2023 BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Restoring The Power
Shayna Smith
Associate Director for Diversity Initiatives
Miami University
Tekeia N.K. Howard
Director of Career Equity and Access
Miami University
Balancing power relationships is important to any restorative career development practice. Come learn about a framework to balance power, in career centers. ELEVATE: Diversity and Inclusion Career Institute restores power to underrepresented identities through a conference style experience, bringing together Miami University’s Career Community. ELEVATE advances inclusion, equity, and diversity in professional spaces through dialogue with students, faculty, staff, and employers. A cornerstone of ELEVATE is the DEI Reverse Career Fair, a student-empowered approach connecting student groups to employers beyond the traditional career fair. ELEVATE broadens cultural awareness, competency and leadership knowledge in preparation for success in a global workforce.
Making it Possible and Doing it Well: Institutional Responsibilities in Experiential Learning
Emily Carpenter
Associate Vice President for Experiential Impact
Nazareth College
Dale Leyburn
Assistant Director in Internship Program
Center for Life's Work
Nazareth College
Coming from an institution that is twelve years into creating an experiential learning requirement cookbook, we’ve learned that the secret sauce shouldn’t be a performative stat on an institutional brochure or a burdensome box students will check. This session will cover the must-have ingredients if you are building an experiential learning requirement. From student navigation to equitable access to successful outcomes, ensure your experiential learning requirement is a transformational game-changer captured through institutionally-relevant metrics (e.g., retention, graduation rates, and student performance) and earns rave reviews from your key stakeholders.
From Admit to Alum: Envisioning One System that Propels Students Through the Engagement Lifecycle
Chris Harris
Career Development Specialist - Creative, Public & Human Sectors + Identity
Santa Clara University
Zach Plaza
Sr. Assistant Director, Community Engagement
Santa Clara University
How do colleges connect with their network? With initiatives that vary by user profile, department & vendor, managing outreach on many campuses can be overwhelming. In this session, we will examine how one university designed a lifecycle engagement strategy that touches everyone in their community. Learning Outcomes: Identify three strategic campus departments/partners to assist in building an engagement pipeline Articulate your north star: a common theme and initiative, within the values of your institution that everyone can engage with, that guide your hubs List five departments/teams along your campus roadshow to advocate and align with your pipeline
Say it Early, Say it Often
Dave Merry
Associate Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Career Education and Professional Development
Suffolk University
Identifying career readiness learning objectives for students at our institutions is key, both as a guide for developing our own initiatives and as a tool for students and colleagues to understand the scope of the career education journey. The leadership team at Suffolk University’s Center for Career Equity, Development & Success partnered with the Career Leadership Collective to identify six core learning goals (aka our “Everys”) for our students and alumni, and have worked for the past two years to make these goals clear and memorable for students, faculty, staff, and employers. From pre-admission and orientation, through curriculum design partnerships with faculty; integrated into program evaluations, office décor, and throughout the alumni experience, come discuss how you can elevate the visibility of your center’s goals to all stakeholders to strengthens partnerships and improve outcomes.
Career Clinics: Meeting Students Where They Are
Tiffany Cullen
Assistant Director, Career and Alumni Success
Savannah College of Art and Design
Students starting their collegiate careers often focus on their future careers in industry. As more companies expand their internship application levels to sophomores, students of all levels want to be ready for those employment opportunities. To meet students where they are, I developed a series of workshops called Career Clinics to focus on specific areas and materials needed for a professional image. Starting in the fall quarter, each Career Clinic builds on the next. No matter where a student preparation level is, they can bring their materials to be perfected on the spot.
Engaging First-Year Students: Campus-wide Initiative Connecting Students with Careers & Vocation
Laura Kestner-Ricketts
Executive Director of Career and Professional Development
Augustana College
Career Development continues to be an essential part of the college experience as students and families identify career success as a primary reason for attending. Simultaneously, this remains an optional part of the college experience. Leaders from Career Development & Vocation have been working to change that. This session will guide attendees through steps taken to collaborate with First Year Experience gatekeepers, strategies for implementing a required, campus-wide introduction to career development & vocation, and data outlining the impact on students’ understanding of interests, strengths, work & lifestyle values, and needs of community which are essential to designing a life of meaning & purpose.
A Career Plan for Every Student – Made Easy
Gary Boling
Associate Director, Office of Career & Professional Development
Belmont University
Mary Claire Dismukes
Director, Office of Career & Professional Development
Belmont University
Taking from the High Impact Career Practices, the Career Development Team at Belmont University decided to take on the audacious 2030 goal of every student graduating with a career plan. Where to begin scaling such an endeavor much less measuring it? Defining “Career Plan” and coming up with action steps that apply to every student is harder than it sounds. Using data, technology, existing systems, and campus partnerships, we’re piloting our plan this semester and will show you how our students are able to track their progress toward a strategy for discovering their purpose and achieving their desired career outcomes.
Preparing C.A.R.L.S. for Life After College: A Developmental Approach for Liberal Arts Career Education
RJ Holmes-Leopold | Director of the Career Center
Carleton College
Liberal arts colleges are often criticized for failing to adequately prepare students for the world of work. Faculty members are concerned about “career” creeping too far into the curriculum and career educators are wary of how courses lack connections to the “real world.” The C.A.R.L.S. model is an intentional effort to create a comprehensive, integrated program that blends academics with career education. This presentation outlines the Carleton Career Center’s strategic process in shifting the campus conversation to serve students holistically for life after college.
The Importance of Understanding Career Motivation
Maggie Tomas
Director - Graduate Business Career Center
Carlson School of Management/University of MN, Alumni Career Services
When the University of Minnesota's business school, the Carlson School of Management, opened its career services support to all alumni, the center’s director, Maggie Tomas, noticed several trends with the alumni career questions and needs. The biggest trend she noticed was a misalignment in motivation. In this session, attendees will learn the 5 motivational preferences alumni tend to fall in, ways to help alumni identify motivational type, and tools to help empower students and alumni to align motivation and ask for what they need. This is a framework that can help all career services practitioners have insightful conversations with students and alumni.
Networking for Good - Experiential Interviews
Kristin Williams
Director of Career Services
Kent State University
Michelle Adkins
Associate Director, Career Services | College of Business Administration
Kent State University
"Networking for Good" is an opportunity for students and employer partners to meet employers and grow their network, while supporting community service activity with our 4-5 partnering employers. Our learning outcomes for the students include – gaining a better understanding of the roles available with the attending partner employers, making 3 new employer/recruiter connections, sharing the importance of community connections/volunteer/service. With two full cycles of fall/spring events completed, we are proud to share that more than 90% of attending students have indicated meeting all of the learning outcomes. Additionally, employers value this innovative way of connecting with talent.
Beyond First Destination: Strengthening Campus Systems for Career Learning Assessment
Faith McClellan
Dean of Career Development
Smith College
Sarah Resnick
Data Analyst
Lazarus Center
Smith College
Now more than ever, career centers need to be able to provide evidence-based answers to diverse questions about their work, ranging across equity, resource utilization, and learning outcomes. This presentation explores the realities of building those systems for data collection and analysis, including potential challenges, stories of successful cross-campus partnerships, and how this work can almost immediately yield positive impacts. Along the way we will provide concrete examples of how career development professionals at all levels of data literacy (and time constraints!) can begin to incorporate meaningful measurement into their work.
Driving Career Outcomes through Early Student Engagement
Emily McCarthy
Senior Director, Career Development
University of Arizona
Megan Forecki
Program Manager, Assessment and Research
University of Arizona
University of Arizona Student Engagement & Career Development (SECD) leverages our unique organizational structure to enroll students in early engagement opportunities, often within our own department! Learn how: - SECD’s unique structure integrates career education, employer connections, leadership development, research, and experiential learning - Our innovative LifeLab triages student needs and enrolls them in their next step - We utilize cross-functional expertise to deliver transformational experiences such as our Design Projects Micro-Internships and Summer Internship Stipend program - We assess and refine our practices regularly through our 4-pronged assessment strategy evaluating not only Reach but Reputation, Outcomes, and Engagement
Leveraging Collaboration and Partnerships to Strengthen Student Exploration and Development
Brett Jones
Director of Employer Engagement
University of Wisconsin - School of Business
Melissa Leffin
Director of Career Engagement and Director of Career Studio and Student Coaching
University of Wisconsin - School of Business
Kelly Newbold-Boudreau
Marketing Program Director
University of Wisconsin - School of Business
In Fall 2021, the UW-Madison School of Business launched Career Forward, a new initiative designed to improve student access to tools and resources to support career exploration and development along business career pathways. Career Forward was built to create equitable and accessible career preparation through clear and consistent resources, new experiential programs and pathway-specific internal and external partnerships. In this presentation, we’ll talk about the development of this initiative, and share key learnings about building flexible networks of student career support with academic departments, faculty members and industry partners, as we’ve navigated the early successes and challenges of the program.
Managing Up from the Middle
Haley Sims
Senior Associate Director, Career & Industry Advising
Virginia Commonwealth University
We know managing up is important, but what is it and how do we do it? Some middle managers get caught in an endless game of trying to please everyone and end up burning out or thinking the grass is greener at another institution/organization. In this session, we’ll discuss metrics for success and collaborate to know how and when to deliver feedback as we lead from the middle. Participants will be able to list resources to identify their supervisor’s style, recognize tactics in communicating with their supervisor, and gain experience in applying strategies for managing up through case studies.
Centralization, A Survival Guide
Mandy Devereux
Director of Career Development
Willamette University
For several universities, career offices are elevating under centralized leadership models. A year after leading Willamette University through two career team mergers, Executive Director of Career Initiatives, Mandy Devereux would love to share tips for other institutions moving towards centralized models. This session will incorporate concepts of change management, navigating institutional complexity, building internal advocates and creating a shared vision to create forward momentum for your teams and your institution. Part visionary leadership part operational management, this conversation will be geared towards small to mid-sized career offices where leaders are often in positions of wearing many hats.
Empowering Marginalized Students in Social Capital Creation
Edward Cruz
Assistant Dean & Executive Director, Career Services
Tulane University
Career professionals understand the impactful outcome of creating social capital. We also know marginalized students may not run the same race and begin at differing points, making it difficult to access the hidden job market and impactful professional networks and opportunities. Moving away from passively teaching networking and tightening career and social capital mobility will provide students with the tools to engage effectively and build meaningful professional relationships. In turn, confidence in social capital creation will have a long-lasting career impact.
A New Model for University Career Services and Stakeholder Engagement
Adrian D. Ramirez
Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development
Southwestern University
Determining new channels for stakeholder engagement is an evolving priority in higher education. In 2021, Southwestern University moved its Center for Career & Professional Development from Student Life to University Relations, a team whose work focuses on stakeholder management and associated contributions to the university community. The move was made with the goal of increasing opportunities for student professional development. This session will address the genesis of this new model, its current impact, and future plans.
Actualizing “Career as Everyone’s Business”: Integrating Career Education into Student Experiences
Jenifer Laird
Associate Director, Academic & Career Integration
University of Delaware
Adam Helgeson
Associate Director,
Career Access and Equity
University of Delaware
The University of Delaware Career Center continues to expand undergraduate student access to career and professional development by integrating career information into the academic and co-curricular settings. In this session we will discuss the design and implementation of career curriculum integration and associated learning outcomes, our expansion beyond the traditional 1:1 and class by class model to scaled efforts, and how we will strategize our efforts using thoughtful data and tracking. You may be interested in this session if you are looking to move from a model of synchronous instruction toward a model of self-paced, individual competency building on a broad scale.
Culture is a Shared Responsibility
Karyn McCoy
Associate VP, Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement
University Advancement
University of Saint Thomas
Organizational culture impacts employee engagement, retention, performance, advocacy and burnout. Contrary to the top-down culture-building model that still exists in many organizations, today’s workplace requires that we all play a role in establishing, impacting and/or stewarding our culture. This session will focus on why culture matters (see the first sentence), the key components of culture, and the actions each of us can take to uphold it.
The Employer Leadership Summit - Engaging External and Internal Leaders to Elevate Career Everywhere Models
Eileen McGarry
Executive Director of Career Services
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
UNLV Career Services and Workforce Development elevated the traditional employer roundtable to a new level! In the interest of advancing a “career everywhere” model at its diverse Minority Serving Institution (MSI), Career Services leaders partnered with top administration to create a unique Talent-Pipeline Summit that brought together 225 university leaders, economic development leaders, employers from all 7 key Nevada industries, student leaders, alumni, and multiple government officials. The Summit, facilitated by Jeremy Podany, CEO of the Career Leadership Collective, resulted in an illuminating and impactful dialogue and planning session that is shaping the campus career readiness ecosystem today. The UNLV Leadership Summit has become a signature university president’s event and has been instrumental in pivoting the campus culture to embrace career readiness through the student lifecycle.
Presenter Eileen McGarry, Executive Director of UNLV Career Services will share insights on the visioning, planning and implementation behind creating a successful high profile campus-wide engagement event with key external and internal stakeholders. Learn about how career leaders can position career readiness as a top leadership priority and create engagement experiences that serve the needs of the greater campus and community while elevating and advancing our work on behalf of students.
From Access to Equity: A Conversation About the Future of Our Work
Jennifer M. Neef
Director of The Career Center
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In the last decade, the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign has worked to enhance access by implementing strategies that mitigate financial barriers, offering paths with differentiated modalities for degree completion or other post-secondary credentials, and creating academic support services that impact retention and completion. Within career services, we have created and/or broaden channels to scale career development support services and resources, and like many others implemented Handshake, which exponentially increased access to internships and other experiential learning opportunities hosted by employers, professional connections, and jobs. Yet, gaps in post-graduation outcomes persist for our Black, Latinx, and 1st generation students relative to their peers.
With great strides toward access, attention turns toward equity. What new strategies, tools, and resources are needed to support career development and post-graduation success that will close the gap in post-graduation outcomes? Join us for a conversation about the next frontier of our work – one that leverages gains in access to move toward equity.