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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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We know about the myth of meritocracy, and we know that relationships still rule the day -- but how do we know if students are progressing in their capacity to build on inherited relationships and in their capacity to strategically create new relationships? For every student, especially those with few to no employment connections, how do we measure if they are building the type of social capital that can propel their lives and careers? And how do we measure our own pedagogy to make sure we are hitting the mark in teaching social capital? 

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