BREAKOUT SESSION OVERVIEW
Click on session title to drop down to session details
DAY 1
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Scale Isn’t Everything: Personalizing Services to Sustain Employer and Student Engagement
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Enhancing faculty engagement to fortify student career readiness
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Faculty Engagement Strategy for Career Readiness and Competency Integration into Curriculum
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Keep Calm and Explore On: Strategies for Engaging Exploratory Students
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Supporting the Career Everywhere initiative with Alumni Career Data
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Scaling Engagement with Liberal Arts and Sciences Using a Peer Career Ambassador Program
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Data, data, everywhere…(but how do we get it, and what do we do with it?)
DAY 2
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Taking Measure: Reconceiving the Story of Campus Career Engagement
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Integrating Principles of Equity into Career Skills Education
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Career Center Outreach Initiatives for Black and Latinx Students and Alumni
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Virtual Meet-Ups: Giving Students the Opportunity to Make Casual Connections
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Helping Underrepresented Students Envision Career Success through Alumni Mentorship
BREAKOUT SESSIONS
ALL TIMES Eastern
W, July 28, 12:30-1:00pm
W, July 28, 1:45-2:15pm
Enhancing Faculty Engagement to Fortify Student Career Readiness
Tiffany Cullen-Salmi,
Assistant Director, Career and Alumni Success,
Savannah College of Art and Design
This session will cover the basics, outline, and outcomes of cultivating faculty collaboration to produce career-focused opportunities for students and alumni. The presentation will begin with steps to take in order to encourage faculty engagement and participation by discovering their unique objectives. From there, evaluating opportunities for collaboration on workshops and other programming. Finally, tracking collaboration success through participation and strategically designed outcomes.
Faculty Engagement Strategy for Career Readiness and Competency Integration into Curriculum
Judy Anderson, Director of Career Readiness,
College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
Ascan Koerner, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education
Integrating readiness in the undergraduate curriculum is the ultimate challenge of career readiness work. If the outcome of a college education is to develop competencies, then that development must include what happens in the classroom. Engaging faculty must be at the core of any change in higher education. We will share the strategy utilized in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota which had several phases including the development of The Career Readiness Teaching Fellows program. This community of 100+ faculty are taking up the charge of readiness as departmental champions to focus on the undergraduate curriculum.
We will help attendees understand the institutional context that dominates the faculty perspective. Issues such as academic freedom, promotion and tenure, reward structures and pressure to meet research objectives are all barriers Career Readiness initiatives must compete with in order to impact the undergraduate curriculum. Engaging faculty with an understanding of their experience within the institution is critical to convincing them to become involved. Career Readiness initiatives will have difficulty succeeding without faculty leadership. After this session, participants will be able to: *Understand the faculty perspective and design a convincing and motivating argument for their role in the Career Readiness of their undergraduate students including leveraging the student voice to influence faculty perceptions
*Navigate barriers to faculty engagement such as academic freedom, promotion and tenure, reward structures and pressure to meet research objectives
*Understand the need to embed a focus on teaching and learning in parallel to Career Readiness to integrate Career Readiness into courses and curriculum
Scaling an Inclusive, Evidence-Based EMentoring Program
Jeremy Daniel, Director, UGA Mentor Program, University of Georgia
This interactive session will provide insight on how institutions can design an inclusive, evidence-based eMentoring program that is sustainable and scalable. Moreover, you will learn innovative strategies and best practices foster a culture of mentoring within your respective organization across all levels. The session will discuss a comprehensive e-mentoring program that connects students with alumni of the University of Georgia and the impact it has had on the university community since its global launch on August 21, 2019.
Keep Calm and Explore On: Strategies for Engaging Exploratory Students
Katie Eisenhauer, Career Coach, Xavier University
Whitney Menser
Assistant Director for Student Success
“Keep Calm and Explore On: Strategies for Engaging Exploratory Students” gives participants the tools to learn how to build and implement a self-guided exploratory course on Canvas for students who are exploring majors and careers. As a smaller Career Development team at Xavier University, we are continuously thinking of innovative ways in which to better engage our exploratory students now and post-pandemic. Research shows that students who are undecided with their major are more at risk for being retained in the first year, so it is crucial that we have effective resources that allow our students to take an active role in their major and career exploration process. The exploratory course gives students the tools to learn more about ways to gain experience while at Xavier, build their network with a special focus on mentoring, set goals, and more. In the time that we have rolled out the course to students, staff, and faculty, we have thus far seen increased engagement with students as well as with our campus partners. We are excited to continue to collect outcomes data on this initiative as the semester progresses.
Supporting the Career Everywhere initiative with Alumni Career Data
Jim Lowe, Assistant Vice Provost, Executive Director at the Center for Career Development
Lee Hameroff, Associate Director of Operations at the Center for Career Development
University of Connecticut
As a member of the Coalition for Life-Transformative Education, UConn seeks to imagine what our University would look like for students if every one of our faculty and staff responded to the question, “Why are you working here at UConn?” by saying, “We are here to help transform the lives of UConn’s students.” At the UConn Center for Career Development we believe, as demonstrated through our “Career Everywhere” program that Career Services has a significant impact on transforming students’ lives. To support this notion, the Center has utilized alumni data collected in 2019 and 2020 via the National Alumni Career Mobility (NACM) survey. We believe that NACM data is key to informing the university community of the factors that positively contribute to career mobility. In this session we will discuss the various ways in which this data has helped to support our Career Everywhere program, how we’ve synthesized the data to create both general and targeted infographics, begun to inform the university community of the key factors contributing to career mobility, and utilized the data to enhance collaborations across campus to further the goals of our office.
W, July 28, 2:45-3:15pm
Connecting Classroom and Career
Megan Ellis, Executive Director, Career Connection, Ohio Wesleyan University
Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato, Associate Professor of Modern Foreign Languages
Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) students develop the key core competencies employers continually identify as the most desired skills in employees throughout the four years at OWU. However, articulating those skills was challenging. OWU students didn't have the language to explain why their philosophy class made them a stronger accountant or how their health and human kinetics class translated into a successful career in marketing.
To maximize career development for our students we created a partnership between Career Connection and OWU Faculty. Through a collaboration with Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato, we have held two faculty workshops where we've trained faculty on the concepts of transferable skills and competencies. As a result of these workshops, nearly 20% of the faculty have been trained and have committed to incorporating semester-long transferable skills assignments into their course.
Scaling Engagement with Liberal Arts and Sciences Using a Peer Career Ambassador Program
Lisa Famularo, Career Consultant - Center for Career Development, University of Connecticut
Aaliyah Castleberry, Career Consultant - Center for Career Development
Of the 18,000+ students that make up the undergraduate student body at the University of Connecticut, approximately 10,600 of them are studying within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS). During the 2016-2017 academic year, the UConn Center for Career Development introduced two career coach positions with a specific focus on building relationships with and serving CLAS students. Over the following years, the relationships with CLAS departments and students strengthened dramatically, but the ratio of 10,600 students to two career coaches was limiting the potential of what could be done. In an effort to assist the two CLAS-focused career coaches in their outreach efforts to CLAS students, the idea to build a CLAS Career Ambassador Program consisting of student volunteers to help spread the word about the Career Center services and programs throughout the College came to fruition.
In August 2019, the CLAS Team set out to recruit a pilot group of CLAS Career Ambassadors. The position description (see attached) was emailed out via Handshake to all CLAS students who had completed an appointment with the Career Center within the previous academic year, and five were selected to join the team (one senior, two juniors, and two sophomores with majors/minors representing eight different CLAS academic departments). Throughout their first year, the Ambassadors assisted with a variety of efforts largely related to marketing, promotion, and event facilitation. A full report of the Ambassadors' Fall 2019 accomplishments is attached (the program was suspended in Spring 2020 due to COVID-19), but a few highlights include: provided additional staffing and student-to-student support at 18 events, writing a total of 8 student/alumni spotlights to post as blogs on the department’s website, and tabling on 5 different occasions to promote upcoming events and services.
Based on the tremendous success in its first year, the program continued in a virtual format during the 2020-2021 academic year. A new Ambassador was recruited to take the place of our graduating senior, and an Intern (see position description attached) was hired to assist in overseeing the program. The addition of the Intern this year has taken many of the day-to-day program management responsibilities off of the plates of the two career coaches and allowed them to focus more on faculty/staff relationship building, program development, and career coaching. A Fall 2020 accomplishment report is attached as well, detailing the virtual accomplishments of this year's Ambassadors. A few highlights include: attending and participating in 7 virtual events, launching an "Ask a CLAS Career Ambassador" initiative via Google Forms, the revitalization of a CLAS group on LinkedIn, and writing 9 blogs for the Career Center website.
Other outcomes of the program include one of our Ambassadors being hired as a Career Intern, other departments asking us for our advice in starting and managing an Ambassador program, and an invitation to be part of a campus-wide working group to discuss best practices for Ambassador programs.
Employer Relations to Employer Engagement: A New Beginning
Ablavi Handziak
Employer Engagement Associate, Undergraduate Business Career Center
Carlson School of Management,
University of Minnesota
This session will focus on the evolution of the Carlson School's Employer Engagement Team. As the Employer Relations Team, we focused mainly on working with employers participating in on-campus recruiting events. We were seen as an administrative team. Over the last 5 years, we have transformed to the Employer Engagement Team and we now focus on recruiting operations AND expanding our portfolio of hiring organizations. We now are seen as a team who manages relationships with organizations. Attendees will learn about our evolution, an outline of steps taken over 5 years, and also the mistakes made along the way. This presentation will be grounded in humility, vulnerability and innovation.
Breaking into the Curriculum
Rachel Friedman, Career Development Program Administrator, New York University- Tisch Drama Departmeent
The NYU Tisch Drama Office of Career Development & Alumni Engagement was created in 2018 when the department hired a full-time administrator to do an in-depth assessment of career development practices that already existed within the curriculum and outside of the curriculum for a department of 1,600 students, over 300 faculty, and over 10,000 alumni. This session will focus on how to identify the needs of industry-specific departments and the first steps that can be taken to "break into the curriculum". The department will discuss the first steps of workshops built into pre-existing course structures and building unique career-centric courses that can count toward key degree requirements (not only electives), as steps toward broader currricular integration. Within the last four years, this office regularly does extensive curricular workshops with key faculty, has restructured the internships program (focused specifically for credit), and has developed a unique course structure that is used to bridge the academic expeience to the professional landscape integrating opportunities for professional exposure, networking, creation of viable projects for life post-graduation, and regular and rigorous conversations about career management.
Telling the Career Success Story with Alumni Career Data
Dr. Kelly Dries
Executive Director, Office of Career & Professional Development
University of Redlands
Higher education must play a strategic role in moving career services from the basement to the epicenter of the college student experience. As Career Services professionals, we know firsthand the impact of the work we do, but with the support of insightful data, others can realize that value too. In this session, learn how the University of Redlands utilized the National Alumni Career Mobility Survey to create campus-wide buy-in towards the importance of career and professional development.
W, July 28, 3:15-3:45pm
Data, data, everywhere…(but how do we get it, and what do we do with it?)
Paulette Gonzalez-Sierchio, Executive Director, University Career Services, St. John's University
Dr. Michelle Kyriakides, Executive Director of Center for Career Design & Development at Hofstra University,
Kevin Grubb, Executive Director of the University Career Center and Assistant Vice Provost for Professional Development at Villanova University
Our panelists will discuss ways in which they have identified solutions to some of the most persistent challenges faced by today’s Career Center directors including engaging students, faculty and employers; and requesting greater resources. The panelists will share case studies of successful uses of data on their campuses. The session will commence with an overview about what types of data Career Center leadership is typically able to access on their campuses. Then, each panelist will share their story about how they have utilized data successfully on their campuses with their case studies.
The Center for Career Design & Development at Hofstra University was seeking to enhance engagement with students. Based on both an analysis of student engagement data and campus-wide survey data about student confidence with the NACE Career Readiness Competencies, the Career Center chose to focus on special populations who had limited engagement with our office including student athletes, students with disabilities, and students who were involved in non-professional clubs and organizations. These efforts resulted in measurable successes and increased engagement with each of these populations. During the pandemic, we have also utilized engagement data and enrollment status data (remote/on-campus) to target student engagement efforts, resulting in an increase in student appointments from Fall 2019-Fall 2020.
The overarching strategic priority of St. John’s is to ensure student success, so it’s incumbent upon the Career Services team to determine how to best support the students and tell their story. The collection of accurate and representative first destination data drives the decisions towards accomplishing these goals. The outcomes information provides opportunities to collaborate with faculty and administration across campus to identify trends, successes, and areas of opportunity. The data is then used to share our students’ success with all stakeholders, from prospective students to the Board of Trustees. In 2016, the Villanova University Career Center consisted of a staff of 9 who were tasked with serving an enrolled student body of 10,000+ and all university alumni. While student, alumni, and employer engagement with the Career Center had all doubled, tripled, or more over the previous 10 years, the size of the staff remained the same. With new leadership recently installed in the Provost’s office and in the Career Center, the opportunity to make the case for increased staffing was clear. Using a combination of Career Center audience engagement data, benchmarking data (including some provided by NACE research), and externally available research, a 3-year needs assessment plan was developed and presented to academic leadership. As a result, the Career Center team has grown from 9 in 2016 to 19 in 2019, and the career services function is poised for further growth in the university’s just-launch 10-year strategic plan.
This session will discuss real problems, and realistic solutions - making data and data driven decision making more accessible to those who may have previously felt intimidated by this topic. The presenters will also help identify data sources from outside their own office that may be helpful in making decisions and strategic planning. Attendees will be provided with a Reference Guide to Data that they can take back to their campuses with them.
Elevating Employer Engagement in Your Campus DEI Work
Tekeia H.K.Howard, Diversity Initiative and On-Demand Career Advising, Miami University
Sharon L. Attaway, Director of Employer Relations
Let’s face it, there was a lot going on in 2020. Two concurrent events, the pandemic and the racial injustice reckoning required both campuses and employers to intentionally respond to the moment. Joined by these common challenges, The Center for Career Exploration and Success created a space where we could come together to mutually support and explore strategies for elevating DEI conversations and practices in our organization. The result was the launch of the DEI Mastermind, where competitive employers united to share vulnerabilities and best practices while strengthening their network of peers and resources.
We pulled out all the stops: leveraged faculty, staff, students as well as colleagues from UNC Chapel Hill and Synchrony Financial. We jump started imperfectly perfect conversations to break down access barriers to student careers. Now, we'd like to share our blueprint for how you might create similar dialogues and experiences on your campuses.
Preparing Students for Navigation Past Universities Gates: A Project Based Learning Approach to Gaining Core Competencies and Experiential Experiences
Amy Jared, Professional Development/Course Coordinator, The University of Tennessee Knoxville
This session will be an informative session. Experiential learning and problem solving strategies are becoming more and more critical in the development of career readiness. As the work force continues to grow and evolve, so do problems and issues. Implementation of the PBL module helps develop a research, unique and all-encompassing thought process to facilitate higher-order thinking constructs and give students an opportunity for experiential learning in the classroom. I have developed a course that encompasses and has a proven demonstration of higher student reported career self-efficacy. Best practices for implementation will also be discussed. This has been a phenomenal way to build relationships between academic professionals, career development professionals and employers. It can be implemented in both in-person and virtual climates.
The Case for Practitioner Research in Career Services
Imants Jaunarajs, Assistant Vice President and Executive Director, Ohio University
Tony Botelho is the Director of Career & Volunteer Services at Simon Fraser University
Penny Freno, Career Cducator at Simon Fraser University
How do you know that students have benefited from engaging in your services and resoruces? How are you able to convince administrators that your work is of value?
In this engaging and interactive session, presenters from an American institution and a Canadian one will share their experiences with measuring student learning and development and how this has led them to the area of practitioner research. They will demystify practitioner research, differentiate it from other forms of evaluation, and provide simple tips on how to get started. They will also highlight how well the skills we all have as practitioners transfer to the research world. An action orientated discussion to enable participants to apply content will be facilitated.
The session will showcase four interconnected stories: 1) The need and importance of practitioner research in career services, 2) Principals of practitioner research, 3) Examples of practitioner research in career services, 4) Ways in which practitioner research enhances practice and articulates career services value.
Scaling Career Services Through Campus Influencers
Nicole Kolt, Associate Director, Career Coaching, George Washington University
Shaunda Thompson, Career Coach, George Washington University
In Fall 2020, The Center for Career Services launched a new program called the Career Influencers Program. The Career Influencers Program equips faculty and staff to support GW undergraduate students’ career readiness and success through conversations about internships, careers, and post-GW plans. Most faculty and staff are already having these conversations with students. The goal is to help enhance these conversations by providing resources and support when navigating career-related questions. All faculty and staff who meet with undergraduate students are welcome to participate. If interested they can attend a 1-hour training session offered three times throughout the semester.
The training covers resources, the career development cycle, and common questions or concerns students present. Participants leave the training with access to Handshake (if requested), a toolkit of resources, and a better knowledge of where to refer students. We began designing the program in fall of 2019, held focus groups and developed the training in spring and summer 2020, and marketed to our core campus partners for the fall pilot. We then expanded our marketing efforts to have faculty and staff sign up for the spring sessions. To date, we have had 45 faculty and staff participate with approximately 10 signed up for the April session. Current Career Influencers can sign up for elective training for the end of the semester on Career Competencies and/or Networking.
TH, July 29, 1:00-1:30pm
Extending Beyond a Committee – Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as an Entire Career Center Team
Tara Malone, Associate Director, Regional Campus, University of Connecticut, Center for Career Development
Lisa Famularo, Career Consultant, University of Connecticut - Center for Career Development
Career development professionals have a shared responsibility to acknowledge and combat the systematic racism that impacts our students on a regular basis, as they navigate their educational and career aspirations. While this issue is not new, with recent events of racial violence, we may feel like we are experiencing two pandemics. In this time of uncertainty and upheaval, our commitment to advocacy can be greater than ever before. However, allies and advocates may struggle with what to do, what to say, and where to begin. The UConn Center for Career Development decided to start from within. This summer, we critically examined our previous and current diversity efforts and identified the need to revamp our internal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) committee. In this session, we will shed light on our process of recreating a DE&I committee that extends beyond its members and is truly integrated into the individual and collective work our entire department. The UConn Center of Career Development is comprised of 26 full time team members, 10 of which serve on the committee. We will share how the perceived challenges of a virtual setting also created a silver lining of access for staff members from regional campuses throughout the state. We will examine the pros and cons of the old and new structures and provide insight on how we have made it a priority to further infuse a DE&I focus into all that we do.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Examine pros and cons of different ways to structure DE&I efforts within a career center staff
-Explore ways to create a sense of shared responsibility around the topics of DE&I within a career center staff
-Identify takeaways that could be applied to their own team's DE&I work
Taking Measure: Reconceiving the Story of Campus Career Engagement
Abra McAndrew, Assistant Vice President, University of Arizona
Megan Forecki, Sr. Coordinator Assessment & Research, Student Engagement & Career Development, University of Arizona
In this session, we'll describe how we remodeled the Student Engagement & Career Development office metrics and placed them in conversation with senior survey data to tell an equity-focused story of collective campus impact. We'll share how we collect evidence not only of our Reach, but also of Outcomes, Engagement and Reputation factors that will continue to inform this story.
Our presentation will include some preliminary data from our pilot of the initiative. One outcome we can discuss relates to how the data-informed insights we developed led to new conversations and helped us develop shared vision with stakeholders from Deans to employers to students.
Integrating Principles of Equity into Career Skills Education
Lisa Novack, Associate Director of Student Services, UBCC, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Britney Hayes, Career Coach, Rebecca Dordel, Senior Career Coach,
As career educators, we are uniquely poised to teach students about systemic inequities that permeate the career development space. At the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, we are committed to bringing an intentional equity lens to our career education work. One area where we’ve infused principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion into our work is throughout our required Career Skills course. We’ve woven topics of systemic racism, gender bias, name bias, and more throughout the course curriculum with the aim of leveling the playing field for all students and using our roles as career educators to advance equity.
In this session, the facilitators will share examples of course content, highlight the challenges and opportunities of doing this work, share outcomes/feedback from students who took the course, and provide space for participants to identify how they might bring similar ideas back to their campus. Attendees will gain strategies for leveraging our roles to bring principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion to the students we serve.
Career Center Outreach Initiatives for Black and Latinx Students and Alumni
Margaret Oaikena, Career Coach, University of North Texas
Jeanette Hickl, Senior Associate Director,
On a voluntary basis, a group of the UNT Career Center staff team created a group to address the following areas: a) Critically assess Career Center services to determine areas of opportunity for serving Black and Latinx students, including increasing staff awareness of the unique challenges Black and Latinx students face; b) Develop sustainable programs, services, and resources that support Black and Latinx students; c) Increase self-awareness and understanding of individual role played in creating an inclusive environment for Black and Latinx students; d) Educate and collaborate with our employer partners to promote inclusive practices that support Black and Latinx students and graduates.
In year one, we created a post-appointment and post-programming survey to assess inclusivity in our office environment and programming effort and created a survey to assess the unique challenges of Black and Latinx students who we meet in our programming. We piloted several programs in spring 2021 including Introduction to Diversity in the Workplace professional development employer roundtable and Black History Month social media campaign highlighting our alumni.
Finally, we expanded on our employer recruitment policy to address diversity and standing against indirect and direct discrimination of our students and alumni. Later this semester, we will be adding a Form to our website for students to report discrimination as an intern or employee. The group also plans to host focus groups with Black and Latinx student to capture student insights on the Career Center’s services. We would like to host this session to provide some of our best practices to other universities and institutions.
TH, July 29, 2:45-3:15pm
Raising the Bar: Implementing Microcredentialing
James Renfro, Director, Career Center, University of North Texas Health Science Center
John M. McKenzie, MS, Assistant Director, Center for Innovative Learning
Lori Y. Saunders, MS, Director of Student Development
The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth (UNTHSC, or, HSC: https://www.unthsc.edu/) has emerged as one of the nation’s premier graduate academic medical centers, with six schools that specialize in patient-centered education, research, and health care. Without exception, HSC’s mission supports that of what the calling of higher education aspires to do in improving the lives not only of the citizens of our state, but those throughout the global community.
In response to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board plan, 60x30TX (which aspires for 60 percent of the 25- to 34-yearold Texas population to hold a certificate or degree by 2030), HSC has developed a vision for mastering the 60X30TX tenet of the “Marketable Skills Goal” by placing great emphasis on the value of higher education in its direct application to success in the workforce. Upon identifying and articulating the institution’s essential Career Readiness Skills, we recognized that we needed a reliable means of fully capturing students’ acquisition of these skills in a formal system that also provided a way of legitimizing their mastery of these competencies on a certification level.
The first step was to form an institutional Microcredentialing Committee in early 2020 as a means of defining, and refining, our best representation of microcredentials, and to begin the process of building these out for broader implementation through the contributions of several established subcommittees. HSC began issuing microcredentials in the summer of 2020, which was met with immediate acclaim, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic: https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/story/hsc-prioritizes-microcredentials-to-enhance-students-career-readiness/. HSC now manages and awards microcredentials using the Portfolium e-portfolio platform.
To date, the committee has reviewed and approved nine distinct institutional microcredentials for development, with numerous more continuing to be submitted for review on an ongoing basis. Next in development, the HSC will soon launch HSC-Plus, which will be a community-focused, for-fee system of issuing microcredentials to professionals outside the institution.
Virtual Meet-Ups: Giving Students the Opportunity to Make Casual Connections
Danielle Rueger-Miroewski, Assistant Director, Career Connections, Baldwin Wallace University
According to LinkedIn, up to 85% of jobs are filled through networking. Some NACE statistics indicate that that number could be even higher. Regardless of specific numbers, it's clear that social capital is invaluable, but not all students have equal access to networks, and traditional networking can be intimidating to students.
This session will cover how Baldwin Wallace University Career Services organizes regular career community-oriented meet-ups that allow students to learn from and build connections with professionals in their industries of interest without the pressure of a career fair or one-on-one informational interview.
From Getting Involved to Getting Hired: Developing an Institutional Approach to Co-Curricular Career Readiness
Kevin Schwemmin, Associate Director, Career Development Center, Central Michigan University
Jennifer Drevon, Assistant Director, Sarah R. Opperman Leadership Institute
Do you ever wonder if students understand the impact of out-of-classroom experiences on their ability to be career-ready? We asked ourselves that question and what followed was an innovative and research-informed institutional approach to addressing how students frame their on-campus involvement.
First, we will explore our research findings on how students and employers often differ in how they value co-curricular experiences. We will then explore the collaborative and mutually beneficial process of on-boarding campus partners to develop divisional program learning outcomes and definitions of career readiness. Lastly, we will outline how these steps led to the development of the CMU Gold Path. The CMU Gold Path aims to provide students with the opportunity to design their on-campus experience, build important skill sets, and help graduates articulate their out-of-class experiences to future employers.
Through three phases, Explore, Engage, and Apply, students navigate competency areas, including career-readiness, that lead students through a self-paced path filled with experiences, reflection, and education aligned with the goal of creating well-rounded, career-ready graduates. This session will describe both the challenges and benefits to building a divisional approach to student career-readiness through co-curricular engagement and will offer opportunities for group discussion, exploration of how to apply this approach to any institutional setting, and next steps.
Helping Underrepresented Students Envision Career Success through Alumni Mentorship
Keira Simmonds, Senior Assistant Director for Campus Initiatives, University of Florida
Jessica Phillipe, Campus Initiatives Specialist
At a time when career centers were pivoting to virtual operations due to the pandemic, the UF Career Connections Center launched a short term, virtual flash mentoring program to help its black students envision a successful future, build community, and connect with black alumni. The initial pilot served 32 students and engaged 29 alumni in meaningful career conversations pertinent to the black community at a time of civil unrest and racial tensions that were sweeping across the nation.
The UF Career Connections Center continues to improve this program with its most recent iteration serving Hispanic/LatinX students. In this session, you will hear program facilitators talk about lessons learned and plans for the future as well as get practical tips and strategies to implement at your institutions.
TH, July 29, 3:15-3:45pm
The Career Collaborative: Faculty Career Grants
Shelby Summers Ballard, Associate Director, Academic Initiatives, Miami University, Center for Career Exploration & Success
Dr. Patrick Haney, Associate Dean of CAS & Professor of Political Science
It is more important than ever to support our students. To increase real-world projects in the classroom as well as career exploration and student professional development, CCES has a career grant fund designated for Career Grants available for faculty on the Oxford campus.
This career grant opportunity was established in the spring of 2019 and has been so successful, we have continued this career grant program every semester since then. We began to formulate the career grant committee to review proposals, which is made up of Associate Deans and Faculty from each division. We developed policies, procedures, general submission guidelines, and timelines to ensure faculty had a proper understanding of how to complete this funding opportunity. Faculty can receive full or partial funding (up to $5,000) for 2 reasons: academic classes with work-related projects that tie to outside entities (employers or organizations); or
faculty/staff-led events or initiatives (outside of class) that help students prepare for their careers. Since its inception, we have funded 65 projects totaling $154,000 for faculty to embed career into their classroom. Every college at Miami University has been funded-Education, Engineering, Business, Creative Arts and Arts and Science.
The learning outcomes:
Participants will understand how to create a successful and cohesive faculty career grant program on their campus, which includes; committee development, funding, policies and procedures and timelines.
Participants will comprehend the barriers and the opportunities to successfully apply and create their own career grant program on their campus.
Participants will understand how to identify problematic scenarios and develop solutions, evaluate the success of the initiative, and the opportunity to propose their own concepts to take this back to their campus.
Designing Your Life: A Mentoring Pilot
May Thao-Schuck, Radzinski Vice President of Career and Professional Development, St. Catherine University
This project was approved by IRB. Career Development at St. Catherine University Partnered with the Endowed Chair for the Liberal Arts to implement a mentoring program pilot. Mentoring is a high impact practice that leads to improved outcomes for students in academia and career placement. Mentees were students of color from undergraduate, graduate and weekend programs.
Mentors included members of the Senior Leadership Team at St. Catherine University including Deans, Provost, Associate and Assistant Provosts, and Directors. We used pre and post survey, interviews and observations as data collection tools. We analyzed the data and will present our results which include: mentee and mentor perceptions of mentoring, and function of mentoring relationships in academia.
Acceptance & Life Vision Creation: Inclusive programming to engage undecided students online with community narratives and design principles
Stephanie Waite, Senior Associate Director, Yale University
Meredith Mira, Senior Associate Director
After recognizing a campus culture that perpetuates competition and private exploration of career paths, a team at Yale’s Office of Career Strategy sought to find ways to reduce the stigma of career indecision and encourage students to share vulnerabilities and brainstorm career visions with one another. They built the Designing Your Career @ Yale program – a series of engaging workshops that give students the time, space, community, and infrastructure of thought to envision their lives beyond college. For five years, Designing Your Career @ Yale (adapted from Stanford University’s Designing Your Life program) has served as a cornerstone program for undecided students, and after dozens of prototypes, the team has identified effective practices for helping students incorporate their values, interests, and skills into the career decision-making process.
This session will cover how Yale’s Office of Career Strategy engaged students in guided reflection exercises and peer-to-peer sharing to help undecided students explore values-based career decision making. With an eye toward developing equitable and inclusive practices, student participants were asked to focus on their personal narratives, wide-range of lived experiences, and to incorporate life design principles while engaging with an online community in the career decision-making process. We will cover the process and logistics for creating successful synchronous online workshops and include specific direction on the activity development process and student recruitment.
The breakout session will begin with an introduction of the campus culture, how we gathered qualitative and quantitative evidence that showed a need to develop programming that specifically addresses career indecision, and the creation of the exclusively-online DYC: Acceptance & Life Vision Creation program. We will demonstrate the facilitation of two key exercises used during the program, share essential facilitator talking points, and showcase design elements that contributed to the success of the program.
Attendees will experience firsthand the two main exercises used to engage an online student audience – Mining Your Life & Life Vision Creation – and will break out into small groups to share their stories and visions. Stephanie and Meredith will detail the key steps involved in the program production process: 1. Modifying community narrative curriculum and elements of Design Thinking to align with campus culture, 2. Recruiting student participants, and 3. Identifying technological logistics. This session will conclude with sharing the challenges encountered along the way and the responses from student participants from 2017-present with an emphasis on the 2020-2021 exclusively-online sessions.
Creating career equity through LMS integration
Brandon Wright, UAB Career Center, Director, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Adam Roderick, Associate Director of Career Education
In response to COVID-19, universities across the nation have scrambled to offer accessible and impactful services to students that can be delivered remotely. Remote learning, hybrid courses, and online delivery have become the new norm. Without intentional effort and focus on equitable access for all, student services are destined to be underutilized and ineffective for first-generation, underrepresented, and most at-risk students. To ensure student career success, Career Centers must seek innovative approaches to delivering career-ready content and seek opportunities to integrate these approaches into the existing student experience to the greatest extent possible. Moreover, the world of work has seen monumental shifts in response to COVID-19. Delivery of career services must be tailored and adjusted to maintain relevancy and impact in this new landscape. The UAB Career Center Canvas Course has proven to be a viable approach to achieving accessibility, innovation, and integration with maximum effect.
The UAB Career Center Canvas Course was launched in spring 2020. The launch was expedited in response to COVID-19 and the shift to remote and online learning. The platform was developed in partnership with the UAB Division of eLearning and guidance from the Indiana University EDGE platform. The UAB Career Center Canvas Course consists of six modules: Introduction to the Career Center, Self and Career Exploration, Career Planning and Gaining Experience, Resume Building, Interview Skills, and Career Launch. Each module was designed to be completed in sequence or to function as a stand-alone module. The course enrolled 18,000+ UAB students initially. In addition to student self-directed completion, the UAB Career Center focused efforts on curricular integration. To date, the UAB Career Center Canvas Course has been integrated into 61 academic courses with an enrollment of almost 2,000 students and representing 13 different departments, colleges, and schools. Also, 9,000+ students have been actively engaged in the platform, and those students have submitted 4,100+ quizzes. Moreover, the Career Center Canvas Course features “Take Action” points throughout that direct students to engage in experiential learning by implementing these practices in their own personal career journey. Since its launch, the UAB Career Center has had the opportunity to provide consultation to other Career Centers across the nation as they explore implementing a campus-wide Learning Management System (LMS) focused on career readiness.
Through this session, the UAB Career Center walks participants through the utilization of campus-wide curricular platforms for the delivery of career readiness content. Regardless of the platform (Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology, and more), LMS is a higher education reality. We will support participants in brainstorming ways to utilize LMS in customizing online career readiness content to fit the needs of campus - the goal to increase the use and accessibility of career readiness content and resources. We will discuss the scaling of services to maximize staff utilization and campus partners' identification in career readiness efforts. Finally, we will discuss tracking and assessment strategies to ensure implementation is effective.
Connecting College and Community: A collaborative approach to supporting Black and African American students in their pursuit of success.
Sheila Shedd
Sr. Director, Global Engagement & Corporate Partnerships
Arizona State University
Dr. Amina Simmons, PhD: Psychologist, Counseling Services, ASU
Ashlee Atkins
President,
Greater Phoenix Urban League - Young Professionals
ASU in partnership with Phoenix Urban League Young Professionals developed YP CoNext for Black students to connect with young professionals. Students feel supported, empowered and better prepared to transition to their professional careers and lives after graduation. We’ll give an overview of the partnership, student program and successes and hurdles experienced.
We partnered with Phoenix Urban League Young Professionals who developed the leadership and mentoring program specifically for ASU students and oversee the operations of the program. ASU has been responsible for marketing and recruitment of students and has taken the lead on finding presenters for some of the monthly meetings dependent on the specific topic. ASU has also identified ways that the university can support students beyond the program through financial aid review and part-time career opportunities that can allow for greater success and retention at the university. ASU and Phoenix Urban League committee members meet weekly to discuss the program, hurdles, and successes.
This program shows the value of collaboration with others outside of the university setting. While ASU has many resources and advantages for students, students also benefit from engagement with those who they aspire to be like. Being able to connect with professionals who have been through similar life experiences and can provide 1:1 support, feedback and share how they were successful is inspiring to students. It can be challenging for students of color to find themselves represented in a variety of settings, including higher education, by collaborating with those beyond ASU we are making sure they have that opportunity."
Technology-Career Education Partnership
The 2021+ Version
Joe Testani
AVP Career Education Initiatives, Executive Director
University of Rochester
Rose Nakamoto
Director, The Career Center, Santa Clara University
What should the role of career centers become as we are now in a more networked world where technology has the power to drive new kinds of connections and access and where information and knowledge is more open or accessible? Pre-Covid, we would have advocated for embracing technology to help serve and scale services to students. Post-Covid, that advice is no different but we would add an important point of emphasis: think of technology as an ongoing strategy for continuous improvement versus a singular point in time decision or investment. Looking ahead, since anything that can be distributed will be distributed, technology and human-machine partnerships must become integral to our work as career educators and in order to prepare the people we lead and serve for this change.
As upward social and economic mobility continues to be primary outcome drivers for prospective and current learners (Cruzvergara & Dey, 2019), an institution’s relationship with change will trickle down to career centers. How can we create an upstream action plan vs. a downstream reactive plan? Regardless of what you think about certain predictions of the future (automation, online learning, etc.), disruption will come to our work and we must be ready to get out in front of these shifts and for the varied speed of impact. Integrating an adaptable and evolving technology plan as a part of your career education strategy is a necessity in 2021 and beyond. As we move forward, our approaches will require more creativity and willing partners to address the complexity of challenges that face our students and institutions in the post-Covid era.
Attendees will be able to
- Evaluate your office’s readiness for ed tech partnerships - the 2021+ version
- Begin to develop a plan to comprehensively review your ed tech strategy
- Meaning-making of uni+tech partnerships as part of your bold and big picture vision for equitable career access for all students
Scale Isn’t Everything: Personalizing Services to Sustain Employer and Student Engagement
Karissa Chabot-Purchase Career Consultant Michigan State University
Christine Beamer
Director of Career Services and Music Entrepreneurship
Michigan State University
Rachel Mangiavellano, Career Consultant, College of Engineering
Michigan State University
This past year has brought a range of unprecedented challenges to our campuses, including isolation and loss of in-person experiences that has made relationship-building with employers and students difficult. Accustomed to a digital landscape designed to provide access and personalization, students are seeking out curated, tailored career support— even as we try to scale services and work remotely. At the same time, employers have more access to college campuses than ever (far beyond geographic reach), steering recruitment efforts onto a more generic path should we fail to step in and prioritize deep engagement and loyalty based around community and local care. At Michigan State University, we’ve leaned on our networked model this past year to develop a range of practices aimed at ensuring we’re providing personalized career services to our audiences. Niche career fairs (including specialized training and support), carefully packaged career education programming, customized resume books and internship programs, intentional targeting through the use of tools within Handshake, and a redesigned website are all empowering us to connect with our clients as individuals instead of homogenous groups, despite the barriers that the pandemic has created. Our session will offer a broad review of our efforts and unpack some of the qualitative and quantitative data that has come from reimagining the ways we can effectively support programming and outcomes— both for students and for employers. We’ll illustrate our best practices through a look at website traffic, students’ internship reflections, learning outcomes surveys, advising and programming engagement numbers, and more.
Leading By Listening- The Dean Career Advantage
Thea Cerio
Director of Career Planning & Internships
Dean College
Wendy Adler
AVP Student Success & Career Planning
Dean College
Melissa Read
AVP Academic Affairs
Dean College
Dawn Poirier
Director of the Rooney Shaw Center
Dean College
Listening to feedback from students, faculty, staff, employers and alumni, Dean College designed a holistic approach to improving students’ career preparation, known as the Dean Career Advantage (DCA). The approach consists of:
(1) a series of career development courses embedded in each major, including increased requirements for internships and other career-intensive experience courses;
(2) explicit integration of updated all-college learning goals, including a new career mindset learning goal, through both the general education core and each major;
(3) intentional development of these goals, especially the career mindset goal, through our co-curricular programs and activities;
(4) active student mentoring from the entire campus community; and
(5) initial and on-going professional development for faculty and staff on reflective and integrative pedagogies to develop students’ career preparation.
The Dean Career Advantage was implemented in Fall 2019. Preliminary evaluations indicate that the approach has not only increased retention, it has also increased active student engagement with career exploration beginning as early as the first year.
Maximizing Alumni Career Data to Help Shape Our Future
Sharisse Grannon,
Director of Strategic Assessment,
Career Center,
DePaul University
This session will help institutions understand how to widen their use of alumni career data in order to pursue institutional buy-in for strategic growth of the career center mission. At the DePaul University Career Center, we are using our National Alumni Career Mobility (NACM) survey data to advocate for the integration of career throughout our institution, promote specific programs by highlighting their benefits, and better serve our current students.
We initially adopted the NACM survey in order to broaden the story we tell about our graduates’ career journeys. Not only has it enabled us to bring a longer-term perspective to career outcomes, but a deep dive into the data helped us and our stakeholders understand what factors may contribute to economic mobility and career satisfaction, as well as institutional affiliation and satisfaction.