Need to convince someone that alumni career services are worth it? Skeptical yourself? This downloadable infographic makes a good introduction.
The Challenge—and Importance—of Intergenerational Alumni Networking
Higher education is instrumental in generating economic and social mobility, and networking within higher education communities is essential to that process. Student-alumni networks promote the transmission of social capital across generational and class lines and are often just as important (if not more so) to graduates' success as their degree itself.
Intergenerational connections produce the most worthwhile alumni relationships because they let older alumni offer advice and opportunities to their younger, less established counterparts. Without intergenerational networks, resources can only travel laterally among alumni in the same cohort, and the potential of alumni communities is squandered.
How the University of Tennessee Provides Alumni Career Services for 365,000 Alumni
It isn't easy to meet the career needs of the student body of a large public university system—let alone those of its entire alumni population.
It's University of Tennessee Alumni Association's Director of Alumni Career Services Andrew Hart job to do just that. He serves 365,000 UT alumni to help them with everything from individual coaching to access to online job boards and other platforms.
We asked Andrew to discuss the UTAA's implementation of alumni career services five years ago, the success it's seen since then, and its use of online platforms.
Building a Culture of Diversity and Inclusion Into Career Services
Higher ed might traditionally approach diversity as an admissions issue, but Shelagh Saénz, Director of Career Development at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, argues that it's also an issue for career centers to take on.
Career centers, she argues, are uniquely positioned to be advocates for diversity because of the role they play as intermediaries between students and employers.
We asked Shelagh to give us a recap of her session at the NACE Conference in Chicago, "Building a Culture of Diversity and Inclusion Into Career Services."
NACE 2016 Preview: “We’re All Technologists: Successfully Realizing the Power of Your Team’s New Technology"
Platforms and software hold a lot of promise for career centers, but implementing them is seldom as easy as we want it to be. Launching a new piece of technology isn't just a technical project, but also a human one. Every new tool requires training, feedback, and consensus building to work smoothly.
Fortunately for us, Shannon Conklin, Associate Director of Assessment and Technology at the Temple University Career Center, and Kevin Grubb, Associate Director of Digital Media and Assessment at the Villanova University Career Center, are presenting on the subject at this year's NACE conference in Chicago.
We asked them to give us a preview of their session, “We’re All Technologists: Successfully Realizing the Power of Your Team’s New Technology." Find details on their session here.
Inputs vs. Outcomes: Are You Using the Right Data to Measure ROI?
Higher ed professionals face increasing pressure to collect data on the performance of our work, and to use that data to calculate their return on investment. Our directive these days seems to be "All data are good data."
That may be true. But not all data are the right data.
We discussed the topic with some of our customer schools last week at a roundtable hosted by Andy Shaindlin, founder of Alumni Futures and Vice President at GG&A. Andy raised the issue as a cautionary note about our growing obsession with performance metrics.