Students & Young Alumni

,

Heather Tranen Explains How UPenn Career Services Mastered Student Outreach

,

Sometimes the most difficult part of helping students with career development is getting them in the door. Career Services offices have to compete for students' time and attention, and many students are intimidated by the false notion that they have to know exactly what they want to do with their lives before they can ask for help.

The University of Pennsylvania's Office of Career Services launched its recent #myPennPath campaign to solve these problems. With a combination of social media and in-person outreach, they were able to deliver help to students who wouldn't have otherwise received it and assuage their fears about career planning.  

Heather Tranen is an Associate Director on UPenn Career Services' College of Arts & Sciences team. We asked her to talk to us about the #myPennPath campaign, the importance of alumni outreach, and the future of career services.

,

Melanie Buford at the University of Cincinnati on Coaching Students and Alumni to Career Success

,

Life after graduation is full of opportunity, but many students have trouble seeing past their fears about starting a career. It's the job of career services offices to help students see possibility in the unknown and find the courage to embrace it.

University of Cincinnati Career Counselor & Instructor Melanie Buford empowers students to take risks rather than fear them.

We asked her to share her thoughts on coaching students and young alumni through career uncertainty, teaching them to network, and getting them in the door in the first place.

,

Marlene Scheel of the University of Guelph-Humber on Planning Beyond Young Alumni

,

"Young alumni" is a buzzphrase in higher ed right now, and for good reason. Young alumni represent the future of their alma maters, and reaching and engaging them requires new programming and new strategies.

But what happens when our young alumni aren't so young anymore? What kind of programming and strategy do we have then?

At the University of Guelph-Humber, Marlene Scheel is already looking ahead to the transition from young to established alumna. We asked her to share how she and her team think about the issue.

,

Chaim Shapiro of Touro College on Networking, LinkedIn, and the Future of Career Services

,

Chaim Shapiro is a lot of things. Assistant Director of Career Services at Touro College. An award-winning speaker and writer. Highly regarded consultant.

We had the good fortune to get to interview him about networking online, recent changes to LinkedIn, and the future of career services.

, , ,

How Noble and Greenough School Uses Its Smallness to Its Advantage

, , ,

Anyone even tangentially involved in fundraising is familiar with this equation:

Donations = Total Population × Giving Rate

Lower giving rates and smaller populations beget smaller yields.

Small schools, be they colleges or independent schools, have to face the challenge of having a small total population every year. They learn to make the most out of what they have and develop strategies that prioritize depth over breadth.

Noble and Greenough School, familiarly known as Nobles, is one of those institutions. They've created a culture of philanthropy that allows them to be aggressive about asking for support, and they've devoted resources to nurturing individual relationships with their alumni. Their Graduate Affairs Office has also made alumni career services and networking a priority. By building a network on top of an already tightly knit community, Nobles is making its smallness work to its advantage.

We interviewed Greg Croak, Nobles' Director of Graduate Affairs, about Nobles' success.

, , ,

There’s No Such Thing as Platform Fatigue—There Are Only Bad Platforms

, , ,

When college and university offices consider launching a new platform or app for their communities, they’re often torn between the need to provide a service that their constituents want and the fear of paying for one more thing that nobody uses.

Too many offices have worked hard to launch a new website, service, or app for their students and alumni only to see nobody use it. We chalk it up to “platform fatigue,” the weariness we all feel when we have to sign up for another website with another account and remember another password. Members of our community, we think, already use so many platforms, websites, and apps that they don’t have room for one more. That’s why ours failed.

But I’m here to explain why platform fatigue is a myth and why platforms really fail: There’s no such thing as platform fatigue—there are only bad platforms.

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are." —Wendell Berry