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5 Reasons Advancement Offices Should Care About Career Services

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We just returned from the CASE Summit for Leaders in Advancement in New York, where we were struck most by one session—"Colgate Professional Networks: Alumni Affinity Groups Reimagined for Maximum ROI."

The gist: positive career outcomes aren't just good for students and alumni, it's also good for your institution's advancement office.

In their presentation, Michael Sciola (Associate Vice President of Institutional Advancement) and Jennifer Stone (Director of Annual Giving and Director of Colgate Professional Networks) explained how Colgate's investment in professional networks help students and alumni achieve career success.

We thought we'd take a moment to revisit why investing more in constituent career outcomes is a good idea for advancement.

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Marc Goldman of Yeshiva University on the Synergy Between Career Services and Alumni Affairs

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From alumni speaker series to alumni networking communities, programs that bridge the gap between career centers and alumni relations offices are proliferating. At Yeshiva University's Career Center, Executive Director Marc Goldman has focused on that synergy for years.

We asked him why it's important for career centers and alumni relations teams to work together, how he accomplishes that at Yeshiva, and what his team's metrics for success are.

How Career Centers Can Leverage Alumni and Parent Engagement to Advance Institutional Goals

This guest post was adapted from the 2016 NACE Conference presentation, "Leveraging Alumni and Parent Engagement to Advance Institutional Goals."

In today’s market, colleges and universities must demonstrate success in preparing and launching their students into the professional world. Although not the sole metric, these indicators are key factors in how institutions are perceived by prospective families, the federal government, college rankings, recruiters, admissions committees, and the media. The career services team is central to this success; leveraging alumni and parent engagement is a prime factor in this equation. 

 

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.

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