Students & Young Alumni

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How Not to Measure the Success of Your Shop's New Engagement Platform

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When your institution is shopping around for a new platform for its students and alumni, the first question on your mind is, "Will this work?"

That question is harder to answer than you might think. It can be tricky to define what the success of your new platform should look like, and to decide which data are relevant when measuring that success.

It's not uncommon for shops to pick the wrong data to evaluate the success of their new platform. Thinking that the platform is performing better than it is, they lock themselves into ongoing contracts that don't actually deliver the results they expect.

In this post we highlight four common mistakes that shops make when evaluating the performance of their platforms and how to avoid making them.

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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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Heather Tranen Explains How UPenn Career Services Mastered Student Outreach

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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.

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

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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.

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

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"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.

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

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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.

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