Alumni career communities are networks used by career services and alumni relations offices to deliver value to their constituents at scale. As institutions demand more from these offices, career communities can help us meet the needs of our constituents efficiently.
We spoke with dozens of schools to put together this two-page checklist to help you implement career communities of your own. Fill out the form below to get the PDF.
A seismic change is occurring in higher education. Some schools are not surviving, and only the innovative are thriving. To stay competitive, schools need to prove their worth to an increasingly skeptical audience. Career services can be on the front lines of that fight. Those with the ability to meet the needs of their students and alumni at scale have the competitive advantage.
Alumni mentoring was the big buzzphrase in alumni relations and career services in 2016.
But the rise in such programs has some people asking, "What is mentoring anyway?" Is it a Karate Kid-style, one-on-one relationship that the institution has to set up from scratch? Or is it something more organic? What can mentees expect to get out of it, and what should mentors expect to do?
To help answer these and other questions, we picked six articles that cut past the hype and clarify what alumni mentoring programs look like at their best.
Colleges and universities are turning to "career communities"—organized, clustered networks of alumni spread across different industries and fields—to serve their students' career needs at scales larger than ever before.
Colorado State University's Career Communities program is one shining example of the success of such a strategy. CSU's 15 career communities helps its 33,000+ students (and even more young alumni) find their way into the careers of their choosing.
Barb Richardson is Associate Director of Assessment & Strategic Initiatives at CSU's Career Center. We asked her to tell us how CSU has implemented its Career Communities program and made it a success.
Why do students go to college? Most academics would be horrified to discover that it’s not to get a great education and become educated citizens of the world.
Today’s students still want high quality academics, but they take the educational benefits of college for granted. What students really expect from today’s college, as reported in the Higher Education Research Institute’s survey of incoming freshmen, is to get a leg up. Three of the top four reasons for coming to college (and the percentage of students who cited that reason) are related to careers.
