University Business - October 2008 - (Page 26)

ADMISSIONS A Considered Life Helping students make deliberate career choices By Howard and Matthew Greene Two years ago, in writing about career planning for college students in “ e [Next] Real World” (University Business, April and August 2006), we advised colleges to bring administrators, faculty, and students together to focus on ﬁnding paths to the right academic major and career. In our recently completed book—titled (as of press time) Ariadne’s read: How a College Graduate Negotiates Life’s Labyrinth (St. Martin’s Press, 2009)—we encourage young, educated students and graduates to lead a considered life by looking for the thread or threads that have tied their lives together, or that they have followed from their early years through their college education. Many college students and graduates we meet have never accessed the career planning and counseling resources provided by their college. ere’s a need to reach out proactively to students to bring them into the oﬃces physically or online. Here is what we have written for student readers, in adapted form, which we hope will help administrators as they help prepare students for their work lives. AVE YOU EVER VISITED your college’s career services ofﬁce, spoken with its counselors, or looked at its website? In our discussions with current college students and graduates, we ﬁnd that many students have never set foot in the oﬃce of their career and graduate school planning oﬃce. ey don’t seem to know such a resource exists, even as they complain about the lack of good counseling and mentoring on campus. ese days, career oﬃces are not placement services that match students with employers. Rather, they can facilitate explorato help you search for jobs and internships with graduates working in your ﬁelds of interest. ey may coordinate this function with your college’s alumni relations oﬃce. Counselors host corporate, military, public service, and nonproﬁt recruiting fairs and individual visits. Many counselors actively promote your college’s name and programs to attract recruiters to campus. Counselors can also help facilitate applications for competitive programs, such as the Fulbright, Rhodes, and Udall scholarships. Some career services oﬃces have extensive websites with the college’s own selfevaluation and career matching tools. For example, with the Individualized Coaching Action Plan (ICAP), Vanderbilt University (Tenn.) students can complete an online questionnaire prior to their ﬁrst visit to the oﬃce and have a plan created based on responses. e process helps students consider initial career interests and what they have accomplished to date, which they then discuss with a career counselor. As Jim Bellar, senior assistant director of the career center, explains in the January 2008 Campus Career Counselor newsletter, “Activities are written on the ICAP as action plan steps. e coach also makes a copy of the plan for the student, and it is recorded in case notes.” Following an initial visit, students can participate in events such as mock interviews, résumé and cover-letter writing workshops, and programs related to employment trends. Howard and Matthew Greene are independent education consultants and the authors of Greene’s Guides to Educational Planning. To contact them, visit www.greenesguides.com. These days, career ofﬁces are not placement services that match students with employers. tion. “We teach [students] how to make eﬀective and thoughtful and deliberate decisions,” said Kathy Sims, director of the career center at UCLA, in a May 16, 2008, Chronicle of Higher Education article. Paradoxically, as desperate as most of you are for career help and advising, most of you avoid taking advantage of this major resource available both during college and after graduation. Are all career oﬃces excellent in terms of their staﬀ, knowledge base, facilities, and contacts? Of course not. But there are many good oﬃces and counselors out there who can serve as coaches, allies, and sounding boards for you. ese oﬃces play many roles today. ey facilitate graduate school planning— for example, by coordinating with a premed advising program, the registrar (who is responsible for sending oﬃcial transcripts), and the faculty (who write your recommendation letters, which may be kept on ﬁle at the oﬃce). Career oﬃces typically maintain an alumni networking database H 26 | October 2008 universitybusiness.com http://www.greenesguides.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - October 2008

University Business - October 2008
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Admissions
Future Shock
On the Hill
The Changing Chaplaincy
Stop, Thief!
Chief Business Officers Speak Out
Independent Outlook
Internet Technology
What's New
End Note

University Business - October 2008