Dr. Susan Schulz

Mary, Thanks Mary. Now we understand your challenges. You are doing the work of 10 people in a department that impacts enrollment, retention, and of course placement! And now Gainful Employment. So ideally your budget can increase. You might ask your alumni to get involved. Alumni love to be engaged with their school so perhaps they can be your extra staff. Create service learning projects so they have something to add to their resumes. Good idea to take the MaxK course on alumni. It is facilitated by a super experienced alumni director. And then you can talk to us about… >>>

Mary, Great Mary. We feel your energy and enthusiasm. You seem to have things covered. We suggest that one person be assigned Community Outreach and spend most of their time off campus. In our opinion they should be visiting employers and non employers to ask about jobs, your training and how it meets their needs, training they will need in the future, externships and more. Also we see you have an Alumni Association. What is done so that the organization plans offerings that encourage alumni to refer students, assist with retention, and tell you about job openings? Also what specialized… >>>

Samantha, This sounds like a good start, Samantha. From our experience career services need to be taught consistently and daily from the start of enrollment to really work and not be something that is done towards the end of training. That means a lengthy process for resume writing starting with having each student understand who they are. With each interview it means feedback on what went right and areas for improvement. Instructors need to talk about life on the job and why skills and theory taught are needed. Students need to be paired with working alumni so they learn more… >>>

Mary, Very comprehensive and thorough analysis of the importance of career services in every area of the school. Internship readiness does impact the office managing internships including Education. And yes, when students are constantly made aware of the job they are training for it does help to keep them in school. Alumni success stories are very important. And also encouraging instructors to continually talk about life on the job and how skills learned will be used in the workplace has to be done. It sounds like you have a good community outreach program too, where someone on your staff stays… >>>