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CAREER DEVELOPMENT
STRATEGIC PLAN

 

I. Introduction

On July 1, 1997, a Career Development unit was created from the merger of the Office of Career Services and the Cooperative Education and Service-Learning Programs. Career Development now reports to the Division of Student Development and Campus Life as one of four units in the Academic Success Center. The varied history of all three sections of Career Development provides a rich background from which to create new programs to meet student needs. Furthermore, the fact that staff have worked within three university divisions, Student Development, Academic Affairs and Institutional Advancement, provides us with both the knowledge and the relationships to make our plans for Montclair State University students a reality.

Career Services

In the 1960s and early 1970s a career planning and placement office, reporting to the Division of Student Affairs, was developed. When the mission of the office grew in depth and breadth, the office was renamed Career Services to more accurately reflect the wide range of offerings available to students, not only throughout their college years, but after graduation, as well.

Today a wide array of services is offered to meet the varied developmental needs of students and alumni. Counselors typically hold over a thousand counseling appointments each year, run over 100 workshops on career planning issues and job hunting skills, and meet with a thousand students during drop-in hours. Additionally more than 100 employers come to campus annually to offer students full time employment, while another 5000 positions are made available to students and alumni by employers who fax their positions to the office or take advantage of the office web page. Still other employers attend the annual Career Fair.

In addition, the office offers an extensive career library, a computerized job matching service, resume critique services, a computer lab and a home page with links to career related sites. Career Services also serves as a centralized clearing house for all on-campus student employment, supporting the efforts of Financial Aid and assisting other university offices to locate students for on-campus jobs.

The Cooperative Education Program

The Cooperative Education Program is a credit-bearing internship program that operates on a year round basis with three enrollment terms. In 1974 the office reported to the Division of Academic Affairs, next was moved to Institutional Advancement and now reports to Student Development and Campus Life. Federal, state and foundation grants, in excess of $3.5M, and matching funds from the college propelled program development. A twenty-person Cooperative Education Advisory Council was established in 1978 to assist with the development of policies and procedures, marketing, fundraising and trend forecasting. Since program inception there have been 9,870 enrolled students and 840 different business and non-profit organizations affiliated with the program.

Today, there are twenty-three credit-bearing co-op courses with forty-three academic faculty responsible for assessing student learning. Professional staff prepare students for enrollment, locate internship opportunities, and coordinate the responsibilities of faculty, employers and enrolled students. There is a relational database that has been built over the last twelve years to provide systematic tracking of enrolled students, employers and faculty. This data is also used to determine faculty compensation, FTE allocations, conduct research and assist with the university's fundraising efforts.

The Service-Learning Program

The Service-Learning Program seeks to integrate community service projects into academic courses so that undergraduate students develop an appreciation of the problems of society and become more informed and involved citizens. To establish this program an Ad Hoc Task Force on Service-Learning was appointed in 1994 by the Vice Presidents of Academic Affairs and Student Development and Campus Life. The Task Force was charged with designing implementation strategies, determining infrastructure needs, locating community partners, offering training for interested faculty and writing grant proposals to advance development. After four years of planning and piloting a series of courses, a Service-Learning Coordinator was appointed in 1998.

Currently the Program is partially funded by the Corporation for National Service, The Leshowitz Urban Initiative Fund, and university appropriations. Collaborations with community partners in the Township of Montclair address such concerns as literacy, aging and substance abuse prevention. Internal collaborations include an emphasis on the use of service-learning for Teacher Education reform, the America Reads Program and the further integration of service-learning pedagogy and practices into new courses.

II. Societal, Technological and Institutional Trends Effecting the Career Development Unit

Recent reports have called for the transformation of American undergraduate education and a reexamination of its purposes. That trend, combined with newly available technologies, greater understanding of learning theory, concern over the competencies graduates are bringing to the workplace and public policy support for community service are creating a perfect opportunity for career development offices to move in new directions to better prepare students for the coming century.

A. The changing job market

Business trend forecasters such as Peter Drucker predict that the future workplace will be smaller because of continual downsizing and market fluctuations. Employees will become knowledge workers who will have to market themselves to a variety of companies who will then require them to continually reeducate themselves. The National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE) further predicts that tomorrow's job market will require continual self-assessment, on-going learning, self-promotion, self-motivation, flexibility and cultural awareness.

It is estimated that current graduates will have five or six different jobs throughout their careers, requiring them to continually prepare for career change, maintain an active network of contacts and examine the compatibility of their strengths with marketplace demands. Student definitions of "career" must be reshaped so that the need for career planning is understood to be a lifelong activity.

B. The use of technology by career centers

Career centers have always been information centers, helping students learn about themselves and the world of work, but new technologies are creating opportunities for centers to become information hubs. Recent software developments and the rapid increase in Internet use have made career resources, job listings, student resume and employer databases accessible to students, alumni and staff on a 24 hour, 7 day per week basis. Office web pages allow students to engage in self-assessment activities at any time and permit them to directly contact web-based job listing services affiliated with universities.

C. Advocacy for citizenship development

The development of citizens is a long-standing goal of higher education. To address this goal, over the past twenty years there has been a steady increase in the number of institutions integrating service into the curriculum. Service-learning has become an essential pedagogy for active learning and enhanced democratic participation. Program growth is being furthered through federal funding for the development of service-learning programs, and new discipline-related publications and conferences for faculty and staff development. Advocacy for citizenship development is further evidenced by support for the use of federal work-study funds for community service and tutoring activities.

D. The use of active and applied learning strategies

The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), and the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) are working jointly to advance effective student learning practices. Recent findings about the nature of learning, drawing on disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies, indicate that learning is an active rather than passive process. Learning is enhanced by incorporating instructional methods that involve students in the educational process, providing opportunities for application of what is learned in the classroom to the real world, and interacting with faculty, students and peers. From research in the cognitive sciences we also know that when students have an opportunity to reflect upon their learning they are better learners and that their experiences outside the classroom often serve as vehicles for practice and application of the course content.

E. Employers want to "try-out" students before they hire them.

Greater numbers of employers are interested in trying out students through internships, cooperative education, practica, and part-time jobs as a way of assuring that new hires are ready to be of immediate value. Due to the great demand for student interns, employers expect universities to respond to their need by providing professionally managed and efficiently run operations.

F. The need for outcome assessment information

As higher education costs continue to rise, and more and more of those costs are borne by individuals, greater accountability is being required of institutions. Citizens want to know if the outcomes of higher education justify the costs. The benefits of higher education to society (financial and otherwise) must be more clearly revealed and institutional research must be continued to make these benefits visible to both legislators and the public in general.

The Council for the Advancement of Standards urges career centers to participate in continual assessment activities. Research relating to alumni perceptions of the value of their education, employment history, starting salaries and professional school enrollment helps inform all constituencies, as well as accrediting organizations, about the impact of a university education.

III. Our Vision for Montclair State University in 2008

We envision a university that graduates students ready to make meaningful contributions to society through their work and community involvement. We further envision an atmosphere in which faculty and staff share a common commitment to helping our students plan their careers, make the transition to their first professional employment or graduate school and become involved in the larger society.

IV. The Mission for Career Development

The mission of Career Development is to assist Montclair State University students to explore, clarify and implement decisions about career choices and post baccalaureate education and to provide opportunities for students to become informed and involved citizens so they can effectively prepare for work or graduate school and leadership in society.

To achieve this mission Career Development will:

V. Strategic Ten Year Goals

A. Foster the development of skills used to plan, manage and change careers throughout the life span in response to the changing world of work.

Given the enormous changes in the nature of the world of work that our students will face, faculty and student development professionals must act as partners in an integrated approach to career planning to help students develop both the skills and understanding they will need. A comprehensive career development model needs to be implemented in which students are made aware that first jobs are just the start of a life-long career development process.

With the expertise and guidance of the career development staff, representatives from academic departments, alumni relations and student affairs units such as the freshman experience program, academic advising, student activities, residence life, and financial aid, should be brought together to create a career development model culminating in a visible senior year career program, that is supported and understood by the entire campus community.

A broad-based task force needs to be appointed by the Vice Presidents to plan this initiative, provide training, and implement and evaluate activities on a yearly basis. Opportunities need to be explored with the Department of Counseling, Human Development and Educational Leadership to determine their interest in offering an applied graduate degree program in career development for students interested in careers in higher education.

So that professional staff time can be spent on counseling and workshop design and delivery, we may need to enter into new business arrangements with individuals or organizations to manage large events such as career fairs, provide web-based job listings, or design web-based data bases.

B. Focus on the use of technology for accessing information, locating employment opportunities and managing information

An information society assumes quick and convenient access to information. In order to meet the needs of our varied constituencies for quality information, new data bases must be created which will incorporate company information, past hiring and college relations activities, and systematic tracking of students enrolled in co-op and service-learning courses to produce outcome reports.

Quality service to students requires top-of-the-line hardware and software in the computer lab so that students can learn Internet skills, create e-mail resumes electronically, and access web-based services such as corporate information, campus interviewing and job listing services.

The LAN network supporting the cooperative education and service-learning programs must be upgraded, new hardware and software purchased, and new staff hired dedicated to supporting all unit wide technological initiatives.

C. Expand the number of service-learning courses and build the infrastructure to support the program

If MSU is truly committed to educating students for citizenship, we must continue to foster the integration of service-learning into the general education requirements, increase the number of courses in all disciplines and the Teacher Education Program. To advance faculty and staff development, the University needs to join national organizations such as the Campus Compact to better educate faculty about experiential education and service-learning. There needs to be greater support by the administration for course development by earmarking FSIP funds for the development of service-learning courses. Ideally, a Fall Presidential Symposium on service-learning would help educate the campus community about this essential pedagogy for citizenship.

D. Encourage the use of experiential learning and reflective teaching strategies.

There is a general need across the campus to better understand the theory and practices associated with experienced-based learning. The Senate Committee for Experiential Education and the Ad Hoc Implementation Committee for Service Learning need to jointly host roundtable sessions and provide new resources for faculty. Faculty need to better understand and use the current methods for facilitating reflection such as journal writing and portfolio development. The Career Development staff will consult with faculty interested in integrating these methods into courses or for inclusion in new degree programs.

E. Respond to employers' need to easily locate appropriate candidates for "try-out" experiences

Because we know that employers like to offer full time positions to those whose work they already know, we want to make their access to students as convenient as possible. We recommend a centralized system for listing all internships, field experiences, practica and cooperative education experiences which are currently housed in a variety of campus locations.

F. Consult with Institutional Research staff on the design of outcomes assessment

Outcome data is needed by students and parents considering attendance at colleges and universities. Although such information is not predictive, families naturally want to know about the employment of graduates. University and discipline-related accrediting organizations require data on alumni hiring or graduate school enrollment. Currently there is no systematic research conducted by the University to address this need.

The successful achievement of these goals, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, depends on:

(quoted by John Gardner in The Senior Year Experience, Jossey-Bass,1997.)

VI. Strengths and Weaknesses Effecting the Achievement of these Goals

A. Foster the development of skills used to plan, manage and change careers throughout the life span in response to the changing world of work

Strengths

Weaknesses

B. Focus on the use of technology for accessing information, locating employment opportunities and managing information

Strengths

Weaknesses

C. Expand the number of service-learning courses and build the infrastructure to support the Service-Learning Program

Strengths

Weaknesses

D. Encourage the use of experiential learning and reflective teaching strategies

Strengths

Weaknesses

E. Respond effectively to employers' need to locate appropriate candidates for "try-out" experiences by centralizing all listings

Rationale

Strengths

Weaknesses

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