2018 #CloseEdGaps Student Success Symposium Recap

Do students begin college with a vision of their future? Do they graduate with the necessary skills to engage in meaningful careers? How do these answers differ for underrepresented students who often lack “traditional” guidance on their college-career journey? 

Nearly 70 leaders from higher education, philanthropy, industry and government gathered to address these and other questions at the intersection of college and career during the 2018 Strada + InsideTrack Student Success Symposium in Portland, Oregon.

“We want students to thrive and be prepared for jobs that don’t even exist today,” said Pete Wheelan, chief executive officer at InsideTrack, during his welcoming remarks.  

This sentiment was echoed by keynote speaker Michelle Weise, senior vice president, workforce strategies and chief innovation officer for Strada. “We believe that the future of America’s prosperity and economic competitiveness depends on a citizenry that constantly retools itself for the future of the workforce,” she said in announcing the April 2018 launch of the Strada Education Institute for the Future of Work. “We’re dedicated, not just on a theoretical level, but at a practical level to understanding how we catalyze those more direct and promising pathways between students and work,” she added.

“We believe that the future of America’s prosperity and economic competitiveness depends on a citizenry that constantly retools itself for the future of the workforce,”

Adding fuel to the discussion were findings from the Strada-Gallup Education Consumer Pulse Survey, which found that half of adult respondents said they would change one aspect of their higher education experience, with a third citing their choice of major, according to Carlo Salerno, Strada Education Network’s vice president of analytics. These findings underscore the importance of encouraging students to think about careers as early as possible, in order to make more informed enrollment decisions.

Educators and employers alike must place an emphasis on career readiness and adaptability, whether that means integrating career exploration and planning into the curriculum or helping students develop the workplace skills that lead to choice-filled lives. In their 6-minute Quick Take, Suzanne Rozendaal and Lucy McKenzie, two InsideTrack Coaches, talked about helping students find their “primary objective” and use it and their passion to chart their career path. McKenzie recounted how Tiara, one of her students turned her childhood love of building Barbie homes out of shoe boxes into a career in architecture. “‘I really want to do something where I can envision what I want and hold it in my hand,’” McKenzie recalled her saying. 

“We know there’s a move from jobs and careers that require more physical skills and abilities to more cognitive abilities.”

Students often study subjects because they excel at them or enjoy them, but with little concept of how to apply them in the workplace. Several panelists built on this theme by emphasizing the importance of developing "soft skills" or "success skills", such as the ability to manage resources, communicate with others, pull teams together, react to crisis events and create strategies.  According to Farouk Dey, associate vice provost of student affairs and dean of career & experiential education at Stanford University, “the world of work is changing.  We know there’s a move from jobs and careers that require more physical skills and abilities to more cognitive abilities. As machines are becoming smarter and are taking over lots of jobs that require technical and physical skills, there’s an opportunity for lots of jobs that require success skills.”

Developing a career requires more than just skills though. Students don’t often realize the job options available to them, know how to find resources to understand workforce trends or have enough self-trust to decide on a problem they want to solve. Mike Marriner, co-founder of Roadtrip Nation, talked about the importance of career exploration and how watching video interviews with professionals in a wide range of careers can open students' eyes to the opportunities around them.

Understanding options serves as a strong first step, but career paths rarely move smoothly and directly from point A to point B. Roadtrip Nation’s interviews highlight career success, but leaders also discuss the meandering paths their journeys took and the struggles they encountered along the way. Celine Cousteau, a documentary filmmaker, studied psychology and art before a trip with her father’s film crew to study grey whales in Alaska changed her mind. She said it might not seem logical but every step got her to where she needed to be. Alice Caruthers, executive director of Alemany Farm, was presented with numerous obstacles as she began her career. Surrounded by drugs and negative influences she realized she could expend her energy better helping teens learn about the environment and stay off drugs and the streets.

Institutional leaders attending the event also discussed the challenges of ensuring students are ready for work, and the roles they can play by assessing their career services departments, implementing coaching programs, and training admission counselors and academic advisers to integrate career exploration into their meetings.  The group consensus was that introducing career planning early on, even in high school, offers students the best chance of leveraging available resources, identify their passion and crafting their own path to success.