Tomorrow's Career Services: Week 1, Issue 1

"It matters zero what other people think. You just need to be in tune with yourself and your life. That is your North Star."?–???Taufiq Rahim

Tomorrow's Career Services: Week 1, Issue 1 --?Innovation Grants

~ by?Gerald Doyle

Greetings; a Happy Thursday to you.

Each week, we'll explore a few issues within the field of career services, showcase some innovative practices, and highlight emerging work as well as individuals, organizations, and institutions which have demonstrated communities of practice that have stood the test of time.

This week's them is "Innovation Grants" -- micro-grants that allow faculty and staff to explore their teaching and curriculum that generate innovative teaching and learning practices for their students, all of which in turn create moments for students to think about their careers, lives, and their learning.

Here are a few models that I've tracked and followed across the years that seem exemplary to me; though you've very likely explored a range of options throughout your career, we thought to share these with you following that conversation. Together, they offer distinct approaches.

If you would like recommend others ideas to this community of practitioners, please let me know or simply add them to the thread below.

Note: Each week, we will also feature a section called, "Career Services in the Classroom" as well as a section highlighting a favorite post by Rick Reis, who previously published?Tomorrow's Professor while at Stanford University .

The University of Sydney

• Student Experience?Innovation?Grants :
• "Do you have an idea that will facilitate cross-cultural connections and make an impact on the academic, personal or professional success of our students?"
• Why I like this model??Encourages students to take agency for their education and encourages collaboration with?staff?and?faculty?toward this end.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Diversity Infusion?Grant

"The Diversity Infusion?Grant?(DIG) supports the research and resources necessary to make course revisions that broaden, refresh, and further SAIC’s curricular offerings in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Grantees will receive $1000 to support this work."

• Why I like this model? (1)?Enables teaching?faculty?to dedicate time for?innovation?in their courses; the cohort model allows?faculty?to share their experiences throughout the various phases of their work including the development of the new syllabus, the practice of implementation and the reflection following the end of the course.?(2)?Feedback to?faculty?members not selected offers positive interactions around teaching and pedagogy and permits other forms of engagement and support for the?faculty?member.?(3)?This model might is also easily be adapted towards other important themes including experiential learning, study abroad, implementation of college/university strategic plans, or at the program level.

Loyola University Chicago Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy

Micro-grants

"The?Faculty?Center for Ignatian Pedagogy (FCIP) has?funding?to award micro-grants?to individual instructors to create content related to Anti-Racist Pedagogy (ARP) and Student-Centered Design (SCD) for use by the wider university community.?Faculty?stories in the form of short videos or audio files will be posted on FCIP's website and promoted to instructors across the university."

• Why I like this model??Engages?faculty?to generate content beyond their classroom/lab for their colleagues.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?Faculty?Fellows Program

"The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)?Faculty?Fellowship is a unique, two-year, cohort-based opportunity for a diverse group of full-time instructors (NTT, tenure-track, and tenured) at Loyola University Chicago."

• Why I like this model??Creates a cohort working across multiple semesters for deeper thinking, exploration, and?innovation.?

Illinois Institute of Technology

Faculty?Innovation?Grants ?to encourage?innovative?connections between the classroom and careers

• Faculty?Innovation?Grant?awarded to 'Food Product Development: ?Concepts and Prototypes with Hands-on Maker Experience in a R&D Commercial Context in an Offsite Session'
• Awarded 10-15 per year, $500 - $1,500 each.
• Why I like this model??Incubated and prototyped experiential learning and career (and life-learning) well beyond the traditional scope of the career services office; and, most importantly, perhaps, created new working relationships -- and built trust between?faculty?and?staff. Other derivative collaboration followed.

Career Services in the Classroom

Prototyping Their Futures ?by?Marcia Faye

The artist’s signature, capped by a swirling flower, is as delicate and as intricate as is her mural in IIT Tower—a 3-foot by 7-foot outline of a tall building filled with a hand-drawn landscape of black and white leaves, buds, curlicues, and an occasional peeking panda. Fatima Azfar (CS 3rd year) says that while her personal sketchbooks brim with page upon page of increasingly elaborate visual realms of her imagination, she never thought that she could parlay her talent into a paid profession—that is, until she had slain the dragon.

Azfar participated in a new?Interprofessional Projects (IPRO) Program ?course called Dragon Slayer (Designing YOUR Future), offered at Illinois Tech for the first time this past spring. It is modeled after the late American mythologist?Joseph Campbell ’s iconic “hero’s journey” story, about an individual undertaking a life adventure, obtaining a victory over crisis, and then returning home transformed.

“We use a lot of the principles and methods we teach in the traditional design process to help students understand career options, think about what they can do in the future, and challenge some of their orthodoxies,” says IPRO Director?Jeremy Alexis , who co-teaches the course with Annie Littrell Senior and Tracy Skala from the?Office of Career Services . “We have some students, who, from the day they start primary school, are told they are going to become doctors or engineers. We don’t want to keep them from doing that, but we want to help them see that their options might be a little bit broader, and how amazing and wonderful their careers can be.”

[With deep appreciation to former Illinois Tech colleagues:?jeremy alexis ?Annie Littrell ?and?Tracy Skala ]

Why I like this:?In full transparency, I served as Vice Provost at?Illinois Institute of Technology ?while this program was being developed; like the IPRO program at Illinois Tech, Dragon Slayer represents one of the terrific ways in which career service professionals and faculty members partner and collaborate to weave thinking about one's career, life and purpose into the classroom, the lab, etc. Each week, we will feature an example from throughout the US and around the world in which this is happening.

Best of Tomorrow's Professor by Professor Rick Reis

• Pay Yourself First

Message Number:?1384

"At some level, when disproportionate requests, expectations, and pressures from others mix with a personal desire to be the professor-you-never-had as an undergraduate or graduate student, the result can be over-working and over-functioning in some areas of your job (service and teaching) while neglecting critically important others (writing and research)."

Folks:

The posting below gives some great advice on setting priorities.?It is by Kerry Ann Rockquemore*, PhD, President and CEO of the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity [https://www.facultydiversity.org/] It is from the posting of October 20, 2014 in her Monday Motivator series which you can find out more about at: https://www.facultydiversity.org/?page=MondayMotivator.

Regards,

• Rick Reis

Why I like this:?The advice offered to faculty might be equally applied to career services teams and the students and alumni we serve. The lessons and recommendations are transferrable for our stakeholders and provides important insight to the faculty at our institutions.

Tri Cosain: Weaving inspiration, learning and career

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of?Tri Cosain , a practice which weaves inspiration, learning and career coaching for leadership in life and work; they are the?co-authors of?9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work ,?Conversations of Inquiry ?(a workbook and an invitation to explore),?Reflections on Careers ?(an interactive workbook). All of these publications are freely available for you to download.

Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, accessibility and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.

Gerald Doyle serves on the faculty of?Wolcott College Preparatory High School , provides Ministry Placement Research/Consulting for Career Formation Services at the?Catholic Theological Union , advises several edtech companies including?Upkey ?and?GetSet ?and works as a Higher Education Consultant at?TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc.

Scott Downs, an Agile and Design Thinking Coach, calls forward great Agile delivery teams, with leaders in every chair.

9 March 2023