Christian Garcia, Associate Dean and Executive Director of the Toppel Career Center at the University of Miami, talks in this episode about his team’s motto: “Career services is everybody’s business."
He also shares three specific ways his team is implementing this motto across campus:
1. Faculty toolkit and webpage. The team created a PDF toolkit for faculty members to help them understand what the Toppel Career Center does, what resources they offer and where to find them, etc. The toolkit lives on Toppel’s Faculty and Staff Engagement Hub webpage and includes:
- An overview of the career center
- What career readiness means (along with definitions of the NACE competencies)
- A list of ways faculty can partner with the career center to support students’ career development
- An email template faculty can use to communicate with students about Toppel’s resources
- A list of ideas for incorporating career readiness into syllabi, including syllabus statement templates, example assignments and activities, and example resources.
2. Live job and internship RSS feeds on academic webpages. Christian and his team partnered with deans, faculty, staff, and other academic leaders on campus to integrate live job and internship RSS feeds from Handshake onto each academic department’s page. The feeds include only jobs relevant to each particular academic area. You can see examples on the College of Engineering’s page here and the College of Arts and Sciences' page here.
3. Toppel Awards. This annual awards program recognizes students, student organizations, faculty, staff, alumni, recruiters, and employers who exemplify a commitment to career education and guidance. Christian says the number of nominations has grown every year. Over time, it’s become a great way to recognize partners, and it keeps Christian and his team up-to-date on what career readiness initiatives are going on across campus.
Resources from the episode:
- Christian’s LinkedIn profile
- Christian’s Twitter profile
- Faculty toolkit PDF
- Live job and internship RSS feed for the College of Engineering
- Live job and internship RSS feed for the College of Arts and Sciences
- Toppel Awards homepage
- Toppel Faculty and Staff Engagement Hub webpage
- Toppel’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect)
- Career Everywhere job board (on uConnect’s website)
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