Course Overview:
Where will your career go next? Do you know how people get promoted and advance within student affairs? Many professionals in this field fall into their careers. Quite often as students, they begin a job on campus, perhaps in the residence halls or other campus employment, and continue to work on campus after graduation. They've built a social network. They're working in an area of interest, they like the environment. Along the way, they might earn a graduate degree in student affairs. However, at some point, many professionals wonder if they're on the right career path. They begin to wonder if other opportunities might exist for them. Or, they feel stuck and want to advance but don't know how to do that.
As a trusted advisor to students, it's important to have a sense of meaning and purpose attached to your career. Do you know why you do the work you do? Do you know what makes you good at advising, supporting and otherwise addressing student's development while in college? Do you know how to improve your effectiveness and get the recognition you deserve?
This course is designed to address the career and professional development needs of student affairs professionals, so they can have a career of their choosing rather than one they've fallen into by default.
Student affairs professionals from all functions, such as residential life, student activities, career services, study abroad, registrar, financial aid, athletics, are encouraged to enroll.
Course Outline:
The course will focus on three main concepts- defining a career direction, exploring career options, and creating a career path. The topics to be covered are:
Exploring your career progress, skills, values and interests to understand your key motivators and key success factors. Participants will complete skills, values and interest inventories.
Understanding the organizational structure at your institution.
Exploring career options at your institution and within the student affairs profession, in general.
Mapping your professional network
Learning elements of a career portfolio
Creating a personal career action plan
Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of the course participants will be able to:
Articulate their "key success factors"- skills and accomplishments, values, and interests and how they connect with career options within student affairs.
Understand the typical student affairs organizational structure and paths for advancement and will be able to identify career possibilities to pursue.
Understand the importance of building and cultivating a professional network and how to network effectively.
Understand how to advance within student affairs and identify specific options available to them.
Create a personal career plan with next steps they can implement right away.
Participant Expectations:
Participants should plan to spend 3-4 hours per week for the course. This will include time to read course materials, complete online exercises and inventories, complete offline assignments and participate in asynchronous online discussions. Weekly assignments will be posted to the participant course content area. In addition, questions will be posted to the discussion board and students are expected to respond.
Instructor Bio: Ms. Markell Steele, M.Ed. Ms. Markell Steele, M.Ed. is Counseling Manager for Graduate Student Services at the UCLA Career Center. In this role, she counsels graduate students from all disciplines on their academic and non-academic career options. She helps them with job search strategies, resumes/curriculum vitae, cover letters, teaching philosophy and research statements in preparation for the job market. She is an advocate of networking and building professional relationships and teaches her students on how to do that effectively.
She has worked at UCLA for a total of 7 years dividing her time between the UCLA Career Center and at the Office of Executive Education at the UCLA Anderson School. Markell's first position in student affairs was as a high school student when she was a front desk assistant at a community college counseling center. Since then, she's worked in outreach, advising and career services.
In her 14 years as a career development professional, Markell has focused on helping her clients get focused in their career, determine how to connect their personal attributes (skills, interests, values and personality) to satisfying career options and execute a career plan that incorporates consistent action to secure the position they want.
Markell has worked with creative clients; corporate executives in the technology, marketing, sales, and human resources functions; managers in the hotel and tourism industry; professionals in higher education; and entrepreneurs. Her work includes teaching, presenting, program development, counseling and coaching in the areas of career management and professional development.
Additionally, she has owned a private career counseling practice, Futures in Motion, Inc., since 2002.
She has a Masters' in Counseling from the University of San Diego and a BA in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
