Division of Student Affairs
2009-10 Annual Report
Department: Career Development Center
Person Completing Report: Leslye Erickson
Executive Summary
After one full academic year of operation, the Career Development Center was flooded
August 4, 2010 just as we began our 2nd year of operation. As a result, the office was relocated to Stevenson Hall and we were not able to return to the Houchens Building until
late November. Staff lost work as paper files and computers were destroyed, almost a
100% loss in most cases. In addition, December 2009 brought the beginning of the worst
downturn in the job market since 1930. Needless to say, both our momentum and our
productivity have been greatly affected. The most major accomplishment lies in a
comparison of first year metrics to second year metrics. Despite major challenges
beyond our control, we continued to serve our student and employer customers with
only minor changes in our net results.
1.
Programs and Services:

In keeping with the new look and feel for the University Webpage, the CDC
re-designed it's webpage with the same look and feel as the new University
page and new updated content for students, alumni, faculty and employers.

The CDC Staff have provided 181 presentations for student classes, groups,
clubs, etc…

The CDC Staff have provided individual career coaching for 1218
student/alumni.

The CDC Staff have assisted 3139 students create new accounts and learn
how to use Symplicity.

The CDC Staff have assisted employers in posting 1898 new jobs in Symplicity
for our student/alumni use in their respective job searches.

The CDC Staff have assisted 839 employers create new accounts in
Symplicity.

The CDC Staff administered and interpreted 865 MBTI and/or Strong Interest
Assessments to UofL students/alumni.
2.

Hosted and/or assisted with the planning of seven career fairs this review
period: The Majors Fair, The Engineering Career Fair (Fall and Spring), The
University Wide Career Fair (Fall and Spring), The Graduate School Fair, The
Part-time Jobs Fair, The Social Work Fair and the Big East Career Consortium.

While the mix of fair types and the kinds of employers continued to change
due to the recession our office suffered only a 3% decline in the number of
student participants in our career fair events and boasted a 13% increase in
the number of employers we were able to bring to our students, as
compared to a national average decline of 20% for most college campuses.
This increase was due largely in part to the addition of the Big East Virtual
Career Fair.
Major Accomplishments:

Four staff in the Career Development Center made professional
presentations at: James Atkinson - SACSA, Matt Real - ACPA, Greg Bocchino NCDA, Matt Real - NASPA, and Matt Real - NACE.

Leslye Erickson served as the ACPA Career Central at Convention Chair and
was instrumental assisting ACPA to re-design and implement a brand new
year- round and at-convention placement center for the association
membership.

Completed through Institutional Research, our first attempt at a University
Wide Graduate Follow-up survey. We are still working with Institutional
Research to analize the data and put it in report form.

Between the flood, the downturn in the economy and state budget cuts, this
was a tough year for the Career Development Center. Many of our key
benchmarks reflect the effects of these factors on our performance. The
most dramatic accomplishment lies in the comparison of our 08/09 and
09/10 results.

For example, while the number of companies participating in career fairs and
on-campus recruiting continued to decline, we reached out and got more
involved in the Big East Career Fair Consortium through which we were able
to offer our students access to 125 additional employers in a virtual career
fair format.

Secondly, while we were re-located due to the flood and services to students
were disrupted we took the opportunity to focus on delivery of resources to
our students through our webpage and social media networking – thus
allowing us to consistently reach our students and update our approach with
regard to our use of technology. While we did see a modest decrease in the
number of student appointments we did see a significant increase in the
number of simplicity registrations and webpage hits.
3.
4.
Staffing Summary:

Stacey Sholar, Student Staff, Graduated and took a new job, May 2010

Renee Geiger, Student Staff, Graduated and took a new job, May 2010

KaBrenda Warfield, Student Staff, Quit December 2009

Corey Brown, Student Staff, Transferred to University of Kentucky to
complete his Pharm D degree, July 2010

Amtoni Norris, JLD Specialist, Dismissed in probationary period, December
2009

Shaun Rayhill, Job Location and Development Coordinator, New Hire,
February 2010

Lindsay Jacobs, Student Staff, New Hire July 2010
Activities and Initiatives that Support Academic Units:

In Arts and Sciences our focus has been to assist students with career
decision making, offering 100's of MBTI and Strong Interest Inventories to
date to individual student referrals from academic advisors and faculty, to
cardinal covenant students, to porter scholars, to GEN 101 freshman, to
Comm 250 enrolled students, to SMEP summer participants, to prospective
students and alumni just to name a few; the delivery of a career
development workshop series in the Arts and Science physical space was
provided to allow us to cover the basics with these students from how to
choose a major to how to write a resume; in addition, a new Career
Spotlights were developed, to help students learn more about how to put
their major to work, that involves hosting alumni presenters in a panel
presentation format to talk about their career paths and give students ideas
on how to put their major to work.

In Dentistry, we helped to convert dentistry staff to the use of Symplicity as
the database for their job posting system used widely in the school by both
current students and alumni and assisted in re-designing there webpage
content concerning symplicity for students, alumni and employers.

In Education, we assisted with the Education Career Fair, hosting a number of
school districts participating in on-campus recruiting, regular office hours
have been maintained during and the delivery of a career development
workshop series in the School of Education space was provided. In addition,
we co-hosted a mini career fair event with the Sports Administration
program.
5.

In Engineering, our focus has been to continue to partner with the planning
and hosting of the Engineering career fair, delivery of mock interviews for all
students preparing to coop, providing regular office hours at Speed School,
the delivery of a career development workshop series in the School of
Engineering focused on full-time employment issues, was provided in
support of their already developed cooperative education program .

In Music, regular office hours have been maintained and changed a bit to
included staff being available over their lunch hour in an information booth
type format in the space where the students hang out, delivery of a career
development workshop series in the School of Music space was provided and
included several presentations during their regularly scheduled convocation
on Thursdays. In addition, we hosted a Careers Spotlight in Music
presentation, bringing several music alumni back to campus to share their
career path with our soon to be grads.

In Nursing, we begun our first class of required career development
presentations and mock interviews for all students. We have also began
working with advisors to develop an early waring program for those students
who are on academic warning and probation – which has had great success
to date.

In Public Health we have provided regular office hours, a comprehensive
workshop series on resume writing, cover letter writing, interviewing skills,
and job search strategies, as well as mock interviews, faculty presentations
on our services.

In Social Work, our focus has been to assist with job postings, getting info out
to prospective students about grad school options and the collection of
graduate follow up data. In addition, we assisted with the second annual
Social Work Career Fair in conjunction with the Social Work Student Council
group. No school specific office hours have been established to date.

On our second year of service, the Career Development Center continues to
offer Alumni Career Development Services. In addition to one on one
counseling, we co-hosted with the Alumni Office, a Career Development
Series of Workshops, updated our webpage with resources specifically for
alumni and invited our alumni to participate in all our career fairs.
Activities and Services that Support Diversity:

In keeping with the University mission to be inclusive and respresentative of
all groups, the Career Development Center Staff demonstrate their
comittment to diversity through the wide range of groups we present to and
comittees we serve.
6.

Porter Scholars Student Administration, Interpretation and Presentation on
the MBTI, Strong and Career Decision Making

Cultural CenterStudent Administration, Interpretation and Presentation on
the MBTI, Strong and Career Decision Making

LGBT Fan

Veterans Friendly Office

James Brown and Valerie Browning serves as active members of CODRE

Cardinal Covenant Student Administration, Interpretation and Presentation
on the MBTI, Strong and Career Decision Making
Activities and Services that Support Community Service and/or Civic
Engagement:

7.
As a newly developed office, this has not been a priority due to the need to
focus on building our own infrastructure.
Staff Professional Development Activities and Programs :

As a means to increase University awareness of the Career Development
Center and to become actively engaged in the University community, all staff
are strongly encouraged, where appropriate, to give time through service in
University Committees and to our profession through participation in a
variety of professional associations.

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Staff in the CDC actively served on the following University
committees:
Cardinal Covenant Advisory Committee
Great Louisville Inc – HIRE Sub-Committee
Interview Committee Member for Mr. & Ms. Cardinal
Financial Festival Planning Committee
Cardinal newspaper Advisory Board
Department of Public Safety Advisory-Education subcommittee chair
Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality
Big East Career Fair Planning Committee
Staff Senate
Student Affairs Professional Development
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8.
Assessment Initiatives:

9.
President’s Commission to Investigate Deasy Ph.D. & College of
Education
ACPA Mid-Managers Institute planning meeting
Provost’s Sustainability Council and Administration
Finance and Outreach Committee
Career Development Center Representative, Student Affairs
Newsletter
Black Alumni Council
Per Credit Hour Tuition Marketing Working Group
President's Outstanding performance Award Committee for
Faculty/Staff
Enterprise Management Committee
Graduate Follow-Up Committee
As a newly developing office, we are not yet very sophisticated at our
assessment initiatives. Currently we do some basic assessment, but plan to
add opportunities for our students, employers and faculty to provide us
feedback.
Department Goals 2010-2011:
a) Change focus of career services delivery in response to campus needs and job
market
 Shift student focus to career exploration phase of career development process
 Shift employer development focus to increase use of and connection to alumni for all programming efforts
 Increase communication/marketing/advertising with students,
staff, faculty, administration
 Increase quality of general on-line resources and school/college
specific on-line resources
 Collect and share better documentation of the worth of our work
b) Expand Alumni Career Services Program
 Create new webpage tab just for Alumni
 Provide additional resources on webpage specific to alumni
 Create and Implement Alumni Career Mentoring Program
 Offer Job Search Workshops for Alumni in support of Alumni Office Programming
 Offer Networking Nights program in support of Alumni Office Programming
c) Focus on Student Career Awareness and Intervention
 Create and populate a Resource Library Tab on Webpage
 Make all workshops available on-line
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Expand Career Spotlights into all colleges at the rate of three per
semester, each focusing on a different major using alumni as presenters
Create process to identify and target major changing students and
students at academic risk
Increase student awareness of Symplicity, increase # student registrants and resumes uploaded.
Increase number of grad school prep workshops
d) Focus on Staff and Faculty Career Awareness
 Expand On-campus Employment Program
 Increase communication with target groups concerning all initiatives
 Assigned Career Coach will routinely attend and report at college/school faculty meetings
e) Create and execute office wide, annual marketing plan
 Increase outreach (communication) to students
 Increase outreach (communication) to staff (academic advisors)
and faculty and Deans
 Increase outreach (communication) to alumni
 Use I drive to share marketing plan and all associated publications, flyer, documents, forms
 Create per event marketing plan
 Create event marketing request form
 Create office logo/header to be used on webpage and all office
publications
 Create and manage a coordinated facebook, linkedIn an Twitter
plan
 Standardize and make available on-line one comprehensive document for each career development topic (Career Planning Overview, Resume Writing, Cover letter Writing, Interviewing)
 Coordinate all internal and external calendars to advertise upcoming career events
 Re-brand Symplicity to Cards Career Link
f) Expanded On-line Resources
 Launch Interfolio to students and faculty in the fall
 Launch Interview Stream to students and faculty in the fall
 Make all workshops available on-line
 Review entire website for broken links, errors or the need for updated information, navigation issues
 Create webpage tabs for Alumni, Parents, Resource Library and
change how we use the calendar tab
 Improve webpage info for faculty
 Utilize Symplicity to host first Virtual Career Fair


Use staff to research subject areas for Resource Library Tab
Cancel Vault
g) CDC Staff Development
 Begin CDF training program
 Revise Career Coach Goals to encompass new focus – meet with
each coach to complete revision and discuss how this will affect
their school/college
 Schedule Office Clean Up Day in preparation for Fall
 Staff Retreat to kick of fall semester and welcome new GA
 Introduce staff and train on the use all newly added on-line resources/tools
 Improve the consistency with which staff use simplicity to record
student appointment notes
h) Program Evaluation
 Utilize simplicity to collect graduate follow-up data from current
registrants
 Post on the web the results of our graduate follow-up data collected through senior surveys
 Collect program evaluation feedback for presentations, workshops, career spotlights, events etc. and develop process for analysis of feedback
10.
Issues and Challenges for the Department During 2009-2010 and Beyond:



August 2009 Flood
December 2009 Downturn in the Job Market
Budget Decreases
Career Development Metrics
Metric
2008-2009
2009-2010
Comment
Student Registrations
2989
3039
Employer Registrations
1267
839
Posted Positions
2801
1898
Symplicity Hits
5660
15298
CDC Webpage Hits
0
13616
Student/Alumni
Appointments
1404
1218
Presentations
210
181
Career Assessments
1441
1365
Continued increase
expected as office
continues to gain
momentum, despite set
backs
Decrease not surprising
due to economic
downturn
Decrease not surprising
due to economic
downturn
Ability to track brand
new, this is first full
year of data
Ability to track brand
new, this is first full
year of data
Decrease not surprising
given that we had to
move due to the flood,
had the office closed
the equivalent of 3
weeks in the process
and then had re-orient
our customers to our
new locations after
each move.
Decrease not surprising
as our fall 09 number of
presentation was way
down – no space on
campus to have a
presentation due to the
flood
Decrease, again not
surprising due to
disruption of service
and additionally, a
budget shortfall due to
career fair performance
that required us to
discontinue assessment
administrations from
May 2010 until June 30,
2010.