Leadership development is becoming a more prominent topic for career services than in years past. I would attribute this to the needs of employers with whom career services works, and the skills and abilities sought after in employees. It is important for career offices to serve the needs of our employers, and provide students with training in the areas that employers see as important. We try to respond to these needs when possible, and one way that we have done so is through our new Leadership Development Workshop Series, offered every fall and spring semesters to our students.
At the community college where I work, there had been little focus on leadership development as a cohesive program for our students. There were several initiatives in place, but no programmatic structure for these initiatives.
In our attempts to assist our students with building leadership skills, we re-imagined our career services department into Career & Leadership Development in July 2016. With this change in focus, we have been able to offer leadership development workshops, based upon the
NACE Career Readiness Competencies, to our students every semester. It was clear that adding this new focus would require additional resources in time, personnel, and funding; however, with a very small budget and a small staff we were creative in how we offered these workshops. We put out a call for proposals across the campus to any interested faculty, staff, or administrator in hopes that we would find campus community members willing to share their expertise with our students on a volunteer basis. This call for proposals resulted in close to 20 workshop proposals on a variety of topics! Through these workshops, we have been able to provide several skill development workshops in the NACE Career Readiness Competency areas.
Examples include:
“Making the Team Work” presented by our One Stop assistant director and an admissions representative
“Six Degrees of Separation: The Skill of Professional Networking” presented by an administrator in the testing services department
“Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills in the Workplace and Beyond…” presented by a faculty member in the English department
“Presenting an Idea: You have Three Minutes” presented by an associate professor in the speech department
“Leadership & Problem Solving: Approaching Problems through a Lens of Opportunity” presented by the director of grants and institutional development
“Leadership and Emotional Intelligence” presented by an assistant professor in nursing
“Will Your Skills Pay the Bills?” and “Creating Your Vision and Setting Your Goals” both presented by the career and leadership development team
These workshops provide students with a variety of skill development topics presented by individuals from across the campus connecting them with on-campus resources.
These one-hour workshops provide students with information, activities, team-building exercises, and time for self-reflection. Students leave workshops with more self-knowledge and ideas for applying these skills. We assess the students at the end of the workshop to determine that they have learned what we intended, and all feedback has been positive!
Our department truly believes in cross-collaborations with a variety of administrative and academic departments.
Stay tuned for additional ideas for infusing leadership development into your career services department!