Five Steps to Career Change Success: Lessons Learned in Tashiya Stewart’s Transition from Auditing to Graphic Design
September 1, 2012BOOK REVIEW – Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level
September 1, 2012By Penny Freno
Just as learning opportunities are integral to the professional and personal lives of the clients our organizations support, ongoing learning is central to career practitioners’ professional growth and development. Many topics of interest to career educators can be explored through self-study, face-to-face workshops, conferences, in-service training and courses, a range of technologies (i.e. the Internet, video conferencing, webinars), and through social media networks and Twitter.
Until recently my professional development spanned many of the above and each offered new and exciting learning experiences. However, my best professional development opportunity occurred in a recent three-week visit to the career centres’ at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Florida. This opportunity came through an amazing program for staff, offered by my organization, Simon Fraser University (SFU), called the international Staff Mobility Initiative (SMI). The SMI provides an international professional development opportunity to a) support the ongoing internationalization of the university through improvements and innovations in service, practice and programming and b) to strengthen SFU’s international partnerships through broader engagement.
About three years ago, Career Services set out to incorporate the Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC) (Bright and Pryor, 2003) in the development of new and existing curricula and in our practice. We were keen to exchange some of the common career myths with modern-day key messages about career development in our core programming, various outreach activities, one-on-one consults, and our career conversations with colleagues. Our early experience with the CTC convinced us that further integration and expansion of the CTC principles in career education programming and service delivery would be a difference maker to our students – from first year undergraduates to doctoral candidates, international and domestic – and the recent graduates that we serve.
The SMI enabled me to see first-hand how the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Florida implemented the principles of the CTC in programming, practice and service delivery. The two institutions were chosen because of their adoption of the CTC and because they are recognized as leaders in the post-secondary career field. In addition, time spent at the University of Texas, Austin provided insight into a “college-model” and decentralized service operation.
My immersion into the day-to-day operation of both universities’ career centres included observing one-on-one consults and the delivery of workshops and career development credit classes, witnessing how the principles of the CTC are used to address students’ “big” career questions and how the CTC is incorporated into experiential education, career education and mentoring. Participating in team and department meetings, and connecting with knowledgeable, creative and generous colleagues expanded my horizons and boosted my confidence in terms of what is possible, exposed me to new ways of “doing business” and challenged my perspective.
Once back on home turf, my focus turned to taking action and looking for ways to add value to my work in my role as a Career Account Manager for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the work of SFU Career Services as a whole. Together with my manager (who by the way was 100% supportive and more than willing to free me up for three weeks – but that’s another story!) we identified some key priorities. We decided to further expand the CTC in a program for students on academic probation; we redesigned the modules for students interested in a self-directed co-operative education work term abroad; and we embedded the principles of the CTC in outreach from new student orientation to in-class presentations. What we could not have predicted were the new opportunities that would emerge, like the development of a pre-departure workshop for domestic students going abroad; designing and facilitating sessions for students in our French Cohort Program; and collaborating with internal and external partners to introduce the CTC to gifted secondary school students.
The outcome of my trip south of the border had all the makings of the tenets of the CTC – highly unpredictable despite some structure to the visits; the discovery of similarities yet differences between the career centres at the University of Texas, Austin, the University of Florida and SFU; and the emergence of patterns from what appeared to be totally random variables. When you are open to new experiences and change, and curious, unexpected opportunities await and that’s a good thing.
Navigating the chaos of her own career and life has taken Penny Freno from working in public relations, educational fund-raising, employment counselling, community programming and career development, with periods of unemployment, education and parenting.
Today, as the Career Account Manager for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences with SFU Career Services, she works with undergraduates, graduate level students and young alumni from around the world to support them in finding answers within themselves to some of their big career and work-search questions.