Connect with Career Education

Yep, and encourage occation. We're going to do one about college essay writing. One about financial aid, and then I think the other one is what about us? Diversity on campus?

Excellent.

Yeah.

Axel.

So it looks like it's 1230 now and people are joining us, so I'll let some more people join in here before I go over some brief introductions and brief instructions for the day and then we can get started.

That sounds great.

Thank you, Daniel.

Well, welcome everyone. I am Danielle Nesper, I'm assistant director, admissions at Allegany College. I want to thank everyone today for joining us for our career education panel.

Some tag advice if you are having any audio or visual troubles, just refresh the page and it should correct it. If you are continuing to have audio problems in the corner, there is a CC closed caption Button. Please feel free to click on that and it will provide a transcript of everything that's being said today and then at the end we will have a brief Q&A session, but right now I will turn it over to our lovely presenters and they can kind of Take Charge.

Thank you so much Danielle and good afternoon autumn. Nice to see you again today.

And good afternoon to our gas. Thanks so much for joining us. So we represent the career Education Center, the Career Center at Allegany College, which is part of the Allegheny Gateway. In this first slide, you get a photo of Chompers and our professional team, though can see Autumn Black, Autumn Parker excuse me right here and she's going to speak with you. Kristen Black. So if any of you were at the CPP presentation pre law and policy, you've had an opportunity to meet and.

Hear from her chompers are college mascot Rhonda Hirschelman, who's our office manager. I think of round as the glue in the grease. She keeps us working together and keeps us heading forward. So she basically overseas the operations of the office itself. And then here I am. I have the privilege of serving as the director for the Career Center, so we are the professional staff and we seek to engage with students as early as the first year. In fact, we have some programming.

That is part of orientation. When students first come to campus, we want students to know that we are a support for the entire four year and we're just part of your support team. We also have four what we refer to his career, peer advocates, and I'm going to let autumn introduce them, take it away on him.

Oh, I think you're muted.

Of course I'm muted. We've only been doing this for the whole year, so I apologize everyone for that, but I was just again thinking Jim for that wonderful introduction of our professional staff in team, and I thank you all for taking time out of your Saturday to join us and learn more about how we can be a proactive resource for you even before you step onto campus or choose more of a remote means of academic learning. But again, we have our career per advocates who are in addition to our professional staff, and they are literally a walking pure resource for you as they too are engaging.

With our employers and recruiters and learning of the different kind of conversation aspects of the career pathway and overall process in the building of that. So they are very much aware of the types of employers that we're bringing to campus as well as the type of job opportunities. Many of our students are seeking as well as internship. Another exponential again opportunities alongside that. They are our designers to of a lot of our promotions and marketing that we have on our social media. And we'll talk a little bit of that later in the presentation. But they are just a really direct resource for you.

To utilized when you're not in our office, you know whether it's in the classroom and Organizacion you share or just seeing them around the community. You can always connect with them and say hey, what are some opportunities or resources I should be tapping into so that I can better prepare an empire myself to engage in this karere process?

Across higher education is an industry. Not only we but our colleagues have identified three prime influencers in the lifeless student and those would be parents and loved ones who filled that parental role. Professors so that faculty members who engage with students throughout the week and then peers.

So we look as our four career peer advocates as people who can talk with their peers, talk with their friends about what's going on, and serve as diplomats as liaisons ambassadors for office on campus. We have some really what I think is really good news to share so consistently. This are Gators. After grad flyer, this is something that you'll be able to see outcomes if you went to the gateway.

Paige Ann then the Career Center.

You can see some career outcomes and typically historically we see that within eight months of graduation, 92% of our graduates report that they are on track to 92%, either in some sort of long-term compensated service, and that's that's employment. That might be something like teach for America. Paul Spitsberg, The Peace Core City are.

And then the other large percentage that you can see in that pie chart. There is students who are engaged in the workforce and historically, if you were to go to payscale.com pay, scale ranks colleges by early and mid career earnings for the last six years. So six consecutive years. Allegany college has fallen within the top 20% of over 1500 colleges and universities in the United States.

So we fall within that top 20% I think were like 18.6% for the the most recent ranking, but that's I think really good news for our students who graduate and go into the workforce. And then the green portion on the pie chart are those that go on to graduate and professional schools.

Till we see an admission rate in graduate and professional programs of 80 to 100% depending upon what the program is. And that's roughly twice the national average. So we have some really wonderful outcomes that you can expect to achieve as a result of the skills he developed. The skills that you nurture and foster during your Allegany education. Now we work on the Co curricular side. We work as coaches who engage with students, help them.

It's loading on my end, Jim, but I'm not sure.

If it's loading for audience an, you froze as well.

All Danielle here is the technical difficulties we were looking for.

Danielle, I think your mic is off.

Yes, it is. So it does look like Jim froze if he wants to leave the session, enter the session. That should fix the problem. But if you want to pick it up from that slide, it should be showing.

Absolutely. Can you hear me? Daniel is my Mike. I'm OK, great yeah. Will wait for Jim to log back on and he'll pick up wherever I leave off. But anyhow, this is my portion to talk about social media as I oversee that marketing Department here in our office. An LED like Jim was saying we have a ton of really great kredible valuable relationships with employers and recruiters, and I think it ties really well to the previous slide that he was showing of the outcomes of our graduates. We really tell utilizing platforms like LinkedIn, especially for those networking building partnership skills because.

You can tell Allegany graduates are not just across the nation, the nation but internationally as well. So for you as a student, I remember in 2016 when I graduated from Allegany College, how just overwhelmed I was and thinking about who could I talk to? Who could I connect with and just giving me a little bit more insight to the career world and it was really the alumni base that I found a lot of support in and also just more knowledge to understand how I could best.

You know, create the reflection of the candidate in which I was trying to, you know, build and part of that is just really getting to know who you're applying to and so on. Our social media. We do a really great job and again, that's on behalf of our career. Pair advocates of really promoting not only who the employer employer is, but what type of industry. How does this relate to your major minor? Any academic interests, and what are the opportunities that they're providing within the organization that allow you to not only accrue more again skills and experiences?

But most importantly, built those networks and those connections really across the career industry. It's about who you know. And so during your four years here, office really tries to get to know you as soon as you enter campus during their first year, so that you understand you can start engaging with this work immediately as you step on campus, even if it's just as simply as following us on social media. And I told Danielle, I'll put our user name in the chat as well, but I'll also email it to her so that she can follow up high gym. There you are.

That's our kovid world. Who knows what happened?

Oh Lord, Well you're here with us so we will just go with that.

I was just giving them again, uh, insights to our social media and a lot of the things that they can expect when engaging with those platforms. Again, I think this is a reflection of what you were talking about earlier. Jim, of our graduate outcomes with that networking and partnering with kredible employers and organizations who know our students are incredible employable individuals that they can count on to do really wonderful work. And part of that, I think lens conversation too.

That type of skill sets that, I think Allegany really provides from both an academic and cocurricular perspective, and you can just again see an identify what are those qualities that employers are looking for just by simply following us on social media. That really gives you an interactive piece as well. As my colleague Kristen and I over the summer, and you can find this on our social media page. Did a few info sessions of how you can utilize platforms such as LinkedIn.

Handshake indeed, and Glassdoor to again kind of providing you more of the technicalities of the career search process and pathway building. So learning about the type of salary that is economically normal for the type of Industry you're going into, right? That market base and then also learning about how to negotiate a salary. Perhaps alongside of that company culture, mission statements, and those 4th. All of those lynnway really to how you cultivate your application materials.

But you know, we provided sessions that you can find on our Instagram page, specifically an you know, we're continuing to build more content on our social media pages of conversations not only with employers and recruiters, but most importantly, our alumni base. Who Jim can attach a test and vouch for, are just as valuable pieces of this work, not only for us, but for you all as well, and really, just understanding the spectrum of opportunities that may be available to you, whether or not they relate to your academic.

Major and minor.

I think that's a great segue into talking about our alumni network. Our best information tells us that 80 to 85% of people who are getting jobs today get them through some form of personal contact. So each of the employers you see reflected on this slide are employers with whom we have alumni connections.

Alumni who know the value of the Allegany education and who come back frankly year after year to recruit because they want Allegheny graduates or Allegheny students in their pipeline. We use a tool that we call a handshake. I'm going to flip back to this first slide. We just launched handshake as a job and internship search tool back in January of this year. So January 13th. So what we've been on it for about 10.

Months now and it had months we've had over 1200 employers contact us and ask if they could post jobs and internships at Allegany. We identify we flag employers to let you, the user, know that those employers are alumni connected so that using tools like LinkedIn you can then find out who are the alumni that work at these organizations, whether they be the FBI or Merck Pharmaceuticals. What alumni have served in the peace core? Who's it you PMC?

Which is the largest employer, the largest where we have our largest concentration of alumni? So you can find out who's working there and then reach out to them to get that information that autumn was talking about, such as what is the company culture like. Everyone has a diversity statement. Do they truly value diversity and access?

No, I think this is a great time for us too.

Turn it over back to Danielle for questions and answers. So I said We are part of the Allegheny Gateway. We are one of roughly 6 focus areas within the gateway and we believe that when you enter the gateway and you begin to work with us as guides on the side, your life becomes transformed. Now thanks for being with us on this wonderful Saturday, Danielle.

Alright, well thank you for that. We are going to open the floor for some questions and some really good answers. So for our attendees if you look on the left hand side there that is our chat box you can feel free to type your message in there, hit enter and it will pop up once I receive it I will approve it in answer. Ask it and we can then answer it. But while you guys are thinking of some questions and putting them in, I just want to start with one of our pre asked questions. So as we learn today about 60% of our graduates will go straight into Akarere.

30% will go into grad school and about 10% go into service.

These are great statistics. We're really, really proud of all the work you guys are doing all the work our students are doing. But do you guys consider your job done, and if not, what do you continue to do to support the alumni that have recently graduated?

Yeah, absolutely well I think being 2016 alumna myself, I can directly attest to the importance of how this offices work. Doesn't just stop after you graduate. In fact, this is a lifetime service. Once a Gator, always a Gator. So even after I graduated I joined city year and served as an americore member in Cleveland for a year after graduation. And then I decided to go to grad school for the next two years. But during that process I actually reached out back to the group education office.

Just to review some of my application materials and freshen up an interview skills and really being able to articulate how to talk about my experience is that I accrued more of an translation to the position I was applying for, and there are other elements of this career process that we talked a little bit about earlier that are constantly evolving. They don't just stop once you get a job. You know Jim knows this first hand as our director, so you know it's really important to recognize that this is a life long process and because we recognize that as counselors.

Our services are going to be lifelong as well. You can email us. You can call us. We are still really conducting virtual appointments as well too, so we can do video chat as well to have a more authentic experience. Holistic overall is really what I think the correct ducation offers during during undergrad years. But well after you graduate because again, we understand your person in your professional in their interconnected and the impact each other throughout a lifetime. So I can just say as a witness myself.

That of the job that we do is wonderful and great, but it is extensive and it never stops.

I'll just add to that that we have had graduates who've been out of Allegany for 30 years that have come back to us because they are at a point where they want to change careers and they've asked if we could assist them more frequently. It's graduates who've been out for five years. We prioritize working with the students who are currently enrolled, so the students who are on campus or virtually taking classes.

You are our priority that those that are graduates are not forgotten on Monday. I have an appointment with a 2017 grad who is thinking I started in this and it's been OK, but I think now I'd like to explore something different. So whether it's OK, I'm ready to go to grad school and roughly 80% of our graduates end up going to some sort of graduate or professional program. So whether it's preparing those materials or thinking about, I don't know what's next, but I want to change.

We continue to work. We have also worked on a limited basis with high school students who occasionally will have a high school student reach out to say this is something I'd like to get into. Can you help me? So within the last couple of months, I had a junior high school junior reach out to me to say that she thinks that her passion is to go into the FBI and knowing that we have a number of alumni who work for the FBI, I was able to to offer her some names.

Reach out to alumni and put her in contact so that she can begin conversations and really learn more about that career that she aspires to. So thanks for that great question.

Actually, if I could just add to that because I think Jim is lending to a great .2 of that return on an investment point that is often not only talked about an admissions, but of course in our work as well. This is not just simply continuing to empower and prepare graduates and alumni for the workforce, but to also bring back these opportunities for current students to get involved in an engaged with and continue that network building. Jim myself and Kristen have a ton of networks, whether it's through LinkedIn or prior relationships.

With alumni who reached out to us and now through handshake, especially with internship opportunities, employment opportunities, and they're saying I want to Gator, I know that and Aluni Gator is going to come in with a well rounded, unaware sense of self in relation to the world and thus also to this organization and be able to contribute meaningfully. And that's one of our missions at this institution. We want to create students who can think critically but also meaningfully, and it really helps when we're able to bring back alumni to showcase that.

I was successful in this work and you can be too and I'm going to help mentor and train you along the way. And so that's just really important for you know, perspective students to realize is we want you to come back to an continue investing an hopefully many more years of students deciding to call allocate either home.

Awesome so we have got some more questions which if you do have questions please still send them in. So the first one is going to be can you talk a little bit about like what is the highest percentage of alumni that?

Art I think you guys mentioned it earlier. So where is the highest percentage of alumni at there? We go, sorry.

Between the University of Pitts Burg and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. So if we look at you, PMC and the University of Pittsburgh, that is where we have our largest concentration of alumni in the workforce.

Thank you alright, and so the next one is kind of going back to the alumni connections you guys were talking about with the first question. Are these connection Coop San? If not, how is it different?

That is a great question. We and Allegany does not have any coop programs so o'clock program, although it's a great idea and I think it's one that is worth exploring.

A Co op program is typically some sort of an internship experience that's bookended by two semesters of coursework, so we might have a student. I'm imagining if we were able to form a coop, say with Lord Corporation, or with Acutec Precision manufacturing or actual tech aerospace.

The student would.

Complete say their spring semester and as part of their coursework they would be interning for acutech over the summer they would intern full time for Acutech and then in the fall semester they would complete an internship while also completing coursework so that coursework provides an opportunity for students to a reflect on the experience they're having. Because there's typically some sort of an internship seminar, so the pre the spring semester would have a seminar that prepares students.

An works facilitates that initial diving into the internship and then the fall semester is more of a reflection. And how do I articulate this experience that I just had so that it makes sense when I go somewhere else often?

Coop's lead to full time employment.

And we see that same pattern with intern ships, so we don't have Co op programs. But we have recruiters like you, PMC, so you PMC. Although it's the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the top function that they hire Allegany students to fill is in their finance management rotation. So we would have students who would go and completed a finance summer associates position. It's paid with you, PMC, and typically those students are extended a job offer.

To get to work for you PMC after they graduate.

Danielle, I love being in a classroom an asking students who can tell me who you PMC is an maybe one handle go up and then I'll say, well how many of you would like to go to work there and no hands will go and I'll ask why and they'll say I don't want to be a doctor and I'll say that's great. Do you know that 85% of their positions?

Did not provide medical care, it's all the infrastructure. It's the finance. It's the accounting supply, chain management, advertising and marketing communications. It's all of these other roles that keep this large industry. The largest employer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that keeps them going. So although we don't have coop programs, we do have partnerships that lead to employment for students.

And then a lot of the work that we do, that Kristen and autumn, an I Kristen is our resume guru. She is number one in our office when it comes from resume design layout and then has the the set of eyes had scanning at the work that we do is some of that work that might take place in that second internship seminar where we're working with students to help them figure out how to articulate the experience in a way that makes sense to employers.

An you know in conjunction with that jam, I think it's important for students to recognize it when we're talking about internships. There's this connotation that it has to happen during the summer, and that's not entirely true. We're working with partners as Jim was mentioning earlier, such as the Philadelphia Center, which is an off campus study program, and it's more or been urbanized. Excuse me where you are utilizing the city as your classroom, whether it's for the fall or their spring semester, where you can earn 16 credits or the summer where it's 8 credits.

But nevertheless, it's a really phenomenal program that allows our students to take what they're learning here at Allegany College and apply it to that too literally. Another physical space and the industries within that space so you know, if you're into, you know, economics, business law, medicine, etc. You'll not only be taking classes within the program, but you will literally have a built in internship that is constantly asking you to reflect and process your experience. That will then translate to you. Coming back to Allegany whatever timeframe you.

Decide to do this says do this in with a more informative approach to how you see your degree. Translating your career prospects well before you graduate, so just know that these internship experiences and partners we have that Jim we're talking about. They may not be Co op programs, but nevertheless they are expander experential opportunities that lend more informative steps to you being employed full time, or at least connecting with more networks who can provide you opportunities to apply for in this 4th.

Autumn, I'll let you take that.

Now.

That's exactly how I feel. You should definitely be connecting with this now because in all reality, ask yourself what would stop you from just simply learning about the different aspects of career building and search. If anything, sometimes the beginning, it's just kind of like a research process. Getting to know the language, getting to know the type of industries out there, getting to know the resume, building skills, what what, a cover letter is, how to interview and Justice really also had to learn to talk about yourself.

You, it's never too late or too early really to start that important work, and if anything I have a student who is currently a sophomore. His name is Adam and he is one of the most proactive individuals I have ever met. He made me feel bad about my undergraduate experience, 'cause I was not doing all those things he was doing, but his first semester of his first year. He came into my office and he said, listen, I know that I want to go to the Professional Baseball League as a broadcaster. I've had a ton of experience.

In high school, but I know they only lend so much credibility. So what can I start doing now of just at least learning about? Perhaps alumni who are connected to this field? We went on LinkedIn. We found several individuals who had some connections to baseball, whether it was professional or more like local, and he just simply talked with them to learn about the industry about the types of skills and qualifications. He should be strengthening or really identify and articulate.

And then once we did that, he had a good basis. We started working on a resume. I started working on a cover letter and then we let all of that translate to searching for the positions. That kind of embody what he was looking for in knew he needed. Next thing I know, he had four offers on the table for the summer.

Yeah.

And he he was like, Oh, I don't know what you want to choose their so buddy. That's the point we want to put you all in. Essentially we would love for you to be overwhelmed by everybody who wants you. But I just want to show you the reality of it's on your time really. And you have to challenge yourself as well to step outside the comfort zone, the fears, anxieties and know that you have a safety net and a consistent network. Who's going to support you as long as you actively ask questions and reach out.

You know part of this work is and becoming a young adult is stepping outside and saying, hey, I need help and not just kind of waiting till senior year so you know I'm really grateful for the fact that this office doesn't isn't stagnant innocence. Jim, myself and Christian are constantly visiting classrooms, reaching out to our affinity groups and Organisations as well to make sure that we're being mindful to have reflective employers and alumni of the various diverse student bodies we have to. And making sure they see themselves in.

Of you know vast career setting, so I'm just grateful that we start early and we're not afraid to do so.

Person.

Thank you autumn.

Yeah, thank you. So our session is going to wrap up now. If you are planning on joining any of our other sessions this afternoon, please feel free to start moving your way to your email, checking the link and getting into those sessions. If you do have any questions for our lovely panels, Please send it to admissions@allegheny.edu and we can pass it along to them and then autumn. If you want you can put in your social media so they can follow you on Instagram and Twitter.

We would love to have you follow us.

Yes, I am doing that right now.

If my fingers won't work today.

And then the second link is just our admissions email. Let us know if you have questions and we're happy to pass them along. But again, thank you to our panelists. Thank you for everyone who attended. We are excited to continue this conversation and hope you have a great rest of your day.

Weather is.

You all.

Excellent, Danielle, thank you. Thank you and thank you all for joining us.

Yes, take care and be safe everyone.

Bye bye.