Student Learning
& Development
This competency area addresses the concepts and principles of student development and learning theory.
This includes the ability to apply theory to improve and inform student affairs and teaching practice.
Tabling Events & Career Consulting Student Feedback
A large portion of the responsibilities associated with my role as Career Specialist at Azusa Pacific University’s Career Center consists of consulting appointments. Through regularly conducting career consulting appointments with a large variety of students, I am given the opportunity to engage in career counseling relationships with the students I serve. This artifact contains a small collection of post consulting appointment survey responses. These survey responses are used by the Career Center to better assess and evaluate student development as a result of said career consulting appointments. Additionally, this artifact includes photos of myself attending tabling events in which I offer students “Walk-In” consulting times during unique events. This service type is designed to address students’ immediate career readiness concerns and jump-start their professional development.
Whether it be conducting a resume review, a mock interview, guiding them in their graduate school applications, or taking the time to discuss career goals and concerns, having 1:1 time with students has always been a rewarding experience. I am blessed to able to build impactful relationships with my students regardless of whether we have only just met, or we have already developed a trusting relationship. This experience has allowed me to develop strong consulting and counseling skills, allowing me to ensure that each opportunity I have with a student is spent challenging their learning, encouraging their discovery, and boosting their personal and professional development. Research shows that the student and advisor relationship is an incredibly powerful, if not one of the most impactful, determining factors of whether a student achieves their degree (Young, 2003). Although I originally saw my role as Career Specialist as strictly a professional resource for students, I have grown immensely in my understanding of just how much impact I have on students’ learning and development.
Career Counseling Case Study
One of our career counseling course assignments allowed us to gain hands-on experience through practicing career counseling theory approaches and implementing various career assessments with an undergraduate student of our choosing. The student that I met with was a senior Mechanical Engineering student struggling to decide between a career in teaching or robotics and rocketry. Throughout our consecutive meetings, I was given the opportunity to walk the student through multiple career and interest assessments and identify the appropriate use of multiple career counseling theories, such as Hollands’ Theory of Vocational Choice. By engaging in intentional conversations regarding the student’s interests, personality, skills, and other personal orientations, I was able to better analyze the student’s goals (Holland, 1985). By discovering these things together, both the student and I were challenged to think critically and gain a more holistic understanding of the career decision-making process. Our career counseling sessions ended with the student having learned a great deal more about themselves and the career assessment tools available to them, as well as having successfully undergone a professional development experience. Being able to work through a career case study with a student who needed career support challenged me in developing my own career approach through learning new practices and concepts.
Career Development Workshops
In an effort to promote professional development and career success in APU undergraduate, graduate, professional, and alumni students, I oversee the facilitation of career center workshops. The APU Career Center offers various workshops, all aiming to incorporate the development of key career competencies within students as identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). These workshops provide students with necessary tools to enhance their skills in: career and self-development, leadership, communication, professionalism, critical thinking, teamwork, equity and inclusion, and lastly technology (NACE, 2021). I also have greatly developed my own personal professional development through learning not only how to present and facilitate such an environment, but also through training the next generation of student affairs professionals within career services to do the same. The development I personally achieved from first learning how to co-present these workshops virtually, to solo presenting in classrooms of 50+ students has been transformative in my own career readiness.