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For too long, career services has been an afterthought. Now it's time for career services to be in the driver's seat, leading institutional strategy around career readiness. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth interviews with today’s most innovative career leaders about how they’re building a campus culture of career readiness… or what we call Career Everywhere.
Rhonda Gifford:
Our goals really were to create a campus-wide culture of experiential learning at PennWest that could support recruitment and retention and just help make our students career ready. And our objectives really were to ensure that every student at PennWest has the opportunity to complete at least one experiential learning experience before they graduate, and of course, support the promotion and the data collection and assessment, and then work with our career center staff to help students to effectively make those connections between their experiential learning experiences and their future careers.
Meredith Metsker:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I'm your host, Meredith Metsker. And today I am joined by Dr. Josh Domitrovich, Rhonda Gifford, and Meaghan Clister of Pennsylvania Western University, AKA PennWest. Josh is the executive director of the career center. Rhonda is the executive director of the Experiential Learning Center and Employer Engagement. And Meaghan is the director of Internships and Experiential Learning. Thank you all for being here.
Josh Domitrovich:
Thanks for having us.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I'm super glad to have you all, and I'm excited to talk to you today about PennWest's new Experiential Learning Center, what it is, how it came to be, how you got senior leadership on board, and so on. And as you all know very well, experiential learning is a super hot topic right now across the higher ed spectrum. And I think it's always interesting to hear how different campuses are investing in experiential learning and how their career services teams are taking point and executing on a really big initiative.
So I'm excited to learn more from you all about this new Experiential Learning Center and what early results you are seeing. Before I get into my questions, is there anything else any of you would like to add about yourselves, your backgrounds, or your roles there at PennWest?
Josh Domitrovich:
I'd say maybe to start, it's probably good for the listeners to understand who PennWest is and how we came to be. So maybe I'll start a little bit there for the listeners. So in July of 2022, PennWest was created and it was created based off three legacy standalone institutions. And those institutions were a part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. So in 2022, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, California University of Pennsylvania, and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, all integrated to what is now known as Pennsylvania Western University or PennWest.
And that was largely based off of some external climate situations, financial situations, declining demographics across our region in the state of Pennsylvania, really putting pressures on each of those three legacy, as we call them, institutions, which then had the chancellor of our PASSHE state system piece us all together and say, "You are one now university with one shared service, with one faculty compliment, with one staff compliment. You have one leadership structure now all figured out. Make it work. Build it."
So we are very unique in that landscape of newness. We are the first of its kind or very few of its kind, and we tried to lean into that the best that we could through integration to really create a shared service model that supported all of our students because we do support all three still physical locations that I had mentioned, and we still service our online population of students.
So from undergrad to grad, we are here to support them in everything that they do. For other contexts, just so people are aware, we do reside in academic affairs and we report to the provost. We have just over 10,000 students is what our enrollment is. That has declined about 20% since 2022. We've also had our fair share of challenges. So yes, our budget has been cut nearly 50% since integration. We've lost about 50% of our staffing since integration. We've changed division three times.
I've had personally eight different bosses across those three years. We work in a unionized environment. So I say all that humbly and so really to say, "If we can do it, so can you. " So I'm really proud of Rhonda and Meaghan and the work that they've done to be able to charter a path for experiential learning at our university to see where it goes. So that's just a broad overview context of PennWest.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's some really good context and I think helpful for our listeners who maybe are not as familiar with PennWest's story. I guess to dig into that, so are you all in different locations?
Josh Domitrovich:
I am at the Clarion campus.
Rhonda Gifford:
And Meaghan and I are at the California campus.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. So do you guys get to be together very often or is it mostly virtual?
Josh Domitrovich:
Mostly virtual and when the budget allows is what I would say.
Meredith Metsker:
That's probably the answer for a lot of things.
Josh Domitrovich:
Yep.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. Well, that's some great context, Josh. Thank you. Meaghan, Rhonda, anything to add before I move on?
Rhonda Gifford:
No, that's great context to start with.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay, great. Well, now before I get into my more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast and that's what does Career Everywhere mean to you?
Josh Domitrovich:
It's a good question. Definitely something that we've tried to live and breathe throughout especially the creation of our new career center, if you will, since integration. And I think for PennWest and the Career Everywhere movement and why it's so important to us and what it means is really just trying to ensure that every student understands why they're here and where they're going, and that everybody in this ecosystem is playing a role.
That is the student has a role, staff have a role, faculty have a role, and we all can support students wherever they are in the journey. We've recently restructured our office in four phases, and those phases are explore, prepare, experience, connect. And what we like to try to present to whether it's students or faculty are that students can enter that career development journey at any stage, and they can exit it at any stage, and they can reenter it at any stage, and the cycle continues.
And for us, we know wherever we go, whatever we do, whatever division we're in for that year, it doesn't matter because career is there. It is a central theme of what we do in our institution, and it's the main reason why students are here. So for us, it's just trying to ensure we're meeting students where they are, and that we are educating and empowering those students to meet their specific definition of career and life success.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. Well said. And for those who are watching or listening, if you're not familiar, Josh has spoken at the Career Everywhere Conference twice now, and this is also his second appearance on this podcast, so I think definitely knows the Career Everywhere answer there. Rhonda, Meaghan, anything else to add?
Rhonda Gifford:
No, I don't think so. Thank you.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay, cool. All right. Well, now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is, again, all about PennWest's new Experiential Learning Center. So let's start with the basics. What is the Experiential Learning Center and why did you create it?
Rhonda Gifford:
Sure. So Meredith, the Experiential Learning Center is a center that supports the promotion, tracking, and assessment of experiential learning across PennWest. It's essentially a rebranding of our former centralized university internship center. So prior to integration, the Legacy California campus had an internship center staffed by one, which was Meaghan. And then post-integration, a centralized internship center also staffed by one, Meaghan. So we decided to rebrand and expand that internship center into an Experiential Learning Center.
We are housed within the career center organizationally and physically, and that enables us to leverage existing resources, space, staff, budget, all of those things. So we're essentially a center within a center. How it came to be, I think Meaghan and I started talking about this about a year ago, and we knew there's so much great experiential learning happening at PennWest, and so many students were almost stressing out about not being able to find an internship. Internships are so competitive, even sometimes more competitive than finding a full-time job.
And we started talking about also how students may struggle when they come in to meet with their career coach in the career center to close the loop, to be able to talk about their experiences comprehensively and the competencies that they've developed and gained through those experiences and relating them to their future careers. So through those conversations, Meaghan and I decided that we thought it was important to really focus our time on promoting all of the great experiential learning that was happening on campus.
And at the same time, we could help support faculty and other areas in tracking and assessing experiential learning and have a great story to tell. So we started off, of course, mentioning it to our provost and president, and Josh will talk more about this, because we heard them talking a lot about experiential learning. And Josh will definitely talk about how that support and advocacy has been crucial and so appreciated.
But our goals really were to create a campus-wide culture of experiential learning at PennWest that could support recruitment and retention and just help make our students career ready. And our objectives really were to ensure that every student at PennWest has the opportunity to complete at least one experiential learning experience before they graduate, and of course, support the promotion and the data collection and assessment, and then work with our career center staff to help students to effectively make those connections between their experiential learning experiences and their future careers.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, yeah, that's great context. Thank you, Rhonda. And I especially love that point that you made at the end about helping students make that connection. They feel like that's just been such a struggle. So far, students don't necessarily know that they're learning skills or how to talk about those skills, how to apply them to different jobs, different companies.
So that makes a lot of sense that you're really investing in that. I'm curious, so you kind of talked about what it is, why you created it. Now I'd love to dig into the how. So how did you go about creating the Experiential Learning Center and getting that buy-in from senior leadership?
Meaghan Clister:
Well, a lot of people who've been in the career field for as many years as Rhonda and I know that ideas are long game at times, that you might go to a conference and you see an idea that you love. And maybe four years down the road, administration says they'd want to do something. You're like, "I have something for you. " So from integration, Rhonda and I had experiential learning in our job title.
So that was always a plan to expand, to do more. And the internship center is unsustainable with one person in order to make it grow. So the choice was either stagnate or to pivot to something else and something broader. I will say for people listening that we had maybe four or five different proposals about how to improve the internship center that we pitched to every leadership that we were under and how we could make it better.
And we just kept evolving on that and how we want to go to it. It was easy for a couple years of integration to put that on the back burner about experiential learning until we got set with establishing policies for the other things that we did. And then it just became that this is the timeframe where we want to... We can either stagnate or we can grow. And so we put together a proposal, we worked on it, and we pitched it to our provost. And I believe we said it was like a three-year rollout.
And he said, "I love it. Can you do it in one?" So we're like, "Of course, we can't." So we're very much in the creating and listening to other people. And it has been wonderful for me individually and professionally to be able to create something new and to expand upon it and to grow. That's what I love about our field. And it's just persistence of making sure that we keep pushing forward and then you are just ready when the buzz starts to happen about what it is that you want to do.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. I love that. It reminds me of that quote. What is it? Luck is when opportunity meets preparation, or something like that. That's what I think of here. So you mentioned persistence. I'm curious, how did you all, I don't know, keep your heads up, want to be persistent when you had all these changes in leadership and so many different proposals. I'm just curious about that.
Josh Domitrovich:
Yeah. It wasn't easy.
Rhonda Gifford:
Right. Yeah.
Josh Domitrovich:
Go ahead, Rhonda.
Rhonda Gifford:
That's a great question, Meredith. I think that for Meaghan and me, I mean, as Meaghan mentioned, we've been in this field a while, and so to have a new project was very invigorating. So I think that for me personally is something that helped keep me going. But we really just created a project plan and broke it down, creating a website for experiential learning.
We're currently building out a dashboard. Meaghan has been working on an assessment tool. So each step of the project, there's a new piece that engages us and we can engage others in it and feeling the excitement from other people has just kept us going. We see that there are stakeholder, students, faculty, staff who are seeing different pieces of this that they might use and are getting excited about it. So that really has, I think, kept us going. It's been fun.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, yeah. I imagine those reactions are a good indicator that you're onto something here.
Rhonda Gifford:
Exactly.
Josh Domitrovich:
Meredith, what I would also add to that, it's been amazing to watch Meaghan and Rhonda evolve, especially over the fourth year now of PennWest and how challenging it was, it still is, but how challenging it was in the beginning. We were at one point in enrollment management. Then we were moved to student affairs. Now we're in academic affairs. And as Meaghan alluded to, we attempted the best that we could to make the pitch to each of those various leaders we had in each of those divisions.
But it wasn't always as successful, but it made sense why it wasn't because we weren't in alignment with the provost at the time. But that really changed over the last few years. And we have a provost now who is very much career minded. He understands it. He gets it. He doesn't question it. The answer often we get back is, how do we do it and how do we do it quickly, which I'd rather have that than being tossed around like a ping pong ball as many times as we were.
But what I applaud Meaghan and Rhonda doing is the amount of times they've had to make iterations to this thing, from the initial concept to where it is now, and not giving up through that journey. Because there's this whole piece that was going on behind the scenes of Meaghan supporting the internship agreements and applications of students for academic departments.
That was still going on while simultaneously Rhonda and Meaghan creating this new vision and trying to launch that vision. So it was this still is very much an intersecting thing that eventually is going to pass and will just be the ELC. And then the internship piece will very much be in the hands of the academic departments for the most part. But that evolution took time.
And again, I just applaud them for not giving up, because it could have been very easy just to say, "We're done. We're not going to try this." But I think a lot of that also makes me think about these signals that were happening at our institution and how we could align with where the momentum was going and how important it is to align with where the momentum is, which is where I ultimately believe a huge piece of where Jim came in and how we aligned with him.
And he took it and just skyrocketed it for us because he has decision-making power and belief that this is something that is an advantage for PennWest.
Meredith Metsker:
I'm assuming Jim is the provost.
Josh Domitrovich:
Jim is the provost. Sorry. Yes.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay, cool. Kudos to you, Jim.
Josh Domitrovich:
Go Jim. We love you, Jim.
Meredith Metsker:
Their shout-out. Yeah, Josh, I'm glad you brought up signals because that does seem like a big theme to me in this process for you all was reading the room. You all seem really good at just reading the vibe on campus among your senior leaders, understanding what their priorities are and then how you might fit into that or how you could fit into that. So I'm curious if you can say more about what signals you were seeing and then how you made the decision that the time was right and the leadership was right to pitch this idea for the ELC.
Josh Domitrovich:
Sure, yeah. Well, the first signal that really was flashing, screaming right at us was the internship application process and how overwhelmed Meaghan was. When she shifted from just focusing on one campus to all the campuses, it was not really sustainable at just one campus, let alone when you add two more, technically three if you count online. So four total campuses that she was attempting to support. It had nothing to do with Meaghan's inability.
It was just a scaling problem, and it became super inefficient and she got behind because of the mass numbers. So that was the first signal that something had to change. And we attempted to try to get more staffing. But in a current environment where enrollment's declining and budget's declining, that's a challenge. So that really was we attempted the signal.
We pretty much learned very quickly that wasn't going to happen, so then we had to think about what's an alternative solution here. So through iterations, that's where Rhonda and Meaghan started to think about what could this visually look like and they explained that a little bit. But for me, it was really trying to figure out where's the momentum here at PennWest in terms of strategic priorities.
And just over about a year ago, we got a new president, Dr. Jon Anderson. And in some of those initial conversations with him personally and/or hearing him speak, he had started to really shift a narrative where experiences meant a lot to him in the student experience. So there was something there that we knew we could latch onto. So that was a signal. The other thing for our provost is seeing how much momentum we were gaining with him and how they are reviewing a program array.
So what majors are we going to offer? What's the degree makeup look like? He also believes that experiences are a hallmark that should be a critical piece of the curriculum. Not all programs have them, some of them do. So what are we doing to really support the students inside and outside the curriculum? The other signals that were going on in some very honest conversations with the provost was, how do we gain more support in this very turbulent environment?
And he very honestly said, "If it doesn't support enrollment retention or outcomes, don't come knocking because there won't be an answer at the door." Now, he didn't say it that way specifically.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. That's the vibe though.
Josh Domitrovich:
It's the truth, right? If you aren't able to show your impact on one of those three key metrics, which brings in often revenue in this environment that we're currently in, you're going to have a really, really hard time. So what we wanted to start doing was looking at each of those pockets, and that's where I started to focus. So in terms of the enrollment piece, the signal there was we know prospective students and families, they're shifting their focus to a return on investment.
And the biggest return on investment in the things that they're asking for are, how are you going to help get my students an experience that's going to help set them up for success at the end? So from an admission standpoint, we're partnering with them to think about where our students are actually going, what they're actually doing, and how they can help promote that through the admissions funnel cycle.
In terms of retention, Rhonda had mentioned there are really three key pillars of the ELC, tracking, assessment, and promotion. That assessment piece, in addition to skills and competencies, one of the things that I'll be looking for are trying to make connections to students who do engage in these one of eight experiential learning experiences that they've defined.
How is that correlating to retention, persistence, and outcomes? So the hope is that once we have this centralized data, we will then start to be able to help make connections. And that's going to be critical because the last signal is perhaps the one that might matter the most, but I don't know what the future holds yet, is this One Big Beautiful Bill Act and this focus on earnings premium that might be coming.
And if academic programs are being evaluated based off the livable wages that the students or the graduates are getting, how is this going to play a role in the impact that we're doing to try to set them up? So that is very much future. It's coming. We're watching for it. It's kind of screaming at us. We're still not sure what that means or what that looks like, but that's going to be a critical play here that we need to be thinking about.
So multiple signals, some signals died out on us, some we leverage more than others, but it was just that constant reinforcement. I think Rhonda always says it best is, if you don't have a seat at the table, you pull up a chair to the table. And we've had to do that many times throughout this conversation and through the reliving revitalization of who we are and what we are here at PennWest, specifically for the career center, but now also with the Experiential Learning Center.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Thank you for that, Josh. That was really helpful just to hear what you were looking at and when it seemed like the right time. And it seems like you had the right person in the provost office too. So I'm sure that helped get some momentum there. I guess I am curious, how did you adjust the proposals knowing you had this new provost? I know you said you had four or five iterations of the proposal for the ELC. I'm curious how that changed, maybe for the final version that worked. I would just love to hear more about how you adapted it.
Meaghan Clister:
I think we started out with a proposal to how to sustain the internship center. So here are some suggestions of what we need to be able to continue to do what we do. So it started that way and we just kept building upon that. Rhonda had looked at... We'll give a shout-out to Nazareth University years ago. I think every professional has a folder of things I like to do or great ideas that I can take a look at at different times.
And that was one of them. When we started to become the Experimental Learning Center, there was a culture of a centralized internship center at Legacy California that was not there with the other two campuses. So how do we create a culture across three campuses very far apart? And so we took a look at that and I believe three provosts ago that just asked us, "What's your big picture plan?"
And so we're like, "This is what we would love to see five years out." So we already had that, that this is what we would like to move to. So every time we proposed, we thought we're spinning our wheels a little bit with the Internship Center because we're not going to get anywhere. So let's go big and look at all of these things and see if this would appeal to administration about a way to expand and increase.
And there was no place where data was found about where our students are, what they're doing, beyond what I would do with the internship center. So it's like, we can get you this data, we can help you get to what it is you're looking for because we already have a lot of the tools already in place. It was just we had the big picture for a few years before we finally got to where we wanted to be with that.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I just have this vision in my head of you guys just having a vision board for the future ELC in your office. So that's cool. Thank you for that additional context. I'm curious, again, me being a visual learner here, how does the experience for students compare between your old setup and then this new setup with the ELC?
Rhonda Gifford:
That's a good question. I think our website that we've developed is much more comprehensive first for students. So our website, career.pennwest.edu/elc, we highlight the variety of experiential learning opportunities categories, broad categories, but then we break down each category and help students understand what might a specific experience look like in that category so that they can see themselves in it, they can relate to it and then give suggestions on how they can get started.
So I think that's the first thing with the student experience. But we've also looked at creating different appointment types that students can request when they want to meet with us or a career coach. And one of the appointment types is called How to Gain Experience. We hear that so often from our students, "I would like to get this job, but it asks for experience. How do I get experience if I can't get a job?"
So just creating that appointment type and ways to have that conversation. Josh has been working with others to build a career conversation tool, and the conversation about building an experiential learning plan is now a part of that conversational tool. So that's a tool that any stakeholder can use. It takes a village, right? So faculty can use it, staff can use it.
The more people that we expose to that tool and teach them how to use it and the resources that are available, it just helps that conversation to happen in more places. So it's kind of in alignment with the experience of the student before, but just opening students' eyes to the breadth of experiences, but also getting specific and helping them to understand, "Okay, how do I get started? Who do I talk to? Who do I meet with?"
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's interesting. So it's just more of a specific clear process.
Rhonda Gifford:
I think so.
Josh Domitrovich:
I was going to say, finally a centralized process. I mean, that was the piece. I mean, so many of the academic departments that have prescribed programs are doing some of these things, but it's not all funneling into a central place. And that's what was a huge thing the provost was focused on is what's this repository that we can easily start having a dashboard to see where and what our students are doing.
And that was part of the big pitch that Meaghan was alluding to is what are they looking for, they as in administration, for them to be able to get a yes that this is a worthwhile investment. And what I think Rhonda and Meaghan are also being humble about is through this process, we were able to secure various amounts of funding to be able to help with the software, to be able to assess students' competencies.
I mean, there are a lot of different unique aspects to this, yet it's hard to talk about in just one hour. But there was a lot of thoughtful deliberation and thinking that went on by them to like, what is the best path forward to be able to assess and actually complete this process in an efficient manner? And we're just still one semester into it technically. They just launched it a couple months ago, but it's exciting just to see even where it's at and what will ultimately come out of this.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Especially considering that you said the provost gave you a year instead of the initial three that you were wanting. Yeah, it's really impressive what you all have accomplished. So I know you only just recently launched the Experiential Learning Center, but have there been any early results or success stories that you're excited about?
Rhonda Gifford:
As you mentioned, Meredith, we did just launch our center and the website in mid-September, but in general, the response has been so positive. Students appreciate the website, the clear explanation of experiential learning, the variety of opportunities that they might not have thought about and the practical steps to get started that I mentioned before. But each stakeholder we meet with and other stakeholders that are hearing about it reach out to us.
And that's a new thing sometimes, right? Folks reaching out to us saying, "Hey, I'm doing this in my department. How could I get this added as a resource on your website?" So we're hearing a lot of excitement from those stakeholders and then excitement about the dashboard too and the competency assessment support. So I think those are some early indicators for us, but we'll look forward to measuring more specific results as we go along.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. That's great to hear that people are coming to you wanting to put things on your website. You are now officially the curators of all things career. I love that.
Meaghan Clister:
We started out with how can we save ourselves because the work was too much. And what we're finding is that I think other people were looking for ways to get their message out. I just did a presentation with faculty development and the excitement that you see on faculty's faces or the comments we've heard about, "This is a great resource." We don't own everything on the experiential learning. We still are very much a part of internships.
We're very much part of our reflections of the student learning, the RISE program. So there are pieces that we still own, but it's for all of the university to talk about and it's a place to put their information. So it really is breaking down some silos that is a bonus for us that we're looking like, "Oh wait, this is a good thing for other people too." So it's been really fun to do.
Josh Domitrovich:
Meredith, I want to underscore something that Meaghan and Rhonda both said in their own way. So this is from a strategy lens, which is where I kind of live and I think. What's so critical in all this work is us trying to think about how do we come indispensable? How do we place ourselves in situations where we are very much the center of the spiderweb and people need us in order to stay intact?
And that was a lot of the strategy that Rhonda and Meaghan were thinking about in the iteration of this, is that we are a central piece of this where we can collect all the data. We can help assess all that data. Some programs are doing it. It's okay. We just need this information. Other programs aren't doing it at all. Hey, we have some solutions that could help you. So I think the boiling everything down is what are their problems?
What solutions do we have to help answer their problems? So that's stakeholder one. Stakeholder two, cabinet level, based off these solutions, what am I feeding them to be able to answer all their questions and ultimately give them the numbers and support that they want? And if you're doing those things strategically, you are becoming a very important part of a puzzle that is harder for you to be removed, if that makes sense.
Not impossible. Stay humble here. It's not impossible, but it makes it harder because you become more valuable because you're in a critical role in this process. So I just wanted to talk on that because so much of that strategy and thinking was occurring and it still is. We're still trying to figure out what other ways can we help support other areas and/or leadership.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's a great point. I'm glad you highlighted that because I think that's probably something a lot of other career leaders listening to this podcast are thinking about. How can I launch initiatives that are not only helpful to students and other stakeholders, but how do I ensure the sustainability of my office and my budget? So yeah, I think that's a really important point. I'm curious, you've had some early wins with the ELC and some good indicators that people are really excited about it. What are your future goals for the Experiential Learning Center?
Meaghan Clister:
We're very much still growing now where we want to be with the Experiential Learning Center, but the end goal is to create a culture where experiential learning is recognized, understood, and talked about frequently at PennWest University so that faculty can talk to students about ways that they can get an experiential learning experience.
So that students understand what we mean by experiential learning and how they can take advantage from freshman year to senior year about experiential learning, and that students can talk about their skills that they are learning through these experiences in a way where they're talking to a recruiter that will promote what it is they're doing. Our students are doing some great, great things.
Our faculty are doing amazing things. And it would be the culture that we promote what we're doing. Our three values, I guess, of the experiential learning is promote, track, and assess. And it's on a high level and it's on a student level as well. So that's our ultimate goal is to figure out ways that it makes sense to who we assess, how we assess, and how we promote that information.
Rhonda Gifford:
I can see Josh getting really excited about assessing students' ability to articulate and make connections between what they've learned and their future careers, and also the impact of this on recruitment, retention, and even career outcomes. So that's the land that Josh lives in. Josh, am I right? Are you excited about that?
Josh Domitrovich:
I am. Yes, I am. It wakes me up early every day thinking about it. Can't wait.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, yeah, I love that. That totally seems on brand for you, Josh. To clarify, so this is part of the tracking, so you mentioned you have this dashboard. Is that something that is available to everyone across campus, so all of your leaders, your faculty, folks like that can all see it, or is that mostly a career center project?
Rhonda Gifford:
We're still building that out, Meredith. That's the part of the project that we're currently in. So September was really launching the website and doing some promotion, but now we are knee-deep in building out the dashboard, collecting data, building out that dashboard. But you're right, the intention is that various stakeholders will have access to that. And we've even heard from some faculty how they can envision using it.
For example, prospective student open houses, they may not have had data before about where do students in this program do internships or field experiences or where do our students do their student teaching? If the person at that open house is not the person who handles those field placements or student teaching, they don't always have access to that information.
So this dashboard would make it very easy for everyone to be able to access that type of information. So it's been fun to hear how different stakeholders have thought about how they could use this dashboard. So we're in the middle of that right now.
Meredith Metsker:
It sounds like they are very excited about it and they totally should be. I can see how, and if, I don't know, another year or two from now, how PennWest is going to have that reputation for having answers to the hard questions, which is not always the case.
Rhonda Gifford:
Right. Exactly. I've never had so many people so willing to hand over their data.
Meredith Metsker:
Amazing. Rhonda has found the secret sauce people.
Josh Domitrovich:
But it makes sense though, right? If you think about it logically, we are here to help the academic program strengthen their own program. So help us help you, and that's helping admissions, which helps recruitment for your program, which is going to help retention for your program, which hopefully helps outcomes for your program. So it does make sense if you just step back and look from the balcony.
And I will say in a time where we are going through an academic array revision, I think more people from the academic programs are coming out and saying, "Well, how do I help show our program is actually doing something good, that we're supporting students in different ways." Hey, I'm happy to help be a part of that conversation, however we can help you do that. I think Rhonda mentioned at one point, it's like you're dating, right? I've never used Tinder.
I'm not saying anybody else has on this call, but you're finally getting the appropriate swipe. I don't know which way it is, but people are starting to notice me. That's how we feel sometimes. We've been screaming this for so long, it feels like. It has been, right? For four years we've been saying this thing. We're finally at a point now where people are listening and people are lining up as opposed to us having to go knock down the doors, which is pretty cool.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, it's a great place to be. So considering all of the success that you have had so far with this project, what advice would you give to other career services leaders who want to launch something similar or who just in general want to help their institutions reach high level goals around experiential learning?
Rhonda Gifford:
Meredith, I mean, I'm not sure I feel qualified to answer this because we're so early in this and some days you feel like you're building the plane as you're flying it. But I think the things that have worked so well for us with anything we do is to have what Josh has dubbed as a listening tour when you start out by setting meetings with stakeholders from academic affairs, student affairs, all the different divisions that may benefit from this.
First of all, Meaghan and I have had a lot of fun learning about initiatives happening across our three PennWest campuses that we may not have been aware of. With integration comes all new people that you haven't met before. So learning about these initiatives and doing that listening tour I think is so important to learn and then create that buy-in. And then we've tried to build based on what the strengths and the needs of PennWest are.
So just thinking about the strengths and needs of your own organization, which can be very different. But last but not least, I would say... And we give a shout out to Nazareth University. I've loved what they're doing for a long, long time. So shout out to Emily. Emily, thanks so much. It's just been wonderful to meet with others.
We've met with professionals from Nazareth, of course, University of Florida, University of South Florida, so many universities to talk about what they're doing and we've learned from each of them. So we're so appreciative of that sharing environment among career center professionals and the ability to learn from what they've done and what they've experienced too.
Meaghan Clister:
I think that helps with our profession is that it's a leg up on some of the other professions. It's just, "Here's my form. Just change it to what you need. Here's this idea. Make it work for your school." It's so giving of ideas and advice that it just helps you to make it right for your university or your institution, regardless of the size or what's going on. So that's really the cool thing about being in this field.
Josh Domitrovich:
The advice I would give in addition to all this would be really trying to understand what your institutional priorities are, what your divisional priorities are. I mean, most of the time, most offices know what your own department or office priorities are, but what's going on above you and/or beside you that you can make these connections to support others. And I think the more you think about that, the more you're intentional with that, oftentimes the more support comes with that or ally building, we'll say, comes with that, which can lead to many different things.
So I think it's understanding priorities. Timing has a lot to do with it. Go with the goers, who's supportive, who isn't supportive, trying to align yourself appropriately, which has been what Rhonda and Meaghan have done for a very long time to show proof of concept, which is brilliant. And then as I mentioned, there are going to be signals flashing to everybody at your own institution, which makes us different, but most of them are similar. We're all experiencing similar things.
It's just where are you positionally to be able to make some of these decisions or who do you need to be able to convince to be able to help make the decision? So it comes back to priorities, in my opinion. It's wonderful that our team has the thinkers and the doers and the people all in between. And I think that's what you see here is Rhonda and Meaghan have such brilliant conceptual thinking minds and it's sometimes hard for me to get there.
But what I feel like where I'm okay with is how do I connect the dots to all the other stuff that's going on outside of us? And it works really, really well for us and we can lean on each other to do that. So I think the right people on the bus is really important and trying to advocate for that at your institution to see how that can help propel you forward. That would be the advice I would give.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. To continue our plane metaphor, you need the right people on your plane as you're building it while flying.
Josh Domitrovich:
There it is. Yep. Thank you.
Meredith Metsker:
That's great. Well, is there anything else you would like to add before I start to wrap us up?
Rhonda Gifford:
Josh, you got your ear back in?
Meredith Metsker:
You lost an AirPod.
Josh Domitrovich:
Lost an AirPod. Let's talk about that. We're so excited.
Rhonda Gifford:
Not that I can think of. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground. So thank you, Meredith, for leading us.
Josh Domitrovich:
The only thing that I would say is take a look at the website. Rhonda had mentioned it, career.pennwest.edu/elc. See if it helps gain inspiration for you. I think Rhonda and Meaghan had mentioned many, many times there, we didn't necessarily create this. We recreated it that worked for us and our own creation and our own thinking. And you can use that too, just to be able to see how that might support you in the way that you're thinking how to do this. So feel free to take a look and provide any feedback that you'd like or suggestions.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. And for anyone watching or listening, I'll be sure to include a link to the Career Center's website for the Experiential Learning Center in the show notes so you can go and check that out for yourself. Okay. If people would like to connect with you or learn more from any of you, where is a good place to do that?
Josh Domitrovich:
I am on LinkedIn. You're welcome to connect there. I'm also part of the Career Everywhere community. You're more than welcome to send a message there, or email. Any of the above works for me.
Meredith Metsker:
Cool. Rhonda, how about you?
Rhonda Gifford:
Same for me. My LinkedIn is just linkedin.com/in/RhondaGifford. So feel free to connect.
Meaghan Clister:
Same. I'm on LinkedIn or email. It's just my last name at pennwest.edu and happy to chat.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay, great. And I'll include links to all of those resources in the show notes so folks can reach out to you if they would like to learn more. All right. So now I would like to move into our closing segment, this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I'll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you will leave a question for the next guest.
So our last guest was Jeremy Schifeling of The Job Insiders, and he left this question for you. Imagine that you are leaving a time capsule from right now in 2025. What would you put into it today to help a career coach in 2125 understand our wacky world?
Josh Domitrovich:
Such a Jeremy question.
Meredith Metsker:
It is.
Rhonda Gifford:
I know.
Meredith Metsker:
It really is.
Josh Domitrovich:
It is so Jeremy.
Rhonda Gifford:
So Josh and Meaghan and I were talking about this, and it brought to mind a coaster that I bought during the pandemic. And it says, "If you think it's bad now, in 20 years this country will be run by people homeschooled by day drinkers." And it has a picture of a little school girl with a ponytail flipped over with her head on the desk. And for me, it brought to mind, we've been through so many changes in higher ed.
And whether it's for us, integration, just a change in how we do things, sometimes a complete change, which can lead to burnout. So I think it has been so important for all of us to use humor as a coping mechanism for that. Do more with less, constant change, culture, and balancing mental health, having an awareness for our own mental health. So I would leave that coaster in the time capsule, Jeremy.
Meredith Metsker:
Love it. Love it. I'm sure the career coach who opens it will get a chuckle out of that.
Meaghan Clister:
I was thinking that I would leave pictures of our office space and the way we promote things. Looking back from the '50s, you'll see job boards for men or things about women's weight promoting their careers. So I would love to see their take on the way we work, because I'm sure it would be very different of what that looks like and what it means to be at work.
And I also probably would put in about the theories will stay the same, but the technology will change, but it's still the way you relate to a student. It's still the way you would talk to a student and meet them where they are and still showing your value to your administration. So anything we add about those two things, because I think those things probably will always be the same.
Josh Domitrovich:
Yeah. The two things that I would add, the first would be probably the NACE 8 competencies, because I would love to see if the same focus is in the future as it is now. Do those change? Do they become more important? That would be interesting to be able to see given probably the advance in technology that will be there and how important those skills are during that time.
The other thing that I think I would add would be similar to what Meaghan was saying, pictures or perhaps a report of what were critical metrics that we were being evaluated on. Now it just feels like the awakening of career readiness and career as a priority. Well, they look back at us and laugh and is like, "Why weren't you doing that the entire time? It seems so simple."
It would be interesting. The big focus is on enrollment, retention, and outcomes, and career preparation, career readiness. Duh. It would be interesting to see what that looks like then. So just maybe some, not to surprise anybody who knows me, some data, some report. Hey, here is what we were focused on at that point. Curious if that changes for them. That's what I would add.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. I feel like that's a good variety of objects you would leave in the time capsule between the coaster, the pictures, and Josh's data and reports. I feel like I would also want to put in pictures of today's, I don't know, business casual or business professional wear. How does that change 100 years into the future?
Josh Domitrovich:
Good point.
Meredith Metsker:
Be interesting.
Josh Domitrovich:
That's good.
Meredith Metsker:
All right. Well, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?
Rhonda Gifford:
Would you like me to share mine, Josh and Meaghan?
Josh Domitrovich:
Please do.
Rhonda Gifford:
So I would leave this question. If you could instantly master any skill, so could be juggling, could be speaking a new language, could be AI prompting, what would you choose and why?
Meredith Metsker:
Oh, that's a good one. Do you know what you would choose, Rhonda?
Rhonda Gifford:
Oh my gosh, you've put me on the spot. Do you know what? I have single-sided deafness, so I've always wanted to learn sign language. And if I could instantly learn that, I think I would love that. I thought of doing something with that in the future with sign language. So that would be it for me.
Meredith Metsker:
That's a good one. Is it like maybe this is just because I'm still a relatively new parent, but I'm like, the skill that I wish I could master is sleeping anywhere under any circumstance at any time.
Rhonda Gifford:
Meredith, I can share some tips.
Meredith Metsker:
Yes, please.
Rhonda Gifford:
My husband jokes with me the phrase, someone who can go from zero to 60, I can go from 60 to zero in an instant.
Meredith Metsker:
Beautiful.
Rhonda Gifford:
So let's talk.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I will take all of your tips.
Josh Domitrovich:
That's great.
Meredith Metsker:
I'm curious, Josh and Meaghan, would you have any answers to the question Rhonda posed? It's fine if you don't, but I always like to turn it around just to see if people have answers.
Josh Domitrovich:
What I would say, I feel like I'm a theme here, judging myself before I say these things out loud.
Meredith Metsker:
Data?
Josh Domitrovich:
Yeah. Yep. Surprise! Slight twist to that. I would say I would love to learn the skill of stock trading. I'd be able to master that and I wouldn't be here. Make a lot of money and then make some donations back to all of you.
Meredith Metsker:
Live on your island off in the Caribbean.
Josh Domitrovich:
So that would be probably the skill I would love to learn.
Meaghan Clister:
I think for me, I've just taken out of work and looking at the rest of your life is I love to bake and I wish I was a more decorative baker. So I would love to be able to create beautiful as well as tasty things. So that's what I would do.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. Those are all great. Well, thank you very much for leaving that great question, and just thank you in general for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. I really enjoyed this conversation. It's a great mix of that high level strategy and reading the signals you're getting from leadership and also just the nitty-gritty part of making a big initiative like the Experiential Learning Center a reality. So thank you again for taking the time to share your knowledge and your experience.
Josh Domitrovich:
Thank you, Meredith.
Rhonda Gifford:
Thank you, Meredith.
Meaghan Clister:
Thank you.