Meredith Metsker:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I'm your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I'm joined by Dr. Dave Merry. He's the associate provost and executive director of the Center for Career Equity Development and Success at Suffolk University in Boston. Thank you for being here, Dave.
Dave Merry:
Thanks so much for having me.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I'm really glad to have you, and I am excited to talk to you today about a very important topic, and that's career equity. I know that's a huge focus and passion for your team, and you all have been doing some innovative things to improve career equity for your students, and even for students at other institutions through your annual career equity conference, which I know we'll talk about more here in a bit. But before I get into my questions, Dave, is there anything else you'd like to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at Suffolk?
Dave Merry:
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here at Suffolk. I always say this is my dream job. When people say, "How's work going?" I say, "I'm at my dream job." And so, that's how I start every day. My role is relatively new. Four years ago I was hired at Suffolk as part of the strategic plan, the 2025 strategic plan. So, Suffolk University, in their plan, put career readiness at the heart of its academic mission, and that's the line that sold me and a line that I've been able to use. I should get it tattooed somewhere, I say, "Career readiness is at the heart of Suffolk's academic mission."
And so, since that time, the university has really invested in the career center, both in terms of our personnel going from a team of five incredibly dedicated workers, but not enough, to a team of 25. And then also physical location-wise, we are located in a phenomenally visible spot in downtown Boston, and space at Suffolk is more important than personnel sometimes, it is gold in a downtown campus. And so, we've been really supported by the university, and so I feel lucky to be in this position.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, it sounds great. And if I'm recalling correctly, you all just opened your physical space, or at least a physical space pretty recently, right in the heart of downtown?
Dave Merry:
That's right. Yeah, we are on the first floor of 73 Tremont, which is one of our main academic buildings. It had been a Citizen's Bank, and for the year leading up to us moving in I was casing the joint, and I think I'm on a list somewhere for peeking into a bank too often and planning out where I was going to put my office. But no, it's on the first floor right between Park Street and Downtown Crossing and the Common, and so talk about Career Everywhere. People are walking, they're commuting to Mass General Hospital, or the financial district, or the arts district every day, every morning. So, students walk out of their classrooms or out of the career center, and they're in downtown Boston getting out of the way of somebody who's between meetings.
And so, that means that where we're located, students see us regularly when they walk by the windows, but so do employers and alumni. We have a regular influx of people coming through our center pretty casually. We have free coffee, which I always say coffee is the new pizza, but so our location is really central to the way we're able to reach students.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's great. Like you said, that does really embody the Career Everywhere element, because not only is it central to all of your other academic spaces, but it's central to the hub of Boston.
Dave Merry:
That's right. We say pretty often, "Boston is our classroom," and it's really true. I think we are right in the thick of it, and there's an experience of being downtown Boston that you can't really replicate. So, we take advantage of it.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, next time I'm in Boston I'll have to stop by.
Dave Merry:
Please do.
Meredith Metsker:
All right. Well, before I get into my more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with the question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that's what does Career Everywhere mean to you?
Dave Merry:
I think, and having talked to a lot of my colleagues, some of whom have been on the show, I have a relatively similar understanding of Career Everywhere, in that career is everyone's job on campus. We know that somewhere between 90 and 100% of students go to college to improve their career prospects after graduation. Whether they know what that means or not, that's why they're there if we ask them. And so, that has to be our key metric. And so, that needs to be everyone's job, from the career center, but also the faculty, the staff, the people thinking about space design and programming. Everyone needs to think about how is this improving students' ability to secure a meaningful job after graduation? When we think about financial aid, when we think about alumni support, how are we supporting social mobility of our students after graduation? And I feel so fortunate at Suffolk that that was the conversation before I came here, and has increasingly become the conversation over time.
So, it means that it's everyone's job, but I also think that it means for students, they're encountering this idea of career in all of their experiences. So, when I speak to faculty and they say, "Hey, we're bringing an employer in to bring a case study," or, "Can you help students process that in terms of their career development?" When I talk to our student affairs staff here and they say, "Dave, can you tell us more about the NACE competencies? We've been talking about them for years, what can you share with us?" That means that there's a culture here of people really thinking about how does my work support careers? And students are hearing that over and over again.
Meredith Metsker:
Wow, that's amazing that that is so ingrained in the culture there at Suffolk, from the top down it sounds like.
Dave Merry:
Absolutely. And like you said, from the top down, the president has been very vocal in her support of our work, but also has been very good about not making it the career center's work, but saying the career center is at the heart in some ways in supporting the university's work around career readiness, which I think is an important distinction to make if we're talking about Career Everywhere.
Meredith Metsker:
Yes, absolutely. It's like we've talked about on this podcast many times before, it's about engaging the entire ecosystem, on campus and off.
Dave Merry:
That's exactly right, yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
And it sounds like you guys have got that figured out. So, that's great.
Dave Merry:
Well, we have parts of it, and we're by no means perfect, but I feel, like I said, the reason it's my dream job is that I'm coming into a place that wanted to do some growth in this area, that knew that they were doing some things right but knew where they could grow. When you say the word ecosystem, I think that suggests some areas where we could improve. So, we have lots of individuals who have this as part of their mission, and so now we're thinking, "How can we make that a web? How can we have that be a cohesive experience for students, where if you're talking about your career plan in your first year seminar, that career plan might live on into your advising with your career advisor, your faculty advisor?" Or the conversations you have with the club and organization leader might be part of your career portfolio. And so, I think it's that the word ecosystem suggests everybody, but also everybody interconnected, and I think that's where we can do some more work. And I see lots of possibilities.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, sounds like there's lots of exciting stuff on the horizon for you all, and I think that's a good segue into our topic today, which is again, how you all are working to improve career equity there at Suffolk. And just to get us started and just give some context for this conversation, can you share how you define career equity? What does that mean to your team?
Dave Merry:
We define career readiness as ensuring that every student has equitable, and that doesn't mean equal, it means equitable, access to career preparation from our center and from the university. And it also means that, when we're looking at our employer partnerships, we're working with employers that share that mission. So, not just we want to hire a diverse workforce or we want to bring in a diverse applicant pool, but companies that say, "We have a mission to hire, retain, promote, sustain, and grow our population of employees of color, women in traditionally male fields," we want to look at that mission and support those organizations. At the same time, an organization that maybe hasn't made that step yet, how can we help them to make that step?
So, when somebody comes to Suffolk and says, "Help us recruit students of color on your campus," we say, "Hang on one sec. How are you going to support those students? Let's talk about that first." And it becomes a great partnership then with that organization as we build out that language.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I know we'll talk about some of those specific that you're doing here in just a little bit, but thank you, I think that provides some good context just so we all know what career equity means. So, your team has poured a lot of resources into improving career equity, including hiring a director of career equity, which again, we'll talk about here in just a little bit. But in your mind, why is this such an important issue to address, especially from a career services perspective?
Dave Merry:
I think we know, certainly at every university and at Suffolk specifically, we know that some of our students are going to face more systemic bias in the workplace than others. It's just a fact. And Suffolk University started with an equity mission. So Leland Archer, back in the day, I should know, the year by heart, Suffolk was started as a law school for people who were not admitted into traditional law schools. So for immigrants, people who are working during the day, it was how do we provide access to people who don't have it currently? And so, that mission is really strong in our foundation, and we think about how do we provide access to the institution now to Boston Public School students, or students of color, or students who are eligible and may not be able to afford a different education, how do we provide that opportunity?
I think it's important to then recognize that it can't just be the opportunity to come to college and then accrue debt, it has to be the opportunity to come to college and to be able to economically improve your situation afterwards. And that's the expectation on the promise. And so, career equity means that we know that some students are coming in with a network who can support them in finding that internship, who can encourage them to take advantage of a career center, who know what a resume looks like and have one themselves. And some students are coming in the first in their family to ever go down this path. And so, what don't they know they don't know, and how can we be more explicit about that, that we might not have been otherwise? And so, I think as most people know, I think there's that image of the three people looking at a baseball game, and a fence, and the boxes, and I think people are familiar with equity.
It means not everyone has the same, but everyone has what they need. We try to really question how can we target and tailor our resources in a way that, to some, and sometimes feels like we are providing more resources to some students? And that's because we are, we recognize that some students need more support or need different support, and that's part of what career equity is. Understanding that and then acting on it, and not saying, "We'll just do more generally," because when we do things generally we support a general, usually majority identity population, but when we call out specific groups and we say, "We're having a focus group for students of color, or working with Latino students in their student organizations, or we are having a women in technology fair, or event," when people see their identities called out, they know that we are specifically named and specifically targeted.
And when we work with people on campus who are already allies, when we have a strong connection with our Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, or with those student organizations on campus, that's when we start to make inroads with populations that weren't already using the career center at the same levels as their peers.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that's great. That makes a ton of sense. And you mentioned acting on these improvements for career equity. So on that note, here's the big question. How is your team working to improve career equity?
Dave Merry:
I think one of the biggest things, and again, this will not be surprising to many people, it is, it's looking at data I think is an important piece. So when I came into the center, and this is no one's fault, and I think a lot of different places are like this, I say, "Well, career equity, how many students of color are on campus? How many first-generation students are on campus?" And we had numbers like, "A lot, 20%." And I was like, "What's the exact number based on the best data we have?" And then, we started to disaggregate our engagement around that. So to say, where do we have greater or less than median engagement? So, are we equitably working with these different populations? Our veteran students, again, we oftentimes think about our international students as being those who might need some specific career support. What's our engagement like there?
When we break those numbers down, it's easier to see some of the low points and to see what's successful. So, disaggregating the data as much as possible. How many filters can we put on, not just African American and Black students, but by gender, and seeing that, wow, our Black men on campus are really under engaged in our appointments. How can we actively shore that up? Because we know from literature, and practice, and research that not only does everyone benefit from having someone reaching out to them for career support, but specifically students of color and under underrepresented students disproportionately benefit from having those supports, and having that resource. And so, making those extra efforts then to provide programming that's targeted. So, some of that unique programming, and there are many, and oftentimes it's just a conversation, how can we partner with the Black Student Union, or how can we partner with our VP of DEI on campus to more actively promote our events and target those?
Sometimes it's specific events. We have a cohort series called Activate Your Career Plan, which is specifically targeted to, one cohort is for first generation students, and one is for international students. And so, by calling out populations, bringing them in, and having them talk about shared experiences, we can create a safe space to say, again, this is a question that's something I hear often, "I didn't really know what a resume was. I was embarrassed to ask, I kept looking at it online. I called it a resume. I didn't know." These are some of the things that we hear when people come together and say, "I was afraid to ask this because I thought everyone knew." And for international students, we know that that's a population that sometimes is self-informing. And so, "Well, we all thought this because we were hearing this from each other." And so, when we can reach a cohort of those students and say, "Let's talk about that together," we can provide some differentiated services there.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. So yeah, it sounds like it really started with evaluating the data, looking at the numbers, seeing what the stories were there, and then coming up with some strategies and programming to address any gaps that you had. I am curious, I know you mentioned earlier that a big part of your work involves partnering with employers. Can you talk to me about what that partnership, that education looks like in terms of career equity?
Dave Merry:
Yeah, so we wear on our sleeve, when we're doing employee development, that this is part of our mission. I think that's one of the benefits of having equity in our center's name. That was actually a battle that we had to fight early on, not battle, a conversation we had to have early on with the president and other equity oriented folks on campus to say, "Are you putting that in your name as a marker or as a real value?" And so by saying, "We're the Center for Career Equity Development and Success," that's an automatic ping to employers that this is something that's a value that we're going to talk about. This is something you won't be surprised when we bring this up. So, in our onboarding with new employers, or in our evaluation of existing employer partners, we oftentimes ask questions.
And we have a rubric that our director for career equity has helped us to identify around the makeup of your C-suite, if that's an appropriate question, or the career trajectories of employees of color, the retention of, our employee resource groups on campus, or what are your policies around non-discrimination? What's your just mission and core mission as an institution around equity? I'd say that's probably the first question. What's more important sometimes is how is that lived out in your C-suite, in your retention, in your actions in your organization? So, by asking those questions, oftentimes we find that, again, the recruiters that we work with, no career center is calling the president of Fidelity and saying, "Hey, we'd love to hire. We're working with recruiters."
They sometimes say, "I don't know, I have no idea. That's a great question." And then it forms this great partnership where they then say, "Well, we've been able to find this out. We're going to try to offer this. Can you help us? How are other organizations doing this?" And we can put them contact with each other, we can provide them resources through our employer DEI toolkit. So, a really great resource, I have to give credit where credit is due, University of Colorado has a great employer DEI toolkit, and we saw that as a model and said, "Could we create something that's local for our employers here in Boston?" And so, it's a toolkit around exactly those topics, how to recruit and attract talent that is from different social identities, but also doing right by them as employees, not just doing it for a metric, but doing it as the right thing to do.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. And I believe you sent me a link to that toolkit-
Dave Merry:
That's right, yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
I think, in a prep call, so anyone who's watching or listening, I'll be sure to share a link to that so you can check that out, and know what we're talking about here, and maybe even make your own.
Dave Merry:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing I love about this podcast, and this community, and the groups I'm in is it's a very sharing group. So, if there's something that we've done that's working, we want to share it, and I'm certainly happy to give credit where credit's due on all the things that we've appropriated, or gotten great ideas from others on.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I love that about the career services community too, everyone is very willing to share their secret sauce, there's not this competitive element like, "I don't want their students to succeed as much as mine." That's not a thing.
Dave Merry:
That's right.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. So, I want to go back a little bit to the programming element. So, you were saying you've adjusted some of your student facing education and outreach. What are some examples of different types of programming you've launched recently to address career equity?
Dave Merry:
Yeah. So, we have those cohort programs where, again, we think that students oftentimes learn ... No event is going to teach any student or anybody what they need to know, no one event. And so, having something a little bit more longitudinal is great no matter what, and we want to target those for our students who we know we want to capture the attention of and who might benefit most. So our cohort programs, Activate Your Career Plan, are one of our biggest successes. Those partnerships happen with our Office of International Student Success and our first-generation student programs. So, that's a partnership already to get the buy-in, get the word in the street to those students. We have lots of individual programs around bringing alumni of color, so a Black men's panel of alumni who come and speak about their career journeys and the opportunities that they took advantage of. We have first-generation week, international student week for each of the months.
We have a heritage month event, so whether that be API month or disability awareness month, we bring in alumni, and employers, and organizations in the community that support employment opportunities for those populations. Not, again, as a social event, but really as a networking and learning event around here are the resources in the Boston area. And again, we're blessed to be at the corner of the Common to say, "Well, spin around in a circle and here are the organizations that are here to support hiring veterans, hiring women into technology." It's really our ability to form partnerships with people on campus who are already working with key populations, who already have the trust and best interests of some of those student populations that we needed to really earn the trust of those folks. How are we doing right by our students and not just being a nominal supporter of equity? And we have the receipts at this point, which is great. And so, we have those partners, and that's where a lot of the benefit comes, not from the work we do, but from the partnerships we've been able to make.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, and I hear that from a lot of career leaders on this podcast how important those partnerships are with other stakeholders, other departments, the folks who really have that expertise in a specific subject matter. So, that makes a ton of sense. You mentioned your director of career equity, that's a specific position that you hired, and I would love to hear more about that, who you hired, what the role entails, why you decided to open this position.
Dave Merry:
Definitely. So, I was given a really unique situation when I joined Suffolk in, first of all, in July of 2020, so I had not been to the-
Meredith Metsker:
What a time to change jobs.
Dave Merry:
It was really interesting. I interviewed on Zoom, and everybody was still learning Zoom. I interviewed in March of 2020, and never came on campus, even when I started, but my mandate from the 2025 strategic plan was to hire a team. But it didn't give a lot of structure, it gave something like it should be industry specific in some ways, there should be an arm that's looking like a career community's arm, there should be this and that. But then it was and here are some other lines, what are we going to do here? And again, in hearing more about the mission at Suffolk, learning more about the population and the goals of the institution, I said, "Somebody needs to wake up every day and think about this." It needs to be all of our work, but sometimes when something's everyone's job, it can be no one's job sometimes.
And so, who's going to wake up every day and say, "No, no, no, no, no, we need to reevaluate," or, "That's great, let's do more of that." And so, I built into one. We have a few directors in our team looking at different strands of work, whether it be our curriculum and education, or employer engagement and career communities. And on the education side, I built a role around career equity, and thought what that might look like. And when I shopped it around the university to say, "Here's what we're thinking about building, what do you think?" I heard from a number of people that, "That role needs to be a director."
And I said, "Great, thank you." And so, we're like, "Here's some more funding to elevate that role to be at a director level." Again, I was nervous to say, "What do you all think?" And they said, "Not only is that good, but you've under under-placed that position in your org chart, Dave." So, that was wonderful. And so, we were so fortunate to have amazing applicants, and Ade Igbineweka has been in that role since its inception. She joined us from UMass Boston, and has been a career educator in her previous roles, and with a real focus on equity and access. And so, in her role currently, she does do some advising certainly, but her main role is to support our center's efforts.
I always, and she always, makes it very clear that she is not the career advisor for students of color. And on her team, she has a associate director who works on our international student interests that is not the international student advisor. They advise international students, but they're supporting our entire office in terms of making sure we're educated, we're doing the work continuously. Once a month we have an equity and access team meeting where we explore an issue, whether it be about our own identities or around unemployment issues around identity, and we're consistently problematizing our work.
What are we doing in our work that still might not be inclusive? What are we doing in our work that still is not providing full support or outcomes to some of our students? So, that's the question that Ade keeps asking. And she also serves as our liaison to a number of key people on campus to keep those lines of communication open, but always then brings it back. So, if she's talking with somebody from the president's office around DEI, it's not that it's just Ade's face, she's saying, "Great, now come back and talk to this person and we'll get that going." So she really is, again, the person who wakes up every day and says, "How can we be better at our equity mission?"
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. And I loved your emphasis earlier, especially on the fact that it's not just her job. She's not the only one thinking about this, she's just the one who's guiding the strategy.
Dave Merry:
It's an extension of career, it's equity everywhere. I think it's, again, at Suffolk it's so easy to say, because I've never been at an institution that had to evaluate that. Many of them do, but everyday people are living it. And I speak to faculty, I speak to admissions folks, advancement folks, and more often than not someone will say, "Well, wait a minute. How will that impact this population in a true and earnest way?" And it makes my heart get big every time, because it's not just, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a stat. We need to improve the stat," but it's, "We know the story of Suffolk is the story of people who have not been included at the table, the story of social mobility." And so, everyone knows that and everyone lives that, which is great.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I love that. I imagine when it's so ingrained in the culture like that, that it makes it easier to attract people who buy into that, whether that's faculty, staff, leadership, things like that. Everyone just automatically buys in, which makes it easier to steer the ship in that direction.
Dave Merry:
It is, and I think one of the things that's been difficult, or one of the challenges we've had to get better at is for those folks for whom it's not second nature, we're lucky that that's few and far between, but when we are working with a faculty or an employer who says, "Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, equity, but are you helping white students? Are you just exclusively supporting these other students? Are you being so exclusive to the point that you're not supporting these other students?" What's our response to that? Because obviously the answer is no, but with a focus on equity, sometimes people can perceive that as being really targeted and specialized, but not supporting the entire population, which is of course not true.
But we had to think about our messaging around how to educate those folks. And again, been very lucky that it's not a frequent conversation, but it's one thing to act equitably and build it into your practice, and then another to explain that to others and to bring others into that conversation, because it's important. We can't just say, "This is what we're doing and deal with it," at a university. You have to say, "Here's what we're doing, here's why, and we'd love for you to understand it so you can help us with that."
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. On that note, I'm curious, what is your response when you have those conversations, just for other career leaders who, especially in certain states, who may have to have those conversations more frequently? I'm curious what your response is.
Dave Merry:
Yeah, I mean, it's different for different people depending on where they're coming from. I think sometimes it is just having somebody repeat what they just said. It really is. I think there's a knee-jerk reaction of, "I see all these events for students of color. What are you doing for white students?" It's like, "Tell me more about that." They can't. So, I think it is just problematizing it when you hear it's easier to, like uncle at Thanksgiving, like, "Oh, they're just going to say what they say, I'm not going to speak up right now," but it's our job to speak up right now and say, "Tell me more about what you mean there." So, that's one challenge is problematizing when we hear these things. Another piece is just bringing up the data. For a lot of faculty, it is proving to them that there is inequity in the workplace, which it's like proving to flat earthers at some point.
You're like, "You got to just know this somewhere." But to show some of the statistics around hiring bias, around name bias, around some of these implicit biases, around how folks change the criteria upon which they're making their decisions in hiring based on the gender of the applicant. You can always make it look really, really good on paper, but study after study has shown that men have an advantage in X interview opportunities. People with certain nationalities, or certain names, or certain backgrounds are subliminally excluded from processes and from conversations. Bringing the data about that and bringing the research is sometimes really important. I think it's not always about the numbers, it's about the outcomes, but most conversations is about the numbers for some folks to get invested. And then I think other times it is asking what it would look like to that person to say, "Well, what would it look like if we were supporting all students?"
Because again, that's what it is in actuality, equitable support is supporting everybody, and supporting those who need more support more. Again, we have our receipts, we have our data around our engagement and that we've been able to make it so that our engagement is pretty equal across IPEDS racial groups, IPEDS, genders, first-gen and non-first-gen. We have disproportionately high actually international student engagement. That's a population that because oftentimes when something is not a good service, the word gets out, and when something's a good service the word gets out. And so, we've done some good work supporting international students such that they're coming back, but it's not that it's not pie. It can seem like pie sometimes where there's only so much, but it doesn't mean that we're not supporting our white male students, and more so we are providing them more services.
When I think about majority identity students, myself being one, when I was in college I didn't know I had a race until I was problematized about that. And thinking about what does gender mean, I thought like, "Well, I got what I got. I worked really hard for it." And then for people to problematize that for me was a big part of my college experience to say, "You need to think about this." And so, when we're educating students now, how do we help the students, especially those who have those majority identities, think about, "Well, what is inequity in the workplace, and how might I be contributing to it unknowingly? And how might I support students, support my peers, my colleagues, to be more equitable as a coworker, as a leader in the field?" I think there's a lot of work to do, because oftentimes we put it on the shoulders of the people who are marginalized to fix the problem.
"Hey, let's have some more workshops for people who need support. Hey, let's do some more time, and more work, and more meetings that you have to have to overcome the systemic bias that you're facing." And so, that's part of it. Those resources need to be there, but a big part of the responsibility also is educating. Everybody brings something to the table, but specifically those who might have more privilege identities, what can you do to be more inclusive in the workplace such that we're not having this conversation as often in 10, 20 years when you're a leader in the workplace? I think a lot of the things that we face are people who have not really examined their own identities, because they didn't have to, and they think like, "Well, why do we have to think about this now?" It's because no one ever asked you about your race or your gender, because you're a white man.
And we want to have those conversations with students. We're very fortunate that students are incredibly receptive, when given the space they say, "Yes, tell me more about this. I want to learn about it," but we have to make that space.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that. I remember we talked about that in your prep call, and I think that's such a important emphasis there, that you can't just put this work on the shoulders of students, the underrepresented students, as if they don't have enough to worry about and going on. It's about educating, the, how did you refer to it? The majority represented?
Dave Merry:
Yeah, people with majority identities.
Meredith Metsker:
Majority identities.
Dave Merry:
Yeah, I tend to say white man because I can own that identity, and that stands for a lot of it. My husband and I certainly face certain different things in the field, in Boston maybe fewer than other places in the world. I do own sometimes that helps give me a perspective. I think about, well, in areas where sexual orientation comes up, how might I feel like this would be marginalizing me? But I certainly walk around as a white man most of the day. That's the identity I wear. And I think for a lot of people, they wear an identity that they don't think about, because it's a majority identity. It's the one the world was built for, and that's what we think about privilege, that's what that is.
And so, how do we, for everybody, but there are some key identities that we know play a big part, gender being a big one. Look at a wall of presidents and talk to me about gender equity. And so, how do we own that and talk about that? It wasn't because they were the best person for the job out of the whole country, it was because ... Let's talk about that, and what does that look like in the workplace today?
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, yeah. I think that's obviously super important, and I do remember in our prep call you mentioning that not only is that education on systemic bias the right thing to do, and helpful in terms of just addressing systemic bias as a whole, but it also gives those students an advantage in terms of going into the workforce. If I recall correctly, you were saying like employers, yeah, they want students who understand that, some of these nuances.
Dave Merry:
Yeah, I think that's right. And one of the things I find challenging in my role is that often I'm talking to students and my team, and at the heart of our work what's important to do, and I'm also talking to admissions, and employers, and presidents about look at our numbers. And so, both can be true, both things can be true. It can be the right ethical thing to do to teach everybody about how to create a better world, that can be the right, ethical thing to do. And in so doing, we're preparing students to answer these questions in an interview to say, "What does creating an inclusive workplace mean to you?" And for a student who's never thought about it, they might say, "I think, yeah, it's really important to be inclusive."
And they go, "Great, check." But somebody who's like, "Actually, I've thought about this. I know who I am, I know what I can do, I know what it looks like," that not only is an incredibly important skill, but it's a skill that a lot of people who are not newly entering the workforce lack. They know they lack it, they say like, "Oh, I know I should probably be working on this, but I don't even know where to start." To hire somebody who says, "I do," is incredibly gratifying too. And so, there's a lot of value there. It was the business case for diversity, it's the right thing to do, and also did you know your profit shares will go up if you ... And so, both things can be true. Just one is more meaningful to me, and the other is a nice byproduct of that.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Either way, benefiting students I guess is a win. Well, you've shared several of the things that you're doing to improve career equity, but I do want to touch on one more, which is your annual career equity conference. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, and why you started it?
Dave Merry:
Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think it's been such a great success. We had our first in 2023, second in '24, and it's Ade Igbineweka, our director of career equity, and I, realized of on the same one-on-one meeting, we were like, "Hey, I've been thinking about this." "Well, me too." And we said, "We should have a conference." And we had both been mulling over this idea, which was one of those funny, great minds or crazy minds think alike conversation. But we had felt like we were getting maybe to an insular place, where we were doing what we thought was best because we had been doing some good stuff. So, how do we bring more ideas and minds to the conversation? How do we create those connections that are so important? How do we raise this, the level of the conversation, the importance of the conversation to the level of not just a meeting, but something a little bit more systemic and lasting?
And for all those sorts of reasons, a conference is really the vehicle for that. I won't lie and say that it was a great opportunity for Suffolk to show off. This is something we're thinking about quite a bit, and that we think we have a lot of resources around. So, that was one thing that in my leadership role, I thought this is a good thing for our institution. But at the end of the day, it was good because we brought employers, we brought organizations, so nonprofit organizations that are thinking about specifically identity-specific employment issues, but just employment equity overall, and then other career center leaders from around the Boston region.
So, we brought all those folks together to say, "How can we improve our work here together?" And the actual hows that came out of that were wonderful, but the connections that came from there, I think were even more lasting to say, "We need to do more work together with this nonprofit," or, "We need to do more work together with this employer organization." And so, like any conference, one of the main values of it is who's in the room together, who's discussing this important topic together? And so, it's been one of the more visible manifestations of our equity mission.
Meredith Metsker:
Very cool. Yeah, for those watching or listening, I will include a link to more information about that conference so you can see what it's about, maybe see if it's something you want to replicate in your region. But yeah, that's really cool that you started that, and it sounds like it's been successful, at least in the first couple iterations.
Dave Merry:
It definitely has. Lots of things have been good, but when we ask, especially government officials, or local leaders, or even organization leaders, "Hey, would you like to attend, or sponsor, or be part of this conference?" It again, raises for some folks like, "Career equity. Oh, wait." And so, for some of our elected officials, they were like, "I'd like to be at that. What does that look like again?" And so, even just having it as an educational opportunity for folks, just even hearing about it. And so, it's been great to bring people in who maybe hadn't really thought about career equity much before, and to immerse them in a situation where everyone is talking about that, and talking about solutions.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, there you go. Career Everywhere in action, even with elected officials. That's great.
Dave Merry:
That's right.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. Well, before I move on, Dave, are there any other strategies or initiatives that you're doing to improve career equity that we haven't touched on yet?
Dave Merry:
I think that it's really important to know when it feels like you're being, what is it? The white knight. I think it's really easy for me to say, "We're going to talk about career equity." And unless there wasn't an awkward picture of my husband and I behind me in the picture, let's say that one identity is off the table. Like, "Sure, Dave, talk about equity." And for my team of mostly women of whom I am the leader, "Talk about that gender gap, Dave, that's a good idea." And so, to know who sometimes is the right messenger for those conversations, and also to know what is our goal, how we're being perceived. So, it's really important for us to not be the equity champion saviors to come in and say, "We're going to fix things for that population." I think everyone knows what that feels like when it's done wrong, but it's really easy to slip into that mold when you say, "We're going to focus on career equity."
And so, partnering with our partners on campus, but also having a really good bead on the students who are in leadership roles, thinking about identity groups. So, thinking about who's the president of the Black Student Union, who is the president of the First-Generation Association on campus, or the Veterans Association, and speaking with them, because those are people who have elected to be in a role where they're speaking a bit for their identity. I think it's a big miss to have a panel of students of color and say, "Well, what do students of color need?" That's again, marginalizing and asking people to speak for their whole identity. But when a student organization has come together and said, "This is somebody who leads us," that's a good person that say, "Well, we want to know more. What can we be doing? What is a barrier right now for you?"
And those conversations have been incredibly fruitful, even when originally for some of them it was incredibly maybe fractious to say, "This is the first time we've heard from you, career center, where have you been?" And yep, that was us. It wasn't helpful at that point to say, "Well, we're all new people now. Sorry." You have to say, "You're right. That's exactly right." And then also to own that and say, "Well, what can we be doing differently now?" And that has yielded some of our best success. Because again, it's about your programming, it's about your numbers and your data, but it's really about the trust that you build with the people you want to serve. And so, that's helped us build that trust.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that's a really, really important element to all of this work, and something to keep in mind for our viewers and listeners here on the podcast. I am curious, when it comes to improving career equity, how does your team measure success?
Dave Merry:
That's a great question, and I would love more data. My team's always saying, "I want more data," and I think, "What more could we get?" But I want it too. So, we measure success, we have leading and lagging measures. Some of our leading measures are our engagement stats. I think like any career center, we don't want to wait until the final exam of finding a job to be like, "How did we do?" And so, we have certain metrics like internship engagement, which again, we're trying to get better at measuring. That's still a little bit scattered across faculty departments. Internship engagement, engagement with our resources and our programming in the center, we also utilize skill survey, and we're thinking about other ways that we measure students' career readiness in terms of the NACE competencies, and we can disaggregate that around identity and population as well.
So, are we supporting students equally in building up those key competencies? So, the more that we're able to disaggregate these key points of data, we can see ah, there are fewer first-gen students doing internships. I think we can all make a lot of assumptions about why that might be, they might not have a lot of saying, "Yeah, get on that right now." So, that helps us inform our practice. So, that's continuously whenever we can have a breakdown or a slicer at an Excel table that says, "As best as we can do IPEDS race," that's a really terrible category, but it gives us some information. Or first-gen or gender, where do we see those gaps? The other one's in outcomes, and this is where I have a hard time, because the number, like 97%, 98% of students have a job.
That's great, and we need to put that everywhere, because that's what every other school's publishing. But what quality of job? What income, what confidence did the student have in getting that job? How much of them getting that was because of our efforts, or in spite of our efforts? There are lots of questions that it's really hard to get data on that would help inform us about are we doing that work? We have seen improvements in time to job for different populations, so where a peak of when a certain population would get a job might've been nine months, now it's six months, and can we pull that back even more?
Salary isn't a perfect gauge, but it's something that in general it would be nice to see going up. And so, we measure that disaggregated and also with inflation as a factor. So, I think all those things, anytime you can pull the data apart and say, "Of course we need to publish 98." Unless all of us take a step back and try to be more honest together, we can't stop that, but we can't rest on that laurel, and we need to really say, like any good scientist, "Where's the problem? Let me try to disprove this. Let me try to disprove where can we still do some work?" And when we do that, we see some of the gaps in, whether it be job related to career goals. "I have a job, and maybe even the salary is good, but it's not really what I wanted." Or it's, "I got it by accident, not because the career center helped me." The more we can learn about that, I think that's a better measure of our true success.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it makes me smile a little bit that we started this conversation with data and we're ending the conversation with data.
Dave Merry:
It's such a dry thing, but I think with something as important, but also you have to be a little bit dispassionate about, a little bit dispassionate about this to see the reality. Because I think if you're not dispassionate, you can think the problem's bigger than it is, maybe. You might think you might where the problem is based on your gut of here's what X population needs, but until you talk to folks and look at the data, you have no idea. It's based on your gut. Let's say it's just as problematic as someone saying, "Well, I think you're really only serving students of color because of your mission." Well, let's look at the numbers. And so, it always does come back to that, I think.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Your mention of data reminded me of one other strategy that we forgot to talk about in terms of addressing career equity, but I believe you all use labor market data as a way to address career equity. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dave Merry:
Yeah, yeah. So a really important, I think trend in the field of career services is, and it's been for a while now, is moving away from, "Well, what's your passion? What do you really want to do? What's your passion job?" Which is such an unhelpful question, now that we all think of it. We have two young kids and my husband would say, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" To my kids. I was like, "Stop asking them that." What are you passionate about? Because I think it's more there are deeper questions. So, when we're looking at supporting students who maybe haven't been in an environment where they were told they could be lots of things, or maybe weren't given a lot of role modeling about what it looks like to have lots of career opportunities, making sure that they know the full spectrum of what's available to them.
So based on your values, your interests, your skills, you might think that you know exactly what you want to be, but based on the Labor Market Insights tool, or other things like that, and uConnect is an amazing interface for that, let's look at what's the career outcome look like for that? What's the salary look like for that? What does that mean over time for you? And what are other ways you could live out that skill, passion, mission and maybe have a different outcome in terms of your overall income, your overall career prospects? It's a tool that, not to help pigeonhole somebody or to dissuade them from taking a particular path, but to say, "You might not have known of these other paths. You might have these interests, but not know the wide array of ways that you could implement them in a job."
But we also feel like it's our responsibility to give you all the details around what's the future of that job hold for you economically, financially, job security wise, and that's what that tool has helped us to do. And I think of that as an equity tool, because not everybody has a background or a resource like that in just their personal experience, or the expectations that they're coming to college with. And so, we're still wrapping our heads around that, around telling a student, "You might think you know what you want to do, we all might think we know what want to do, but it never hurts to have more information to really examine that, and to think about other options, and to think about the future of those options."
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, absolutely. I love that element of the Labor Market Insights tool, is the job market projections, the demand for this particular position, estimated compensation over the future, what skills are in demand? It's really good information to have.
Dave Merry:
It's really good. And again, our approach is never, "You want to do something that's low paid. Let's bring you to this tool so we can change your mind," but it's, "You have these interests. Let's really explore the full breadth of how you might deploy them." And I think students then are exposed to things, like, "I didn't know we had market projection for this into the future." Like, "Oh no, we do," and then they're dug in. I think not only is it good information, but it's displayed in a way that people want to ... It's like when you learn your Zodiac sign and you want to find out more stuff about it, students see that, they go, "Oh, let me dig into that. Let me click that, let me drill down."
And it's engaging, and informative, which sounds like some pitch at the end, but it's both of those things. It's engaging because it's fun to look at, and students learn a ton from it that helps inform, not always change, which is great, it doesn't have to change their mind, but it supports or informs their decision.
Meredith Metsker:
Right, you want them to go in with their eyes wide open, regardless of what direction they choose.
Dave Merry:
Exactly, exactly.
Meredith Metsker:
Well, Dave, I know we're coming up against time here, so I'll start wrapping us up. But is there any other parting words of advice, or anything else you'd like to add on our topic today?
Dave Merry:
I think that as a center for career equity development and success that has a career equity conference and a director of career equity, it can feel like, it can seem ... I certainly would never want it to seem like we've figured everything out. What I hope it means is that we continue to ask ourselves these questions about how to do better. And certainly there are things we have not figured out by the nature of the topic and the issue. And so, I would never want a school to think, "Suffolk has this wrapped up altogether." And I would never want a school to think, "Well, we haven't done anything with this." Because I think every institution, whether you put it in your name, or it's explicitly in your mission, or you have a director or numbers, every institution is thinking about this. And so, I would never want it to be like, "We're the first on the block to think about equity," and that's certainly not the case. And so, there are lots of ways to learn from other schools around, and lots of things that we still have to learn too.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, well said. And on that note, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where's a good place for them to do that?
Dave Merry:
Yeah, so I would love to. Either email me at dmerry@suffolk.edu, but also our website. We try to make it very forward focusing on our equity mission, so just the career center website in the show notes description. It's a great place to find our links to our conference, links to our employer equity toolkit. Some of the other ways that we think about equity are our student stories, where we're representing an array of student identities, student job paths, and so we have our career chronicles on there. And so, a way to see the different ways that we try to showcase our equity mission to external audiences, that's a great place for that.
Meredith Metsker:
Cool. All right. Now, for the final thing, I like to end every interview with 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'll leave a question for the next guest. So, our last guest is someone you know, Gerald Tang from Bridgewater State University, and he left the following question for you. "If you could write a humorous memoir about your career experience, what would the title be, and what would be the funniest part or funniest chapter?"
Dave Merry:
Yeah. First of all, Gerald Tang is phenomenal, and talking about giving back, he hosted everyone in the region over at his university, all the career center directors. He said, "Come on down, we'll give you a lunch and we'll just share all our resources together." And so, Gerald's fantastic. A big shout-out to him. Yeah, so I thought about this. I was going to say something like The Boy Who Said Yes Too much, and there's something about that phrase made me think about Willy Wonka. Have you ever heard the story about the boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? No, he lived happily ever after. I'm like, "That's how I feel." Early in the pandemic I remember talking to my husband and saying, "I wish I had a job like this. I don't know what that's ever going to be there."
And then, by the end of the pandemic I was in it, and just every day I wake up and pinch myself for that. So, that's my professional story. But right around that time is also the funniest chapter of what if they realized who they really hired? The imposter syndrome chapter. There are pictures around the internet of me when I had first gotten the job, again, mid-pandemic so I gave myself a haircut in the mirror, and my husband took a headshot of me, and I had grown my beard out, and I smiled very Dave Merry style. And he said, "You're an associate provost now." And so, I was like this.
And it was my imposter syndrome coming out in this awful picture of me, that represents everything I thought I had to be, to be in this role. And it turns out that everything that I am, everything that any of us are is why we're supposed to be, we don't have to fit a mold. And so, the more I tried to be that, the less successful I was. And so, that was a funny chapter of what if they find out that I'm a lovable goof in some ways? And they're like, "Well that's been a part of your success, so keep it up." So, yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that, that's great. What question would you like to leave for the next guest?
Dave Merry:
Gerald, you left such a good, funny question, and my question truly is one of those boring, career center-y questions. But I'm really struggling with that question that you asked around how do we measure success? And it can't just be placement rate anymore, and no one thinks it is. Again, I'm not the first kid on the block to figure this out, but it's hard to find that other metric that's not survey related, like if you don't get it on the first destination survey how do you know if students like their job? So, what is the real metric that's saying that we're doing the real work now? So, I'm curious how people are measuring success in their outcomes data, beyond just the placement rate, and any innovations that people see there.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay, that's a good question.
Dave Merry:
Thank you. It's not as funny, so sorry, Gerald. Yours was great.
Meredith Metsker:
That's all right, we've had a good mix throughout the podcast of the more serious ones. And yeah, the one I always reference, which is, is a hot dog a sandwich?
Dave Merry:
Which it absolutely is, I will die on that hill.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that was from Gene Ray at University of Oregon.
Dave Merry:
Oh, yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
And the funny thing was, was he was like, "I have a very serious question," and he's just totally deadpan. He's like, "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" I was like, "Oh my God."
Dave Merry:
See, these are the questions I should be asking, but at the end of the day, help me do my job better.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, there you go. Exactly.
Dave Merry:
How are you measuring outcomes? Yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
No, I think everyone will appreciate the answer to that. All right. Well Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today, this was a great discussion. I really appreciate you sharing high level how you think about things, the tangible things that you're doing, and just being willing to get vulnerable with all of us today. So, just thank you very much again for sharing your time.
Dave Merry:
Thank you so much, it was a pleasure.