How the faculty at Florida Atlantic University plays a critical role in the career services ecosystem
Florida Atlantic’s latest career-centered innovation — the Industry to Campus Lab — enables professors to collaborate with local and regional businesses to provide students with more life-changing opportunities.
From the moment Florida Atlantic University students enroll until after they graduate, the university’s Career Center provides them with life-changing opportunities.
A national leader in social mobility, Florida Atlantic is using its Career Center to help create generational change at a university where more than one-third of students are first-generation and about 40% are eligible for Pell Grants. According to a 2022 internal study, 83% of Florida Atlantic’s low-income students secured first jobs immediately after college that moved them up at least one full income bracket.
The Career Center has won national awards for its outstanding and innovative work for improving student outcomes. Its leader, Brian Montalvo, assistant vice president of career services, was named Outstanding Career Practitioner in 2021 by the National Career Development Association.
One thing that makes Florida Atlantic’s career services distinctive is its emphasis on empowering faculty members to promote career readiness among their students. Its latest innovation, the Industry to Campus Lab, brings together Florida Atlantic professors and leaders from nearby Fortune 500 corporations and other local companies to collaborate on the business of educating students.
“It’s not just Career Center staff members out there with banners making this work,” Montalvo said. “It’s our Division of Student Affairs making career services into a pillar. It’s FAU saying it wants to be a career-centric institution. And it’s everyone — administration, staff and faculty — putting in the time, energy and resources to make that happen.”
Guiding students to careers
By the numbers, here’s a glimpse at the Career Center that serves a public university of 30,000 students across six campuses along Florida’s southeastern coast:
- It employs 21 full-time staff members — all of whom hold national certifications — based at three main offices and seven additional satellite locations.
- The Career Center brings more than 900 unique companies to campus each year and works with more than 6,000 active employers.
- Ninety-seven percent of incoming students participate in Kick Off Your Future, an award-winning virtual Canvas module developed by the Career Center that gives learners earning potential by their major, tells them the top skills employers are seeking, and helps them build a professional resume and learn about individualized career action plans.
- After this initial contact, more than 80% of Florida Atlantic’s undergraduates engage with the Career Center by using its virtual platform, attending career workshops or job fairs or meeting one-on-one with a career coach.
This intensive approach to career services is a foundational piece of Florida Atlantic’s efforts to help graduates experience social mobility by becoming employed in meaningful careers. The key, Montalvo said, is to engage with students early, often and in a worthwhile way.
“They journey with us from day one until they graduate,” Montalvo said. “We believe that someone shouldn’t wait to find themselves. Instead, they should intentionally work toward creating themselves. There’s a lot that has to happen between their first and last year in college to give them that competitive advantage in the world of work.”
A key partnership
To extend the Career Center’s reach and effectiveness, Florida Atlantic has enlisted faculty members, who have rapport and credibility with students because they’re in constant contact with them.
“The Career Center can’t service all 30,000 students, but we can get all 30,000 students good career information,” Montalvo said. “Faculty at times have to be that vehicle to carry that information for us. When a professor tells students this is important information, it helps establish the validity of what we’re trying to do, and the students buy in more quickly.”
The key was to approach faculty members in a way Montalvo called non-invasive. “We had to do it on their terms,” he said.
Brian Montalvo, assistant vice president of career services, and Jennifer Fabricius, director of college and faculty engagement.
Brian Montalvo, assistant vice president of career services, and Jennifer Fabricius, director of college and faculty engagement.
To build relationships, the Career Center started with simple requests: Could you list our upcoming career fair in your syllabus? Instead of canceling class because you’re attending a conference, could you let a staff member talk to your class about career readiness?
When faculty members responded positively, the Career Center pitched more options: Could you give an assignment that requires your students to use the Career Center? Could you give extra credit to students who attend career fairs? Would you be interested in assigning your students a Canvas module to help them write better resumes? And would you consider meeting one-on-one with the Career Center’s faculty engagement specialist to learn more about infusing your curriculum with career readiness?
“It was our way of saying, ‘We want to work with you on your terms. You tell us what you’re comfortable with,’” Montalvo said. “Most career services view themselves as a service operation for students and employers. We’ve made it clear that we also provide services to our faculty members in every college.”
In early 2023, Florida Atlantic created a director’s role to coordinate faculty outreach efforts. Over the past year, this new director has worked with the provost’s office to meet with every Florida Atlantic faculty member to introduce the Career Center, learn about their programs and offer to send a career coach to their classes to talk for five minutes about upcoming career fairs.
“What we’re doing is listening and learning how the faculty talk about careers,” said Jennifer Fabricius, the new director of college and faculty engagement. “Then we share information about the Career Center and try to pick out three things that can benefit their students.”
These presentations led to a spike in attendance at career fairs, and more faculty members are reaching out to the Career Center.
“Now they call us,” Fabricius said. “It’s really been a chain reaction of success from one conversation.”
The Industry to Campus Lab
Florida Atlantic’s latest career services innovation involving the faculty is called the Industry to Campus Lab.
The converted space in the Career Center — it formerly served as a waiting room for students about to do job interviews — now has whiteboards, flat screens and plenty of power strips for laptops and phones. The Industry to Campus Lab holds about 10 people. It is modeled after similar collaboration spaces often found in architectural firms and other businesses where people can come together and share ideas.
“We use it for congregating and having conversations and brainstorming sessions,” Montalvo said. “It’s a space where you can roll up your sleeves and get to work.”
Montalvo said the lab is intended to seem familiar to industry representatives and serve as a neutral space for faculty members, where they learn more about the job skills companies are seeking and how they can help prepare Florida Atlantic students for in-demand roles.
Recently, the Career Center connected chemistry faculty members with representatives from a large South Florida health care system. Chemistry professors wanted to know how their students could get internships at regional hospitals. The health care system was interested in hiring Florida Atlantic students. Professors and hospital officials used the Industry to Campus Lab to have robust discussions about the chemistry curriculum, skill gaps and health care careers.
“Our goal is to build a vibrant career ecosystem at Florida Atlantic and for the South Florida counties we serve, and it cannot be done by the Career Center alone,” Montalvo said. “The Career Center can be a thought leader, but we must have partners from our division, employers, workforce development organizations, local governments, state agencies and especially the Florida Atlantic faculty.
“The ecosystem is here. We want to strengthen it so it will continue to grow.”
This content is paid for and provided by Florida Atlantic University and developed by Inside Higher Ed's sponsored content team. The editorial staff of Inside Higher Ed had no role in its creation.
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