Intentional, Relationship-driven Approach to Integrated Career Learning Across the Entire Campus

What does it actually look like to build a career ecosystem at a small liberal arts college — and how do you bring faculty, staff, alumni, and students along for the ride? In this episode, Jeremy Podany sits down with Jen Guyer-Wood, Associate Vice President of Life Design and Innovation at Macalester College, to explore how a 2,000-student campus in St. Paul, Minnesota has spent the last three years intentionally weaving career learning into the fabric of student life. Jen shares how a newly launched strategic plan, a realignment of Student Affairs under Academic Affairs, and a culture of deep relationships created the perfect conditions for systemic change. From a first-year "Strengths in Action" course to a brand-new "Engage" general education requirement — ensuring every student completes an applied learning experience — Jen unpacks the specific moves her team has made to embed career learning where students already are, rather than waiting for them to walk through the career center door.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education podcast, where we explore the systemic changes colleges and universities are making to ensure every student receives the career learning they need to succeed. My name is Jeremy Padani. I'm the CEO and founder of the Career Leadership Collective, a consulting company dedicated to helping higher education transform their career ecosystems. Today I'm here with Jen Geyer Wood, Associate Vice President of Life Design and Innovation at McAllister College. Jen leads a uniquely integrated portfolio that brings together career readiness, life design, entrepreneurship and innovation, and faculty partnerships. McAllister College has been strategically building a career ecosystem in a liberal arts context over the past three years and has made significant strides. I'm also thrilled to know that they have over time bought over a hundred copies of my book, The Career Ecosystem Era in higher education to hand out to faculty, for their career staff, and other staff on campus. I'm excited for you to learn more about McAllister's journey and what other institutions can take away from their work. Jen, it's great to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Thank you, Jeremy. I'm so excited to be here. And yes, I have given your books out to just about everybody I know, and it's about time to make another order, which you'll be happy to hear. And I've known you and your work for just a number of years now, and it has such an had such an impact on what I do. And really, when you think about it, probably hundreds of thousands of students across the country. And so I'm just thrilled to be here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Thank you so much. It's really wonderful to have you. And I'm, you know, I mentioned you're you have this unique confluence of a portfolio at McAllister. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that and about the unique McAllister context.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Awesome. I'd be happy to. So I started working at McAllister three years ago this month, and I started as executive director of career exploration. Um, I was so grateful to be a part of a liberal arts campus, going back to a four-year campus, and our students are so intelligent and motivated. So that's what motivated me to come here. Um, if your listeners are unfamiliar with us, we are an undergraduate-only campus of about 2,000 or so students, and we're nestled in a beautiful urban setting in St. Paul, Minnesota. Our student, we're known for strong academics. Our students are super smart, but they're also very engaged and globally focused. We do a lot of innovative work and we have a real commitment to social impact and the common good. So part of what happened was I came into an already amazing team. We had a couple of great directors, our director of career advising and our employer engagement director. We had an amazing team. They were working tirelessly to support students. So I was lucky enough that I didn't have to come in and blow things up. I didn't have to come in and fix a bunch of problems or anything like that. And so that was really awesome. I really was charged with enhancing and aligning what we were currently doing to, you know, build a foundation for future transformation. So that was where I came in and it was super great. And then about a year after I came in, I had the awesome opportunity to align some other areas of the campus and pull them into my portfolio. So the first thing as we designed this life design and innovation sort of group was we pulled in entrepreneurship and innovation. And that's such an interesting area because they've been around for about 10 years. Um, if you think about McAllister and you think about your typical idea of entrepreneurship, there was a little bit of resistance at first because people saw it as like uh people just making money and tech rows and all those things. And what happened over this 10 years is an amazing thing, is in is that we have a little niche in social entrepreneurship. And so a lot of our students work on projects like that, in addition to what you would traditionally think of as entrepreneurship. And so that was super fun. And then a little while later, we pulled in another area. And so we call it our Office of Student Research and Creativity. And what that does is it brings in student-focused research that happens during the summer that's paid opportunities and um really matches the students with those opportunities, pays them, sets them up for success. And that has been a wonderful way to embed some more experiential opportunities into my portfolio. Um, the last thing that we did this past fall was we added a full-time staff member who's a health professions advisor. We have a lot of students who come in who are focused on health professions and need somebody to walk that journey with them from trying to figure out what the heck they want to do to applying for med school or deciding how they want to apply their skills in the medical profession. And so, so that all has come together and it's been so much fun to really build this incredible team.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

That's great. I love, I can see the way that there's synergy among the topics that you described, and and your campus is beautiful, just gorgeous in the where where it's nestled. And and uh so well, let's let's dig in and talk a little bit more about your career ecosystem. Um you know, many campuses are feeling some growing pressure around student career outcomes, but not everyone decides to step back and rethink their systems. Um what were some of the conversations, questions, or signals that led McAllister to prioritize building a more integrated career ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

There are so many things that I think were happening all at the same time, and I was lucky enough to join McAllister when they were happening. So in 2023, when I arrived, the campus was just starting implementation of a new strategic plan. Now, you know me, Jeremy, I've worked at a number of different campuses. I've seen a lot of strategic plans come and go. And it was clear from my first day on campus that there was buy-in for the strategic plan. Everybody in all my conversations, you know, I did that 90-day tour that you're supposed to do and talk to everybody you can. And everybody talked about how this amazing strategic plan integrated their work into the goals as well as career exploration and this career ecosystem. So that was super cool. I think President Rivera did a really great job of being inclusive in this process so that it wasn't a plan that sits on a shelf that nobody thinks about. And then the implementation process was also incredibly inclusive as well. Um, one of the signals was just where my work came alive in the plan. So there was developing a four-year experience for students, there was amplifying experiences for opportunities outside of the classroom. So experiential learning, creating a campus that fosters innovation, um, access and connection, expanding the boundaries of our campus to include the broader Twin Cities metro area. So you can imagine, as somebody who is just a student affairs and career geek, um, this was I lit up like a pinball machine. Um I was so excited. And so that was one big thing. The other big thing that happened right before I arrived is that um with our new leadership, they realigned our student affairs division and academic affairs. So we report up through the provost and we're really enmeshed in our work together. And I hadn't really worked on a campus like that before. And I was a little unsure because again, I'm a student affairs geek. Um, but what it has done is it's increased those connections between the faculty and staff and allows our provost to really know what we're doing so she can advocate for us and um we can be have a place at the table. Um, it's a really relationship heavy campus. I know a lot of people say that, but it really is true. I knew that from my first interview. And so having that culture also allowed me to ask tough questions, hear tough feedback, um, kind of line up our strategy. And it's really been magical. Um, an example of this is not long after I started, I was able to co-lead one of our implementation teams with a faculty member that had faculty, staff, and students around the strategic plan and allowed everybody to be a part of these goals and to move things forward. And I find that when I work with people, that's when I develop the best relationships. So it's just been a real wonderful alignment of all sorts of different opportunities that led us to this place.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Is the timing right to cultivate your career ecosystem? Then consider the consulting services of the Career Leadership Collective and learn from the best. We are the leading experts in helping U.S. colleges and universities build and cultivate thriving career ecosystems. At the collective, we've served over 1,100 institutions across the country. Our consulting team combines national expertise with deep appreciation for your institution's unique culture, structure, and goals. Together, we can help you design bold, data-informed strategies that scale career learning for every student. Contact us today at consulting at career leadershipcollective.com. Yeah, and I love how you're looking for the timing and looking for you, you're see you're seeing oh, the time is right here. They're talking about this, that it's it's planning season, all those are key indicators. Um, maybe we could even dig deeper into uh like what it what your career ecosystem looks like in practice. So, from your perspective, how would you paint a picture of the career ecosystem that you've been building alongside faculty and staff on the campus?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

That's one of the great things about having such a relational campus, is those relationships happen naturally. And so, our career advisors, when I came in, they told me about which faculty members I should meet and which ones they already had relationships with. The way that office is aligned is um by division and also academic departments. So our career advisors, for the most part, are aligned with a division or a department, and they actually send weekly newsletters to their faculty. So they really keep in communication with them to just keep them informed, let them know what's happening, let them know about opportunities that are available for students, offer to come into classes. And so that has been really great. So that level of relationship is just going on all cylinders. Um, we also changed one of our positions to be an exploratory career advisor. So we had those kind of the juniors and seniors and the sophomores who knew their path, and then we wanted to focus on retention as well as helping students to navigate their path before that. And so that has been another great partnership with faculty going into the first year courses and some of those sophomore level courses to make sure that students have that connection throughout their time at McAllister. Another example that I just love, and um, sometime I want you to visit campus and see this, Jeremy, is our idea lab. That's our makerspace that entrepreneurship and innovation runs. And at first, I didn't quite understand when I came to campus how much the design thinking and entrepreneurship way of putting things together is similar to how I had learned the career process for helping students to determine a path. And so they have faculty. Sometimes I go in there and there's three classes going on in the idea lab where students are hands-on, learning by doing, applying what they've learned, building things, um, just having a great time learning and seeing how these things can go outside of the boundary of classrooms and how it's reflective and how they apply it. And so that is um so awesome. Um I've also worked in a lot of campuses over the years, and I love alumni. And our alumni are absolutely amazing. I cannot tell you how many times I reach out to alumni and they say yes to me to either be on a panel or engage with students or meet with a single student. I feel like it's like radical collaboration come to life. They're really a part of our campus community and thread. And I think that that also helps. And our faculty help with that. And so it really um it's really helpful. Uh, final example of that is um last summer we had um our international students were uneasy about traveling home for the summer. Some of them had jobs or internships lined up, some of them just wanted to go home and visit their families, and suddenly their plans changed. And they were, they were scared and they didn't know what they were going to do. Our president put the call out to alumni and said, hey, we've got to support these students. So they donated money to allow students to stay on campus over the summer, to get a meal plan over the summer, to fund stipends for additional internships for our students, to even like start internships for our students so that they had a place to work. They hosted them for dinners and and ball games. Somebody brought bikes to give students so they could get around campus. And so I talk about that to really think about how this all of this student experience and how our student success is really embedded in all of the work that we do. And so it makes it a lot easier to do new things and to implement new pieces that allow those milestones to happen and those interactions with faculty and our staff to happen for students.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah, that's great. That's great. And I again I can see how you're you're you're putting intentionality behind gluing all these pieces together, not you know, building this portfolio where innovation crosses over so you can see the practical uh experiences unfold in the makerspaces and and bring in your alumni that you know will help and uh really really fantastic. Um let's let's talk about career learning outcomes, high impact practices. Uh you've kind of helped elevate high impact practices in the campus dialogue. Can you share how those rose to the top and uh what made them resonate with faculty or other staff members?

SPEAKER_01 14:12

That has been a real fun process and one of the real gifts of my career. So high impact practices were really highlighted in both our strategic plan and now in our campaign to help to fund them. And so um about three years ago when I started work with this, we really looked at what high impact practices were and defined them. And we used George Coo's work. Um, there are like 11 designated high impact practices and eight qualities of them. And we looked within the classroom and outside of the classroom and just did a thorough inventory. And we also looked at barriers, and I think that's really important, especially when we talk about the career ecosystem and having every student have these experiences. There are barriers for the students in participating, as well as for the faculty and staff in like developing new high impact practices or sustaining them because they it takes time and money to really have these impactful experiences for students. Once we did that, we made a strategic decision because our um faculty were working on a new core curriculum to focus our work on these experiential activities outside of the classroom. And so all of the things that are in my portfolio plus study away, which is also awesome. And so we looked at those and we decided what was included, and then we did a deep data dive. So we looked at what made up all of these practices as well as who was participating. And this was the really important piece. So our institutional research office did a lot of work to look back in history and see who participated in these high impact practices. We wanted to know if we could make a promise to our students that everybody would experience a high impact practice. We wanted to know if there were barriers, if there were populations that just were having trouble accessing these. The good news is that by and large, there wasn't a lot of difference between the few students who didn't participate and the ones who did. Um, when you look at like demographics, when you look at identities, that wasn't really what was getting in the way. Um, for the most part, it was they were doing high impact practices that we weren't looking at at that point. So perhaps they were athletes or they were doing performance art in some way. And those were the high impact practices they were focusing their time on, rather than these ones that we were covering. And so when we took a step back, we could see that yes, we can say that our students do have the opportunity to participate in these high impact practices. And so, how do we make that happen for everybody? The next step was looking at this data and we put it into a tracking system. And so now our advisors, who are primarily faculty, are able to look up a student and see, okay, they did an internship, um, they did summer research, or perhaps they didn't, and have either a reflective conversation about that experience they had and what that means for their future after Mac, or a conversation about, hey, here's what's out there. Have you thought about an internship? Have you thought about summer research? And so those things can be really great. And really the last piece is the campaign that I mentioned. Um, we want to make sure that students have the opportunity to have a funded uh funded opportunity to really dive in outside of the classroom. Uh, that's really important, and so we need to get some financial support for that as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Wow. I mean, it is so uh incredible to see the intentionality behind, okay, let's dig into the data, the system. And you know, pillar number one of the career ecosystem era is can we make a promise to every student? And there you are, you're sitting right there, but you you you did the work. You didn't just say, well, we have an office. We let's just get more students to come to it. Let's see if we can get more students to come. And I mean, of course that would be good, but you it very surgical, very intentional, good, good work. It's uh I I'm sure that took a lot of people behind it to start to eliminate that.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, it really, really truly did a lot of people and a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of conversation.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah. Now I know you've also done some embedding into the academic context. And um this might be one of the hottest topics in the field right now today. Here we are, what to March of March, April 2026, and uh mark the mark the time period because I I don't think I've seen a topic this hot in a while. So um what what is embedding into the instructional or classroom or course context actually looked like for you all at McAllister?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

We're doing a lot of different things that are so much fun. Um and again, the timing was right. The timing was right. So we were looking at the first year experience as a whole, so not just a first-year course, but the first year experience as a whole for our students from orientation till when they matriculate to be sophomores. And one of the things that we did was some pilot courses. A couple of our amazing career staff members did a two-credit spring semester first year course that was called Strengths in Action. So we used Gallup Strengths, and the students really took the first part of the semester to dive into who they are and what their strengths are and how they can deploy those. And then they worked with arts community organizations, um, employers basically, as first-year students, to understand them, to do research and put put together a proposal to solve a problem that these organizations had. It was so beautiful to see these nervous first-year students stand up in front of administrators and other students and these employers and present their work so professionally as first-year students. It was great. Um, and so that was one of the first things that that I saw. And the great thing about that is it prepared them for future internships and opportunities, which is awesome. We have uh capstone courses that our students take, and we're engaged in in many of those across campus. Um, one in particular, there's a practicum in our political science area. It's called Politics and Action. So they take a two-credit course and then it's aligned with an internship. And so we help to prepare the students for the internships, help them while they're in their internships, and and um we get to see what happens at the end of it. And so that's another great opportunity for us to embed in a particular program multiple times. The thing I'm most exciting to announce is that promise, basically. Our trustees just approved this, so I can talk about it. We we had a committee that was working really hard on looking at our general ed requirements in our core curriculum, and they embedded that promise in there. It's called an engage requirement, and students must complete an applied learning experience, such as an internship study way, all the things that we do work with. And so I'm so proud that we have a promise for every student. And now we know it's possible because of the work we've done, and we're gonna work toward that.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Oh, I'm so excited that you get to announce that. Yeah, I am too. I am too. Thousands of parents are clapping right now. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yeah, yes, it is so great. Um, and we also have what a lot of schools are doing, and it is so much fun for me to do is a faculty and staff career champions program. So we include staff as well. We have a lot of students who are employed on campus, and so their supervisor might be an administrative staff person in an office, and they may talk to students more than we do. And so we're we're having um a book club. I don't know if I told you that. We have a book club coming up. So we'll be getting some more books. Um, we have programs where, um, for example, one that's coming up is for faculty about how to support students in this tough job market. Like, what can you do and how can we support you? We have plug and play lessons that they can they can use in their courses or assignments. Um, And really, we are also celebrating them. So we're going to have a faculty and staff career champion of the year awarded at the end of the year that's selected by students. And so part of it is just to have um low effort, not low effort, but easy ways for faculty to be supported in this work and recognized in this work because we know that they're so important to student success.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

They really are. It's crucial. And the students trust them and are they they they feel so cared for and so it's so natural for uh students to be able to engage with them more regularly about their future and uh good good work to to to actually identify and see all these pockets around your campus where you can embed and and what that can look like? Um very exciting. Well, uh this is change. It's change. Change takes time, it takes buy-in, and systems don't change overnight. So what is the change process looked like at McAllister? And how would you say buy-in was built?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah, there were a few really key factors, and I know the change management is always hard. And I think in academic in academia, it's sometimes even harder just because of the structures that we have in place and the multiple audiences that you have, the multiple groups who have to buy in. Uh, for me, it was building trust was really the first part of it. And that comes in two areas. First was building trust within our teams, um, celebrating the wins that we have. It's long, exhausting work. And so for everybody to know that they're seen, the work that they're they're doing is seen, and that they're also a part of the conversation, that they have impact on what these changes are and how we implement them. Um, another thing we're really working on is increased visibility. Our new amazing director of entrepreneurship and innovation is really good at um helping people to learn how to tell their story and how to market and share that with everybody. And to me, it doesn't matter if we're doing all this work behind the scenes and the rest of the campus doesn't know about it. That's not embedding all of this into the ecosystem. It's just still us working in this little silo. And so we've become better at not only data, but at storytelling. Um, and and he's a McAllister alum, by the way. So of course he's incredible. Pacing is another thing. Um these past few years have been really hard for higher ed professionals and for students, which makes it harder on higher ed professionals because that's who we think about all day, every day. And it's always hard to keep up the pace. I remember back, um Jeremy, um years ago when I did uh Mastermind. So the group that you bring together of career leaders, and this is the thing that I remember most. I remember a lot of things, but it was energy mapping and really thinking about your teams and when they're putting all in, when they're burning the midnight oil a little bit, when they're gonna be exhausted. And in higher ed, it tends to be late September, October. It tends to be kind of right where we're at now, March and April, and to not like put a whole bunch of new stuff on your staff, to um put in rest, to put in um rejuvenation, recognition, fun during those times, and then to use the times when things aren't quite as busy to really do some of that creative thinking and some of that system and structure building for success when we are implementing all of these changes. Right now, today is not the time to develop a structure for something, probably, because we're just trying to get through the day and get our work done for our students. Um, and we do a lot of fun things. I remember after our team finally came together as kind of life design and innovation, at the end of the year last year, we uh took a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River. No like agenda, no nothing. And we were just there enjoying a beautiful day on the water. And those things I think are really important too. Um, the final thing I'll say is um support from leadership. And this can be really hard on some campuses. I am so excited that I have the best, I think, VP of student affairs in the world who supports us and understands our work. And because we report up through the provost, we have a lot of support from administration and they bring us to the table. And I think that's the most important piece. Um, we are seen at the table with faculty, we're seen at the table with leaders and administrators, and our opinions matter, and the work that we do matters, and that helps to keep that momentum and it helps when something might not be going so well, and we need to get a little input, we need to get a little advice, or we need to get some additional buy-in. And that has been really important as we work toward our goals.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, congrats to you and your senior leadership on making career in the career ecosystem a priority by putting you and others at the table to have this strategic conversation. That is that is a great takeaway for a lot of the listeners on this session today. And and gosh, I'll I'll probably have said a hundred times and we'll say a hundred more. Um, anytime you set out to do a great strategy, change management sits right next to it. And so I I love I love that you're you're mindful of that and and saying we need it, we're gonna set out a bold strategy, then we need bold change management as well, and and to really uh be there for our people and let them know that their voice matters and all of this. So well, as you look ahead, what are the next big steps for life design and innovation at McAllister? And how do you how do you see your campus further strengthening career learning?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah, that's such a good question. I think I mentioned a few things. I mentioned visibility and telling our stories. I think we need to tell our story a little bit better within our campus and also externally, particularly to our admissions audiences and to our advancement audiences. And I think I think as we make these changes, we have to refresh those stories and we have to keep them top of mind for everybody. Um enhancing and increasing those paid opportunities for students. I was a student who had to drop out of school for a little while to because I worked on campus and I couldn't afford to student teach, to take that time off to student teach. So that's really near and dear to my heart. And I don't want students to have to make hard choices between um working a job over the summer that doesn't really spark their interest or isn't as related as they want it to be with doing one of these other opportunities. Um, another thing that is super exciting is we brought a group of faculty to Silicon Valley. They were our innovation scholars, and so we met with entrepreneurs and innovators. We went to the Google Cloud campus, we talked to folks from LinkedIn, we went to the Stanford Dschool to really help faculty to understand innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking, and AI in an educational context, and then come back and be our champions for that area. So, much like the career champions, we're looking at entrepreneurship and innovation as an ecosystem, and we need to have those champions that understand and can talk to their colleagues and to help them to understand how important all of this is and how important that skill is. That was one of the most incredible experiences that I've had with faculty. We have this core group now that they're bringing folks into their classes, they're coming into the idea lab, they're singing our praises, and that's been super amazing. Um and the other thing that I'll tell you that isn't super exciting, but I think is really important and I think it's good to address in this context as we do this change management, as we think big, as we embed these milestones for students, as we make these promises, we've got to have the back end to cover that. And so we have to, we've been really working on our workflows. Um, we've been working on project management, we've been working on that tracking assessment and reporting. We've been working on our learning outcomes and making sure that we're measuring those. Um that isn't always the most exciting piece of pieces of these this work, but it's so important because otherwise, again, your team's gonna end up exhausted, recreating the wheel every time. And so that's a that's another piece that all of our teams are really have really been focusing on this whole year.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

I love that. And it allows you to actually see how you're moving the needle. Yeah. Wow, wonderful. Well, final question, Jen. What what's your hope for the future of higher education?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

I have a couple of big dreams. Um, one is a paid opportunity for every student. Again, I mentioned kind of how I came to that um myself. And um, I just don't want students to have to make the tough choices that I had to make. I still regret that I never got to study away because instead I worked full-time during every break on campus. Um, the other thing that's really important to me, and it's really timely in Minnesota right now, is I want employers to understand the immense value that international students can bring to them, whether for internships and for employment for after graduation. Um, it's just an amazing workforce that can really be a generator for our region and for the country. And it's so hard for students to find employers who are willing to sponsor them or who they can work for for internships. And so that's one thing that if if by the time I retire, I've I've like made some incremental progress there, I would be happy. Um I also really want what you want, and that is a career ecosystem. I don't want to have another student say to me, I didn't know the career exploration or office existed, I didn't know entrepreneurship and innovation existed, I didn't know anybody could help me make connections with alumni or build a resume or find an internship. I just don't want that to happen because we're all working so hard. And so we have to strategically be where the students are at. We have to strategically embed those milestones. And if in the future I never hear that again, I will be so happy.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yeah, let's get rid of the question. I didn't know the career center existed because we don't need the question if we have a great career ecosystem. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Uh Jen Gyar would terrific to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Oh, I've loved every minute of it. Thank you so much, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

You're welcome. And you can catch all the episodes and subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter at Career Leadership Collective.com slash podcast. As always, if you have not yet ordered the book, perhaps you'll be like our friend Jen and order a hundred more or more copies of the Career Ecosystem in higher education. And send us your questions, your thoughts on what's working in your career ecosystem and challenges you'd like us to address at podcast at career leadershipcollective.com. We are building a new era together. Bye for now.