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The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education
We explore the systemic changes colleges and universities are making to ensure every student receives the career learning they need to succeed.
The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education
Career Development Across the Student Experience
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In today’s episode, Nikki Marzano and Drew Poppleton from John Carroll University will discuss the creation of a required four-year professional development program designed to ensure every student receives structured career support throughout their college journey. They share how they built campus-wide buy-in, aligned leadership around a common vision, and redesigned advising and career development systems to create a more equitable, scalable, and career-connected student experience. The episode offers a practical blueprint for institutions seeking to make career readiness a shared institutional responsibility rather than an optional service.
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 to succeed. My name is Jeremy Badani. I'm the CEO founder of the Career Leader Center College, a consulting company dedicated to helping higher education transform their career. Now, today's episode is one I'm especially excited to share because it highlights something that we've been talking about for some time and that many institutions are now talking about. But few have got to this point of accomplishment. And that is moving career learning from an optional experience to an institutional expectation. You know, for years it seems like higher education has wrestled with a few fundamental challenges in this space. We know students want career success. We know parents care deeply about career outcomes. We know employers are asking for graduates who can articulate their skills, navigate professional environments, and adapt to changing workplaces. Yet on many campuses, the common strategy for career development, career learning, career readiness still largely operates as an optional office or an opt-in service. But what if it didn't? It's a common thread question we've been asking. What if career readiness was intentionally designed into the student experience? We're seeing it happen, and we have one great example today. I'm very excited about this. It's exactly what we're discussing today. In this conversation, Drew Poppleton and Nikki Marzano from John Carroll University sit down with our own Monique Frost to take us behind the scenes of a pretty remarkable transformation over a few years. You'll hear how their institution built a four-year scaffolded professional development model, why it's a strategic priority, and how they aligned advisors, faculty, and senior leaders around a common vision. This conversation illustrates a core principle from the career ecosystem era. Sustainable transformation doesn't happen because a career center works harder. It happens because the institution decides that career learning and career readiness matter enough to redesign systems around it. So if you're a president or provost or dean, if you're a career leader, advisor, or faculty member wondering what true career ecosystem transformation can look like in practice, I think you're gonna find this conversation both inspiring and practical. So let's jump in.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello, friends. Um, I am excited for you to hear from some of our friends in the field. And for me, they are right up the road, literally still coming to you from uh Cleveland, Ohio. I'm really excited to talk with um professionals at John Carroll University. So I'll have them introduce themselves and then we're gonna dive right into some of the fun things that they are doing, some of the exciting work that they're doing, and more importantly, um some of the scaled work that they are starting to do in order to impact every student on their campus. So we'll start with Drew. Can you just tell us your name, your title, and how long you've been in higher education?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks, Monique. Um, so Drew Pobbleton, I currently serve as the Assistant Vice President for Student Success at John Carroll University. So I oversee Core Services and Academic Advising. Um, I've been in higher ed for 20 years now, but I'm just coming up on my one-year anniversary at John Carroll. So it's been a whirlwind since I started. And the timing could be better for this podcast, Monique. We're really excited to share with you all the cool stuff that's happening at John Carroll University. So thank you. Awesome. And Nikki.
SPEAKER_02All right, I'm Nikki Merzano. I'm director of career services at John Carroll. I've been the director exactly six years. Uh, prior to that, I was in different career services roles here at John Carroll since 2013, um, career advising internship coordinator, employer relations. And my career before that was um actually in recruiting, where I got to go to college campuses. And um that's where I fell in love with this work.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Well, we're gonna dive right in because as I mentioned, John Carroll is doing some extraordinary work around ensuring that you all impact every student on your campus. So let's kind of lay the groundwork here. Can you take us through the vision for making career development a central pillar of the university's entire strategy? How did you align president, provost, and senior leadership around the idea that career preparation is an institutional priority?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Uh so ensuring our students are graduate, yeah, are graduate career ready is basically a central part of what we now call our onward promise. So onward invites every incoming student, so starting with this class of 2030, to claim the best of what John Carroll has to offer. So that means coordinated team advising, alumni mentoring, transformational experiences like internships and research, a personal plan, and a four-year structured career advising and professional development program we're calling onward launch. Um, so like any major university initiative, onward didn't just you know fall out of the sky. It was many years in the making and it kind of pulled from a lot of different sources. But I would say, sort of the main catalyst for it was a research study that was conducted by the Art and Science Group, which is a consulting and research firm uh that serves higher education. Uh so about two years ago, our vice president for enrollment and marketing and our provost partnered with this group to help us gain greater insight into not only how prospective students and families currently view John Carroll, but also what are they looking for in their college experience, right? We're all all of us are trying to kind of figure that out and see, you know, where we sit in this competitive landscape. And so they, you know, produced this research for us, which we kind of took and ran with and and really try to align it with our strengths. So we looked at, you know, what are we doing really, really well at John Carroll? Where are the gaps and how do we scale this in a really intentional way? Um, and that's how we came up with Onward. But I want to mention, you know, Nikki and her team really laid some of the groundwork for this even prior to that. So Nikki worked with you all at the Career Collective to do uh a landscape analysis. Um, and then that inspired a career task force that our provost convened. And I actually sat on that task force, even though I was at a different institution. As an alum of John Carroll and someone within the career services space, they asked me to join that task force. There were also alumni on that task force, faculty, senior leaders. Um and so we waited for this research to come out, and then when it did, there too, we launched, you know, a working group that included faculty, senior leaders, staff from across the university to sort of take this research and figure out, you know, how we can develop a vision and a plan that works for John Carroll. So I would say from the start, you know, we had a lot of inclusion, right? We had people at the table from every aspect of the university, um, but it always helps to have data, right? And this this group, the art and science group, was saying, hey, if you can put something like this together, um, you know, the university is going to be better for it. Um, and then, you know, we got that research basically as I was starting. Uh, I had just interviewed and I joined a Zoom meeting where they are presenting the research uh prior to even you know starting at the university. And oddly enough, a lot of the stuff that they were talking about were also things that I was highlighting in my presentation when I interviewed. So not only do we have research that was specific to John Carroll, but also research that you know I was pulling from national studies, um, from you know other sources that that we all in the career community often pull from. So I think it was sort of a collection of these data points that really pointed towards we need to do this and we need to do it fast. Um so you know, we basically launched onward in December after getting the research in June. So for you know, higher ed standards, I think it was a it was a pretty quick, pretty quick turnaround. Um, and there's lots of pieces to it. I'm sure Nikki and I will get into the details as we go, but uh that's that's kind of how we got started.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, talk about right place, right time, right person, right? And I think some of those elements are so key to when it's time to move forward um within a particular initiative and so forth. Um, so the tangible piece that I'll highlight is um that John Carroll is implementing a four-year scaffolding professional development program as a graduate requirement. So, what does the architecture of that program look like? And what did the high-level strategy session look like when proposing that career development should become a mandatory milestone for every student?
SPEAKER_01Is 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.
SPEAKER_02Um sure, Monique, I'll take that one. Uh, as Drew said, this these conversations have been happening um for a little while. And so these became more intentional with the career task force that was um that was in uh inspired by the results of the landscape analysis that Career Leadership Collective did. Um, and that team recommended professional development for all students. So the interest has been there, and then, like you said, right place, right time, along with the art and science research, senior leadership understood that this professional development for everybody was a priority. There was already a population of students on campus that were getting four-year scaffold of development, and there were pockets of students that were getting varying levels of content where it was embedded into their programs. So, what we were talking about really wasn't just starting from nothing, but scaling what was already working and what we were already doing really well. Um, as Drew mentioned, we are leading a task force that's part of Onward. And this group is composed of deans, faculty, there's a student on this task force, and they're helping determine the structure and the content of what this four-year program is going to look like. And we have the momentum, and we're we're ready to launch this with this incoming class. So they will get year one. Um, we have the support to do that. Um, so there's really like buy-in from the start for this. And as far as the architecture of the program, it is aligned with five new distinct career communities. So the content can be tailored to the student's long-term interests. It will operate on the premise that professional development should be woven throughout the student's experience. And every year we'll build on the last. So progressing from self-discovery to skill building to differentiating to launch readiness. And more specifically, we're going to help students understand who they are and where they're heading, help them develop the professional competencies that we know employers are looking for, help them network and build professional relationships. And again, because these are aligned with the career communities, they will be networking within the careers and industries that they're interested in. And then we want to help students understand the future of work and how AI is going to be a part of their chosen career path. So we're really building AI into this and not just having it be you know an add-on afterthought. The program will be designed so there's opportunity for flexibility. So if a student changes their mind and changes their career community, they're going to be able to switch and pick up without falling behind in their professional development program. Excuse me. And we're excited because this is not going to be a program that is just delivered by the career center, this office over in the library. We will have engagement and support from the colleges, from both faculty and staff. So we're really excited to look at how that's all going to come together.
SPEAKER_03And I'm sure everyone will be wondering if you all specialize in hypnosis and you were able to, I don't know, how you got deans, faculty, and students all collectively together. Um, clearly that does not happen by accident. And so kudos to you all for doing that. And I I'd love for you to speak to thinking about beyond the data and research, what does the ongoing strategic relationship look like between your shop, Nikki, the career center, and senior institutional leadership? So just kind of how do you ensure that career readiness stays at the center when you have so many individuals that are partaking in this, which is a good thing. And so just talk to us a little bit about that. Um, sure.
SPEAKER_02I I think we are very fortunate that the president of our university and the vice president of academic affairs sit on the onward steering committee and are part of the regular conversations that we have about career development on this campus. Um in addition, like I said, career readiness isn't siloed. So it is integrated in the strategic plan. It has components in the academic affairs strategic plan, where there are goals about how we market our professional development programs, how we tell our student success stories, how we look and compare and improve our outcomes compared to the market. It includes goals about improving our employer outreach and building discernment into the student's advising experience. So, with career development integrated into the strategic plan, that means it's integrated into performance goals that extend beyond the career services office. So, really, it's a part of a lot of conversations across campus.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and one of the aspects that I think you all have done really well is to think about the shift, the mindset shift that faculty and staff have to make with leading and shepherding students through this pillar, this central pillar of career readiness. So I love that you all have made the transition from traditional academic success advisors to integrate academic and career success advisors. So, what did it take to get leadership to support that change and that transition and to completely reimagine those roles? So, how do you expect this hybrid shift to sort of transform the first-year student experience?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll take that one, Monique. Um, this is also, I think, part of the larger Onward initiative, which I think what's so great about Onward is that it's so far-reaching and it's so integrative across the university. And because it's a promise for every student, um, I think you know, everyone's sort of behind it. Uh, that that equity piece is has really, I think, uh, been able to get to galvanize the community around it. That I think when we started positioning, look, this includes a lot of things that we already do well, right? We already have great faculty advisors, we already have great staff advisors, we have good professional development programs. What Omword does is it ensures that you get that level across the institution for every student. And I think for a lot of folks who might have been a little bit skeptical at the beginning, that kind of got them over the line, right? And so, as part of this, we were looking at all of our structures. Um, and so we already had academic success advisors that the vast majority of incoming first-year students would have as their primary academic advisor. We also had Nikki and her team uh there to support students, and they were even co-located. So we share offices together. But when we were looking at that model and really thinking about how do we provide structured career advising, even with professional development, students don't have to meet with a career advisor currently, right? They do have to meet with their academic advisor to get their schedule created, to get their you know, course registration holds lifted. And so we thought, why not leverage that relationship, right? And in that at least that first year, first one to two years, let's combine those roles so that when the students meeting with their advisor, they're meeting with someone who can engage them in conversations, not just about their academic, you know, pursuits and ambitions, but their career ambitions as well. Um, and so you know, we position that as part of the onward model, that we would basically convert existing staff members into academic and career success advisors, we'd have to hire a few more to ensure that our caseloads were manageable and allowed us to engage in those deeper conversations. Because, you know, while our academic success advisors were already having some career conversations with students, because of the caseloads, right, their typical appointment length is 30 minutes and it was dominated by course scheduling conversations. So, you know, we agreed to invest in, you know, this role, um, grow their capacity so that they can work with students, you know, in a more robust fashion. Um, and you know, I think leadership got behind it because it connected to the overall onward promise. Um, and it built into um this movement from sort of general advising to more specialized advising. So this academic and career success advisor serves as a primary advisor for students in their first year when they're ready to transition to a faculty advisor within their major. That's when we will have a career specialist who leads one of the career communities join their team. So then that person shows up and starts to provide that more specialized career guidance in their later years. Um, so you know, I think the model allows for that progression of the students and it brings different people onto the team at critical points in their journey.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's awesome. So, how do career commun communities fit into this holistic model to ensure that students seamlessly connect with the right industry specialists as they progress? And then do you have faculty and university leadership play a key role in these communities? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, this this is all new, though the idea of the of the career communities, and and we've really embraced it, even as Nikki mentioned. So we're gonna have five uh career community leads, we'll call them career specialists. And so those folks, once when a student transitions to their advisor, their faculty advisor, they will join a career community. Um, and so that person will sit on their team. They'll also be charged with you know developing employer relationships, programming within those communities, and they will also help teach the professional development courses within those career communities. But as Nick He mentioned we all we have support from faculty and staff in our College of Health, in the Bowler College of Business, and the College of Arts and Sciences. So right off the bat, you've got a lead, but you've got a whole bunch of other folks contributing to that community and helping ensure students are making those connections. We already have quite a few like executives and residents at John Carroll within different areas. And so we want to grow that program as well as part of the community because we think giving students access to folks with that level of experience, you know, is really key. We think, you know, leveraging these communities as a way to bring in our employer partners to come and talk to students as guest speakers, to put up projects for students to work on, obviously, hoping they're they'll hire them for micro internships and internships and full-time jobs. So I think it's a great way to organize all of our career development work around these communities, especially for a liberal arts institution. I mean, I think we really feel like, especially in the age of AI, this is our time as liberal arts institutions to really talk about our value and how our holistic approach with students makes them, you know, very valuable to employers in and graduate schools.
SPEAKER_03That's great. And I'm gonna kind of combine these last two questions because I think they fit together. Um, because some folks will listen to this and go, where do we start? How what do we need to do? And I think the key element to keep in mind here, especially um me knowing you, Nikki, for the past two years, is there was a lot of priming of the pump, right? It was just, you I mean, you did a lot of grassroots work to ensure that faculty understood and that you were able to make this massive institutional shift. So I'm curious if you can just share a little bit about how did that come about? How were you able to prime the pump and help with making that shift? And then what are some insights or just one piece of um advice that you both would give campuses that are looking for a blueprint on how to do this within their ecosystem? Sure.
SPEAKER_02I'll take the the first part of that. So um you're right, there was a lot of um, I mean, we didn't realize it was priming the pump at the time, but it was a lot of relationship building across campus from the top down, demonstrating the value of bringing career content to students, um, working closely with faculty to build trust that we wanted to partner with them and not add work to their plate. And yeah, over time those relationships grew really strong, but um academic departments could see that some departments were able to incorporate career development more readily than others, and everyone could agree there were gaps and right time, right place. Everyone can agree that optional career development is not equitable for students. And so it hasn't been a hard sell to say, let's take this out and structure it in a way that every student will be able to participate. And you know, faculty are getting a little class time back in some cases, and in some cases, they can use that to um offer more targeted, uh, you know, industry-specific content, um, or or use it how they how they decide. Um I think everyone agreed that the only way to scale it was was to remove it from the classes. And so I guess my my piece of advice would be uh look at what's working, look at what what you're already doing well, and and how can that be expanded.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great, great point, Nikki. I I would highlight urgency, authenticity, and inclusivity. So urgency, I think you do have to create a sense of urgency, right? I think we can in higher ed can be a little bit slow to move and the world is not moving slowly. Uh and so I think if you can create the right amount of urgency and say, we need to move on this, not hysteria, right? You got to be organized around it, but if you can use that research, use that data, and say, now is the time, we need to make a move. I think that can you know get people thinking in ways that um you know maybe they they hadn't before. While you're moving in that urgent manner, you mean you need to remain authentic to who you are as an institution, right? You can't just be copying all the best practices out there and it and it doesn't connect to who you are and what your value proposition is to students. I think we really keyed into that at John Carroll, right? Our our Jesuit values, you know, uh values of accompaniment and you know, discernment, and how can we fold that in? Because I think people value that. We're a very mission-driven institution, and and you know, we really use that to get people um to buy in. And then we've talked about this throughout the podcast is just including a lot of people at you know, bringing them to the table, making sure their voices are heard, and being very, you know, strategic and and structured about it, right? So we had a task force for the you know, career-focused task force. We had a working group associated with the research. Um, once we launched onward, we created a steering committee. We had task forces for every one of the four promises. We have a project manager, senior project manager, who keeps us all organized. He's in every single task force meeting, he's taking notes, he's sharing resources. You can't launch an initiative like this if you are not staffing it correctly and being very organized in your approach. Um, but it's not just people, we're again, we're drawing from deans, from faculty, from students. So the voices are heard, but we have very real deliverables, right? Like each of our task forces had three to five deliverables just for the spring, right? And we're constantly checking in and reporting on progress. So I think you really have to be, excuse me, organized and committed if you want to um, you know, see progress, and then share the wins. There's not a strategic update for the university where we're not talking about onward, where we're not giving these updates. So it's not staying siloed in the task forces. We're sharing the information, we're sharing the wins, and we're, you know, continuing to build on that momentum.
SPEAKER_03Well, I have to say, well said, and that is an amazing blueprint that you just shared. And so um, I couldn't be more proud to be right up the road from such an amazing institution that is uh really doing great work. So thank you, Drew. Thank you, Nikki, for your time. Um, and I look forward to seeing you all soon. All right, thanks, Monique.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Monique.
SPEAKER_01Hey, what a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much, Drew and Nikki and Monique. As I listened to Drew and Nikki describe the work happening at John Carroll, I found myself reflecting on three particular takeaways that I think are important for leaders that are going about this effort. We know there are hundreds of you that are in process and at the beginning stages, middle stages, and making great inroads to build a career ecosystem. So here are the three takeaways to reinforce from my perspective. First, career learning becomes transformational when it moves from optional to expected. I think I'll say this a thousand times before the end of the year. Career learning becomes transformational when it moves from optional to expected. And second, institutional transformation on the topic of career readiness requires leadership alignment. You know, we used to think that you could almost do the whole thing grassroots, but if there's no full institutional buy-in with defining and taking the time to actually um set in motion what it is that your unique institution believes about this, it's going to be a hard go of it. And third, great career ecosystems are built through strategic design, not simply more activity. So for those of you who are listening and are wondering where to begin, my encouragement is fairly simple today. Don't start by asking how you can create more activity around what's trending. Start by asking what every student should experience before graduation and where those experiences naturally fit into your student journey map. John Carroll University's work offers a really encouraging example of what can happen when a university commits to building career learning directly into the fabric of the student experience. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education podcast. You can catch all the episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at career leadershipcollective.com slash podcast. As always, if you've not yet ordered the book, The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education, we encourage you to do so. And please send us your questions, your ideas, your stories, your concerns, things that you would like to inform about your career ecosystem on behalf of podcast at career leadership collective.com. We have built era.
