There is no greater institutionalized tool an undergraduate student can use on a college campus in trying to figure out life after school than the Career Services office.  It’s there that students get help on figuring out an initial life path to forming a resume and setting up internships and networking opportunities that will give them the best chance to do what they want to do after graduation.  This episode of Pathfinders kicks off a series of interviews with the people most involved with undergraduate students in helping them figure out what they want to do.  And today, we start in the state of Tennessee at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Dr. Rob Liddell, Director of Career services at UTC.

Part of the University of Tennessee system, UT-Chattanooga offers educational paths in several diverse areas in their colleges of arts and sciences, engineering and computer science, health, education, and professional studies as well as a college of business.  In all, the school offers 39 graduate degrees including four doctoral programs.  The school itself is also located in a city which is exploding geographically and economically and boasts itself as GIG City, for having the fastest internet in the world.  It’s in this environment that Dr. Rob Liddell and his staff attempt to help students find their paths in life and it’s also where we begin our collegiate connection and learn how these offices help their students.

GUEST BIOGRAPHY

Rob Liddell serves the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as the Director of University Career Services. He has worked in higher education for more than a decade in diverse roles ranging from an Employee Relations consultant to service as an average Statistician within a large Student Affairs Division. Rob holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Florida State University and a Master’s of Science in Management with an emphasis in Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness from the University of South Florida-Tampa. He has earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction with an emphasis in Higher Education Administration, also from USF, where his dissertation research was focused on college student persistence. Rob serves the Tennessee Association of Colleges and Employers (TACE) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Employers (SoACE) through leadership roles while maintaining active membership in the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). He is a graduate of Leadership Tampa and NACE’s Management Leadership Institute.

SHOW NOTES

0:00 – Intro

2:00 – Dr. Rob Liddell

2:18 – Description of the UTC student body

3:47 – How would you ideally like to work with the UTC student freshman to senior year?

7:29 – Why students need to be thinking about a resume when they start college and not only as they finish it.

9:30 – How many students that come into career services don’t have a clue about life after college versus those that know exactly what they want to do?

11:58 – How do you work with students in encouraging them to pursue something they want as opposed to nudging them in a direction that they might not want to go?

14:50 – Have you seen a process that works in helping a student go from “I have no idea what to do with my life,” to “I now have an idea”?

17:25 – How do you use assessments in helping a student figure out a little bit more about themselves?