The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education

What role should career readiness play in the future of the liberal arts?

In this episode, Jeremy Podany sits down with Dr. Milton Moreland, the 21st President of Centre College, to explore how a highly residential liberal arts institution is building a more intentional career ecosystem while staying deeply rooted in its academic mission.

President Moreland discusses how career readiness and the liberal arts are not competing priorities. In an increasingly AI- and technology-driven world, the durable skills developed through a liberal arts education may be more valuable than ever. The conversation explores Centre’s evolving approach, including faculty serving as career ecosystem champions, career connections among faculty and alumni with students, mapping durable skills across the curriculum, and creating clearer milestones that help students understand what they should experience throughout their four years.

In this episode, Monique Frost is joined by Dr. Amy Hodges Hamilton, Professor of English, Director of Undergraduate Core Curriculum, and Mary Claire Dismukes, Director, Career and Professional Development of Belmont University, to discuss how Belmont has successfully integrated career readiness into their undergraduate curriculum. The discussion explores how Belmont moved beyond traditional career services to embed career learning across the entire student experience, starting with a cohort-based model that began with senior capstone courses and expanded to include vocational discernment throughout the general education curriculum. The conversation also touches on Belmont's approach to building faculty champions slowly rather than attempting rapid scaling, and how they address faculty concerns about diluting academic rigor by positioning career readiness as an enhancement rather than an addition to the curriculum.

What should a career ecosystem look like? How might your career ecosystem look different from others? Why? 

In this episode we explore how Tulane University is thoughtfully building a career ecosystem around the distinctive characteristics of its institution and its students. Tulane brings their own unique combination of assets to this work: a major research university where undergraduate students enter through a single academic college point of entry, an institutional culture deeply connected to New Orleans, a belief that internships should not be optional, and and opportunities for students to engage in research, service, and professional development throughout their education. Rather than importing someone else’s model, Tulane is designing to intentionally connect all of these assets into a coherent system that helps every student navigate their education and prepare for what comes next. 

In the third installment of our three-part series exploring the making of a career ecosystem at The University of Texas at Austin, Jeremy Podany is joined by Anneke Chy, Assistant Dean for Advising and Student Support, and Dr. Jessica (Jessie) Wandelt, Associate Professor of Instruction, Faculty Director for Career Education from the College of Natural Sciences to discuss how they are transforming career services to reach the college's 11,000 students across diverse majors including math, physics, life sciences, computer science, and human ecology. 

The conversation covers their shift from a one-on-one destination model to a collaborative "village approach" involving career services, advising, faculty, and experiential learning teams working together to embed career readiness into the academic experience.

In the second installment of our three-part series exploring the making of a career ecosystem at The University of Texas at Austin, we offer an inside look at how UT Austin’s College of Fine Arts is integrating life design and career learning directly into the academic experience of its students. Rather than treating career preparation as a service students seek near graduation, the college is introducing students to reflection, experimentation, relationship-building, resilience, and creative problem-solving from the beginning of their university journey. The episode discusses why life design is such a natural fit for students in the creative disciplines, how collaboration with faculty has enabled career learning to become part of the curriculum, and what it takes to scale the work across a college encompassing numerous artistic fields and degree pathways.

This episode kicks off our three-part series exploring The University of Texas at Austin's journey to build a campus-wide career ecosystem. Jeremy Podany sits down with Michael Drew, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and Daniel Liu, Assistant Vice Provost for Career Success, to discuss how one of the nation's largest and most selective public universities is sparking change in colleges, among faculty, and with career professionals around a shared vision for student career success for all students. Together, they explore the challenges of leading change across a highly federated institution, why clarity of purpose and structure shape an ecosystem, and how intentional collaboration is creating a stronger value proposition for every Longhorn.

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.

What does it take to embed career development learning across an entire university—and prove that it works? In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Julieanne Cutrupi and Eva Chan from the University of Technology Sydney to explore their multi-year journey from an opportunistic, opt-in model to a curriculum-embedded approach spanning 73 degree programs and 135 subjects, reaching approximately 33,500 students. Together, they unpack how a team of just 4.6 equivalent career professionals built this scalable career ecosystem, developed a framework for measuring its impact, and generated compelling evidence that embedded career education significantly improves students’ career understanding, clarity, and confidence.

What if career learning was actually built into the college experience instead of remaining optional? In this episode, Jeremy Podany, Monique Frost, and Nick Cattin explore the growing movement toward embedded career learning and the strategic integration of career milestones across the student journey. Together, they unpack what meaningful career milestones look like, where colleges should embed them for maximum impact, and why the future of career readiness depends less on optional programming and more on intentional institutional design.

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.