In 2016, the Career Development Center developed a certificate-based program for first-year students called the Career Identity Program.  This was designed to help first-year students in the College of Engineering and College of Humanities and Social Sciences identify their major and career path and create a comprehensive academic-to-career plan to achieve it.  The founding principle of this program is to help students make connections between their sense of identity and a major and career path that best reflects that.

We are in our 3rd year and have seen tremendous success and enthusiasm from the students we serve.  We are looking to add partners on campus who would be interested in helping support this program to other students and act as an advocate and coach for them so that we can offer it to as many students as possible, in other Colleges, as well.  To this end, we are offering a professional development opportunity to train campus partners to be an advocate for Career Identity participants – and coach students through the program.  As a Career Identity Advocate (CIA) and Coach, you would recommend the students you want to participate and provide 2 coaching sessions each semester for these students, guiding them through their choice of major and experiences to being career ready. You can decide how many students you want to coach, it can be as few as 1, or as many as 10.

The Career Identity Program provides all the joint programming and workshops for all the students.  To support your role as the coach, we are offering a training program that includes 7 sessions (total 15 hours) of everything you need to know to successfully guide students through the program.  Training will include review of all student workshops, coaching skills knowledge and coaching skills practice.  This training will take place over 7 sessions in Spring Semester on Friday mornings, from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm.  Upon completion of the training, you will receive a certificate of professional development.  This will be the third time we are offering this training and so far, 34 Advisors and Directors have completed the training with very positive feedback, expressing benefits of building coaching skills and guiding students through major and career choice.

The Career Identity Program has successfully guided students through a series of 12 interconnected workshops that build upon one another to help students create their academic-to-career plan and design it in a meaningful and authentic way.  It includes a pre- and post-assessment of student growth and development toward career readiness:

o    Self-discovery – Abilities, Interests, Passions

o    Career Assessment & Skill Identification

o    High Impact Activities

o    Career Readiness

o    Creating a Vision for your Future

o    Creating a Master Academic Plan (MAP)

o    Majors to Career Exploration

We are finding much support among our colleagues and have presented at several national and international conferences, and published papers on the Career Identity Program.  If you are interested in learning more, please email lori_ghosal@ncsu.edu

If you would like to register, please fill in the Google Form at this link before January 18.

https://goo.gl/forms/TUfGG3dDRYd899us1

Dates/Times are as follows: