NACE Award Winners:
2002 Academy of Fellows
Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA Career Center, and Dave Bechtel, director of The Career Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have been inducted into the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ (NACE) Academy of Fellows.
The Academy recognizes career services and human resources/staffing professionals for their advancement of knowledge, leadership, and excellence in professional practice.
Kathy Sims
In
nominating Kathy Sims for induction into the NACE Academy of Fellows,
Dave Bechtel explained how she has exceeded the criteria for fellowship
on every count: excellence in professional practice, leadership,
and advancement of knowledge in the field.
Bechtel, director of The Career Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, knows whereof he speaks. This year, he is a “fellow” inductee in the NACE Academy.
Sims’ resume bears Bechtel out. Having begun her career in career services at West Virginia University, her alma mater, she went on to become assistant director of placement services at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. In 1981, she began a 14-year tenure as executive director of The George Washington University Career Center, establishing a record of achievement that earned her the “GW Award” for outstanding contributions to the quality of student life and for innovative and dedicated leadership.
In 1995, she moved west to serve as director of the UCLA Career Center, where her initiatives have ranged from championing an early outreach model to include career center sponsorship of numerous student groups to launching an annual campaign and special events, which accounted for a substantial increase in career center revenues.
Bechtel says that despite the demands of Sims’career, she has always found a way to do more, particularly in service to the profession. Elected an at-large governor in NACE’s first national election in 1996, Sims went on to assume the roles of president-elect, president, and past president from 1998 to 2001. “Of the six years I served on the board, those three were the most rewarding,” she says. Adds Bechtel: “Her service in those capacities represents the zenith of her contributions to the field.”
In addition to NACE, Sims currently is a member of the Eastern, Western, Rocky Mountain, Southeastern, and Midwest Associations of Colleges and Employers (EACE, WACE, RMACE, SACE, and MidwestACE). Among the honors accorded her for her work at the regional level are the 1993 Outstanding Service Award and 1997 Milestone Award presented by the former Mid-Atlantic Association of Colleges and Employers (MAACE), and the 1996 Presidential Award given by the former Eastern College and Employer Network (ECEN). Interestingly enough, she chaired the task force that merged ECEN and MAACE to form EACE.
Sims also is active in national benchmarking networks for university and corporate practitioners, and is a founding faculty member of the Career Services Institute, a professional development program.
In the spirit of the Academy, Sims is generous in sharing her insight and experience with her colleagues, whether she’s helping to plan or presenting at NACE’s National Meetings or serving on the faculty of its Management Leadership Institute. “She doesn’t just offer her ideas,” Bechtel says. “She gets involved, serves, and leads.”
What makes Sims ideally suited to the roles of educator and mentor is that she is an exceptionally good student.
“I can never hope to know everything there is to know,” she says. “For me, learning never stops.”
Dave Bechtel
After
more than three decades of helping students prepare for the future,
Dave Bechtel is taking a look at the past—and he’s hoping
others in his profession do the same.
Bechtel, director of The Career Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says he’s seen his work change from the simple act of placing soon-to-graduate students with employers in a world of paper resumes, personal meetings, and handshakes, to an intricate process of online job postings, computerized resume data bases, and electronic interview schedules.
“The thing that has changed the most is the complexity of the enterprise,” he says.
Over the years, Bechtel has kept up with the changes in his profession, and his efforts were rewarded this year when he was inducted into the NACE Academy of Fellows. The Academy recognizes career services and human resources professionals for their advancement of knowledge, leadership, and excellence in professional practice.
But after he retires in May of 2003, Bechtel will devote his time to looking back, as he prepares a history of career services at the University of Illinois.
“Turnover among our young professionals is so great,” Bechtel says, pointing out that career services practitioners may spend only five years in their roles before moving on—and campus recruiters and university relations professionals often spend even less time in their jobs. He says that learning how others faced on-the-job-challenges in the past can help current professionals serve students more effectively—and gain a deeper understanding of their own worth.
In his 30 years of overseeing career center operations at the University of Illinois campus, Bechtel has faced a number of challenges, including three recessions and increasingly complicated federal regulations governing the hiring process.
“I think probably the biggest challenge has been the management of information technology,” he says, adding that he believes the new NACElink system will help practitioners meet that challenge.
Over the years, Bechtel has helped his profession grow in a number of ways. More than 23 years ago, he co-founded and convened the Big 10/11 “plus” Career Services Professionals Conference. He also published the results of a study, Early Career Patterns Among Humanities College Graduates, that became a “fixture” in career centers nationwide, according to Tim Luzader, director of the Center for Career Opportunities at Purdue University. “It also became a valued text for academic departments,” says Luzader, who nominated Bechtel for fellowship, in part, because of his contributions to the field through research and publication. Additonall, Bechtel has served on a number of NACE committees and task forces, including the one that formulated the curriculum and design of NACE’s Management Leadership Institute (MLI). He’s currently a member of the MLI faculty and serves as the MidwestACE representative on NACE’s Board of Directors and as a member of the MidwestACE Executive Board.
“NACE and the regional groups have always brought me together with other people that I could learn from,” he says. “It’s that intergenerational connection that maintains and perpetuates the profession.”
Bechtel adds that he’s grateful for the opportunity to have
worked so long in career services.
“I can’t think of any other field in which individuals have as much direct impact on the future of young people,” he says. “I can’t think of any more meaningful work to do.”
