NACE/Chevron Award
Institute on Public Careers— New York University-Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
To educate college career services professionals about public service careers, the Office of Career Services and Experiential Learning at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service (NYU Wagner) partnered with Idealist.org, a global clearinghouse of nonprofit and volunteering resources, to create the Institute on Public Service Careers.
“In 2003, Paul Light of NYU Wagner and the Brookings Institute surveyed graduating seniors from across the country and found that 62 percent seriously considered public service careers, but only 44 percent knew a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ about finding a job in either the government or nonprofit sectors,” explains David Schachter, assistant dean of career services and experiential learning at NYU Wagner. “Furthermore, less than a quarter of students thought their college career services office was ‘very helpful’ in connecting them to public service opportunities.
“I’m on the Idealist.org college and university advisory council,” Schachter adds. “In June 2003, we held a meeting of the council, and members discussed the challenges of integrating public service career options onto campus.”
Several months later, Schachter says that a meeting with his dean, program directors, and members of the faculty at NYU Wagner led to a discussion about how career options in public service are often not well articulated and what could be done to increase undergraduate students’ interest in pursuing careers in public service. He saw parallels in NYU Wagner and Idealist.org’s focuses and brought up the idea of the two entities partnering on an initiative.
“The first thing we wanted to see was if we had shared values and ideas about this work,” Schachter notes. “We found that both Wagner and Idealist take public service work very seriously, that we don’t see this as something to do until something better comes along, and that we wanted to reframe public service to broadly include a variety of ways that one’s work can matter in the world. We also wanted to make the pathways to public service more visible and accessible and to support young professionals in the field.”
With their like goals as their foundation, NYU Wagner and Idealist.org launched the Institute on Public Service Careers, a two-day event that was held in December 2004 with 33 career services professionals from colleges across the country attending.
“In a post-conference survey, 100 percent of the attendees said it would be anywhere from ‘helpful’ to ‘essential’ to offer the training to other career services staff in other parts of the country,” Schachter says. “As a result, NYU Wagner and Idealist have received funding from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation to conduct five regional events to take place by the end of 2006.”
Program objectives include:
- Enhance participants’ ability to make public service careers more visible and accessible to college students.
- Help participants better understand public service careers and feel equipped to integrate these options into their work.
- Provide tools, as well as heighten awareness and confidence in addressing this issue.
- Position participants as active players around this issue both on campus and with their peers in career services.
- Get participants excited about and inspired by public service careers.
Additional events have been held in Portland, Oregon; Atlanta; New York City; and Minneapolis. The final conference in this series will be held in San Diego in December.
