NACE Kauffman Award 2005
Pat Carretta
In
1971, Pat Carretta began work as a career counselor at the University
of Iowa. At the time, the career planning library there consisted of little
more than several professional directories and information about individual
employers. Carretta changed all of that. She developed the career center’s
career planning library into a comprehensive resource center. But she
didn’t stop there.
Among other things, Carretta developed a career course to help students not only choose a major, but to help them choose a career, and she helped start the university’s first cooperative education program.
“My experience in the 1970s at Iowa was a fabulous learning experience,” says Carretta, now associate dean/director of career services at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “It taught me how to build a career center.”
It also helped teach Carretta the value of strong leadership. In addition to her everyday duties at George Mason, Carretta has served on numerous NACE committees, task forces, and review teams. In addition, she served on the NACE Board of Directors.
Most recently, Carretta chaired NACE’s Leadership Development Committee, which develops opportunities and training for NACE members to serve in leadership roles.
“Pat’s leadership in this committee and the work it has produced has provided the career services and employment professions with workshops at national meetings, better communication with members, and ideas for recognizing leaders within the profession,” explains Tim Luzader, director of the center for career opportunities at Purdue University and 2004-05 NACE President, who nominated Carretta for the Kauffman Award.
Carretta says that she has always believed strongly in professional development. As she looked at how the profession was changing during her career, she also saw how critical it was to have people in leadership roles at colleges and universities who could raise the visibility and credibility of career services to make people see the importance of the work career services does. Furthermore, effective leaders were able to demonstrate how critical this work is to the educational mission.
“It wasn’t enough for us to simply get a master’s or doctoral [degree],” she says. “We needed a curriculum that addresses our profession and what we do. We needed a common body of knowledge to build and grow on.”
To this end, Carretta has been instrumental in developing NACE’s Management Leadership Institute and other leadership development offerings. Developing strong leaders has helped to create a new focus within the profession.
“I feel very fortunate to be part of the shift away from career centers primarily being a placement service to them becoming a comprehensive career development center,” Carretta says. “And I think it has been incredibly exciting and rewarding to be associated with professionals and universities that recognize that it’s more important to educate students in career planning and not simply focus on getting jobs when they graduate.”
