Description:
This presentation will explore how we design programming that is targeted to each student's needs in fun, engaging, and accessible ways to diverse students during a time of uncertainty. Providing robust career education to marginalized students is important to remain engaged and supportive to communities that can often get lost in the pack.
We will start by sharing our framework as to how we ensure we maintain our engagement with key campus partners and marginalized student populations. We approach all of our programming through the lens of our framework, which includes:
Understandability: A clear outline of the things that students should be doing in a way that is not full of “career services speak” but rather offers friendly language that will help them clearly understand regardless of their level of preparedness.
Example- Workshop introducing BEAM resources, such as our Alumni Mentoring Platform and Handshake
Exposure: Expose students to things that help broaden their perspectives around what opportunities are available to them, and how to successfully get to those opportunities.
Example- Diversity Career Resources, BIPOC in Policy & Politics
Inclusiveness: Focus on improving inclusiveness of all things for all communities.
Example- Providing a Diversity Guide to complement the campus-wide career fair
Skill Building: Preparing students for all career-related endeavors from the “application process” to networking etc.
Example- Career Fair Prep, UnResume Workshops, LinkedIn Workshops, Career readiness summer cohorts for FLI students, etc.
Identity Development: Supporting students around their growth and evolution with topics pertaining to the intersection of career and identity. What are the issues my community is facing, how can I confront them, and where is my support for this?
Example- WOC Alumni Panel, Black STEM Panel, etc.
Allyship: Helping students to understand that BEAM believes “We are you, we understand you, we support you, this is important to us, we are working to make things better”.
Example- FLI Identity/Ally
Connections: Connecting students with those that can support them on their path in finding meaningful work.
Example- Diversity Alumni Mentoring Groups for LGBTQIA+, Latinx, Students with Disabilities, Black, Women, Native and Indigenous, APIDA, etc.
Then we will discuss what this engagement looks like by showing real-world examples in the virtual space, which includes cohorts, modules, a podcast, an online video library, gamification, and more! Attendees can learn scalable ways to implement career programming to their student populations in nontraditional formats.
Our team has been catalysts in exploring programming in many different ways to support our students. Our work focuses on supporting marginalized students where we use our resources and skills to help create access to career education using new mediums to engage students during the time of uncertainty and Zoom fatigue. The goal of this presentation is to share the myriad of ways we were able to successfully engage marginalized communities.
This session should particularly benefit those who are interested in helping underrepresented students at the intersection of identity and career development. Underrepresented students are historically disadvantaged when navigating a college and are less likely than their peers to ask for help. Our approach will help others learn how Stanford University engages students to critically think about their identity and how that intersects with their career development. Our work toward inclusion ensures that students from the following communities feel seen and heard: Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA), Black, Students with Disabilities or Learning Difference, First-Generation and/or Low Income (FLI), International, Latinx, LGBTQIA, Native American, Veterans, Women and Communities of Faith.
