Maximize the Impact of International Experience via Purposeful Career Integration on Campus

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Global Career Compass

My colleagues at The Learning Abroad Center on the University of Minnesota campus have announced plans for the third conference on the important and essential topic of career integration to be held in Washington D.C., August 8-10, 2018. The theme of the 2018 conference, “Leveraging Partnerships,” examines how connections between study abroad and career services professionals can be maximized to help students find success in the job market.

Go to https://umabroad.umn.edu/professionals/career-int/conferences/2018-conference/ (register on this page at careerintegration.org). I’ll be tracking the program all year long and inform readers of those developments here and via my twitter feed @tillman_marty. I’ve been fortunate to present at the first two conferences – in 2014 & 2016 – held on the campus of UMN and near the offices of CAPA in Boston.

The Career Integration conference, while modest in size, attracts a diverse group of professionals from both career services and study abroad offices around the country. It’s become an important meeting place to address barriers which inhibit these offices from working together, along with senior international officers and faculty, to deepen student learning outcomes from their international experience.

Followers of my writing over the past decade know of my advocacy for integration of student advising services to assist students maximize the impact of their international experience. However, this topic is not only about the cross-training of career and study abroad staffs, or the design of reflective practices before a student leaves campus, while s/he is abroad and upon their return; it’s about – in a more complex analysis – the manner in which a campus chooses to fulfill its mission to internationalize the curriculum and foster a holistic understanding among all staff and faculty of the institution’s role in preparing global-ready graduates. Graduates who have been actively – and purposefully- engaged in building their toolkits of skills and competencies, in and outside the classroom, to provide a foundation for their employability (at home or abroad) after graduation.

Two books are available on the above UMN webpage, comprising brief essays on topics addressed at the 2014 and 2016 Career Integration conferences: Career Integration: Reviewing the Impact of Experience Abroad on Employment I and II

For further background on the issues discussed in these volumes, see my publications and essays on my LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/martintillman