Scaling Career Support for Nontraditional, Online Students

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Just because somebody is 30 years old or 40 years old, they do have their lived experiences, but maybe not necessarily that career experience. And I know I shared the story of the student that said, “I’ve worked many jobs, but now I’m pursuing a career.” So realizing that not everybody is familiar with all of the things that we as career professionals are aware of.

And then also the how’s and the why’s to use different platforms. I think that, whenever possible, it’s important to explain those two things, and have the information available easily accessible for people so they can know the how and the why should they be using this, and how is that going to help them? And I think those are things that, if I’m going to use this, if I’m going to use spend my time, how is this going to help me? What am I going to be able to find out about myself?

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Anita DeCianni-Brown, the director of Career and Experiential Learning Services at SUNY Empire State University in New York. Thank you for being here, Anita.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Thank you for having me, Meredith. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, me too. And I am excited to talk to you today about how you are scaling career support for non-traditional students in a largely online environment. I know this is something that you have a ton of experience with there at SUNY Empire, where you have been leading career services for over 10 years now. And for many of those years, you were a team of one, which is pretty incredible, considering how many students you support. So long story short, if anyone knows how to scale career well, it’s you, Anita. So I’m excited to dig into this topic today with you. Before I get into my questions, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at SUNY Empire?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Well, I was reflecting back after you and I had a chance to meet about the conversation for today. And in January, it’ll mark 35 years of my working in career services. And I started out as an administrative assistant there, and worked at a university for almost 24 years before an opportunity opened at SUNY Empire, which also happens to be my alma mater. I joined SUNY Empire in 2014. And at the time, there was no career services here. So I was able to build what career services was going to be for our students. And as you mentioned, I was able to grow from a team of one to now a team of four. So that’s a little bit about my background. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. Some great context. And also how cool that you are now leading career services at your alma mater.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yeah, I knew, when I started looking after I completed my bachelor’s degree and I was in my master’s program, I knew that I wanted to work with non-traditional students. And it was perfect because SUNY Empire had locations in the Capital Region of New York, which is where I’m located, and so this was where I wanted to work.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s cool. I’m glad it all worked out for you. And you’re clearly making an impact there, which we’ll dig into more here in a little bit. Before I get into my more specific questions, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of my guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does career everywhere mean to you?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Like everybody else, there’s a lot of repetition in this response, and I think about our students, SUNY Empire students, our students are everywhere. They are located throughout New York State. They’re located throughout the country and internationally as well. I think about even the career team. We’re not all in one place, so we are located in three different regions. And even my colleagues and faculty and staff here at SUNY Empire are located pretty much everywhere. So being able to help our students through an online university and having the technology to be able to support them means that we have to have information available everywhere.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s a great response. And I love also that your team is also spread out. I don’t think I realized that. Are they all in New York?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yes, yes. But just different regions of the state. There’s two of us in the Capital Region and then one downstate and one to the western part of the state.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Do you all get together fairly often?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

We do. We do. We have definitely the team meetings. Virtual meetings are obviously different than in person, but we are able to get in person meetings probably about four times a year through retreats and university functions.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, good. That’s cool. All right. Now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is, again, how you are scaling career support for your non-traditional students in an online environment. So I know SUNY Empire has a unique history and student population. So to get us started, can you give some context on the university’s largely online model and who your students are?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Sure. So the average age demographic of our students is about 34 to 35 years old. However, I’ve been at commencement on ceremonies where the youngest student graduating was 17 and the oldest was 88.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, wow.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yeah. So there are a lot, especially with the students that work with career services or come through career services that are in the maybe 40 to 50 year old range and looking at new career opportunities. So aside from that, they’re located in all 62 counties across New York State. As of last year, they were located in 34 states across the country. And we also have international, not international students, but students that are internationally located. SUNY Empire is the largest SUNY school serving veteran and military affiliated students. We have over 1,000 military and veteran affiliated students. And then even further, 51% are working full-time, 15% are part-time, and about 38% are parents, and many are also caregivers. Some are parents and caregivers at the same time.

Meredith Metsker:

Talk about a lot to balance. What percentage did you say are working full time?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

51%.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow. Okay. So yeah, I definitely imagine that changes some things in terms of how they engage with classes, with career. Which kind of leads me to my next question, and that’s what are some of those biggest differences that you see between supporting more traditional age students and then supporting the non-traditional largely online students there at SUNY Empire?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So I worked with traditional students for almost 24 years. And it’s not like they were cookie cutter, but there was that these are things that freshmen should be doing, with sophomores, juniors, seniors, and grad students. This is what you should be doing. And then we developed programs based on how to support them at those different stages that they were in.

Non-traditional students, you’re not necessarily looking at them as the freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior. We’re looking at them as career starters, career transitioners, or career advancement. If we’re looking at how could we support them either through programming or even in our one-on-one conversations. Because like I shared a bit of our students, they are balancing work, school, families, caregiving, life in general, and sometimes all of those at the same time. So just realizing that we do have to be flexible with our schedules to be able to meet with students or to be able to provide them resources if we’re not available that can help them in their career searches.

And then another difference, again, working at a traditional university, the students came to the university, but didn’t often stay in the area. They came and got their education, and then they left. And SUNY Empire students are vested in the communities that they’re living in because they’re raising their families. So even trying to identify, if we’re trying to connect a student with an internship opportunity, we have to look at, okay, who are organizations in your area that we can try and help connect you to? So I think those are some of the biggest difference between the two students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Your last point especially unlocked something for me, because I guess it’s a good point. If you are in a traditional institution, you’re probably looking at the employers in your area who you know really well for internships and other opportunities. But when you have students from all over the country, you have to know employers everywhere to find opportunities that… Wow.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

And that’s very grassroots. Especially with the internships, trying to connect students to internship opportunities. It is one-on-one meetings with them, who’s in your area? And then we do look to see, okay, who might we be able to know there? Are there any alumni in that area? Or cold call reaching out and just asking organizations if they have internship programs or if they allow internships.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow. I am very glad you have a team now, including an internship coordinator. I know that’s one of your newer hires. But that must have been a lot to manage when it was just you.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

It was. And I will say that certainly career services has been scaling up. So while we did have students participating in internships in the past, it wasn’t at the interest that there seems to be now of participating in an experience. But I think that a lot of it is being able to provide information and the importance of if you are even somebody who’s career transitioning from one career path to another, how can you, while you’re a student, get the experience that you need, so when you’re graduating, you’ll be better positioned in a very competitive job market?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that also makes me want to double click on something you said earlier, and how you categorize the students that you work with as opposed to the more traditional labels are looking at it. It’s career starters, career transitioners, career advancement. Okay. Yeah, it’s a really interesting way to look at it.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yeah. And there are obviously career starters. And career starters, it doesn’t just mean that almost that traditional college age student, it means somebody, I’ve had people say, “I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life, but now I want a career. I want to be able to focus and have a career.” So that’s a career starter. But having the opportunity to sit down with them and help them transition their previous experiences to package themselves as a career starter in this new career path, not challenging, but it’s interesting. We do have that personalized approach.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, I bet. I’m glad you’re able to still have that kind of high touch white glove aspect to your support there. So you mentioned a few of these differences and challenges already, but are there any additional challenges that your non-traditional students face in career development that people might not always think about?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I think sometimes they lack confidence. They tend to, one of the things that I’ve noticed that a lot of our students do is they apologize for being in school at this time of their life. They sometimes feel like, gee, I’m 40, and now I’m pursuing my bachelor’s degree. And I’m like, “That’s okay. You’re talking to somebody who was in their 40s and completed their bachelor’s degree.” I think that that’s one of the biggest things that I have found in my time being here at SUNY Empire, is that they are almost feeling sorry, not for themselves, but feeling like they have to apologize because they are just starting school now. Or I went to school before and I dropped out or stopped out, and now I’m back because now I do want to pursue a career.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. That makes me think of a student I interviewed back when I worked at Washington State University years ago. I was on the central marketing team, and I would do feature stories on students and alumni. And there was this one non-traditional student. He was a former Army combat medic. And he was doing a complete career transition and was going into winemaking, so viticulture, and was it enology? And I remember him telling me that he was expressing to a fellow veteran, “I don’t know, I’m in my 40s. I’m too old to go to school.” And his friend was like, “Dude, you’re going to be 45 in a few years regardless. Do you want to be 45 with a bachelor’s degree or not?” And that’s always stuck with me. So that kind of reminded me of what you were just saying.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

It’s funny that you say that because I just heard from a grad school probably a couple weeks ago where they had shared some information about one of the students that was one of our alum who had recently graduated from there. And it was somebody that was in their 40s also. And they had spoken with one of their professors and they were uncertain. Should I be doing this? And he said, “You’re going to be 43 years old. Do you want to be 43 years old and on this career path, or do you want to be 43 years old and just say I didn’t try.” So he tried and is now in his residency for pharmacy school.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I love that. And this guy I interviewed, he is a winemaker. He owns his own winery. I’m still a member of his Founder’s Wine Club and get shipments four times a year. So yeah, that’s cool. It’s always fun to hear those success stories. Okay, Anita, so now for the big question on our topic today, how do you scale career services to meet your students wherever they are, whether that’s geographically, or professionally, or personally?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So before we started this call, I know that I had shared this with you, but I’ve worked in career services for 35 years. So I want to just touch back on my previous experience, and then talk about certainly what we’ve been doing here at SUNY Empire.

But when I first started in career services, the technology that was available then was phone number or phone, fax machine, copy machine, and word processing computer, not anything that we were working with that we had access to that was networked or database driven. And I remember when students would come in and sign up for interviews, they were looking at sheets of paper to see information about the companies that were coming to campus. They had to wait in line on the sign up day. So the first time that I was walking into the office, I thought that there was somebody there were concert tickets. Because the line was zigzag through the building and went out to another building. And that was just for people to come in and sign up for one interview a day. And then technology has come into play, and there are job posting systems and there are websites to be able to provide information at people’s fingertips so they don’t have to wait in those lines anymore.

Now where we are with career services here at SUNY Empire, when I first started, there was a web page, not a website, that had three links on it. That was what career services was. And not that there weren’t career conversations because there were a lot, students would have those conversations with their mentors or their advisors, with faculty, but there wasn’t a designated person or office that put together information to support everybody to a larger audience.

So after I was hired, I had looked at what was the website, the career services website going to look like? What were we going to be able to do and offer work through? And we didn’t even have a job posting system. Everything was just a text-based web page that, if you printed out that web page, it would be about 40 pages long.

So we had looked at a couple different platforms and initially introduced just a job posting system. And so career services with technology had been the website and job posting system from 2014 to 2023 when I had my one-on-one with my boss at the time and had said, “I’d like to be able to look at a couple different resources. I remember when I was at the other university, we had used something called Candid Career. I’d like to explore that.”

So I met with that rep. Didn’t get that sale. However, I found out about uConnect during that meeting, and then I was able to set up a time for a demo. There were several people throughout my division that had sat in on the demo, and we had decided to go with uConnect because that really had the things that I was looking for to be able to start a bigger effort to introduce careers to students.

We have a lot of students. Because we don’t have that campus center, we don’t have that location that if somebody’s walking to a class, they’re going to be walking by the career office and they’re going to maybe stop in and see what is it about. Or we’re not at a campus center to have a table and start talking to students because they are there at lunchtime. So being able to have this virtual career center set up, or virtual career resource, has been incredibly helpful and has impacted our ability to scale up in career services. So I’ll stop and see if you have any questions because I share a lot.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. No, I always love hearing the story of how we came to be partners together, you there at SUNY Empire and us here at uConnect. And it makes a lot of sense that the virtual career center platform works so well for you, so you have to literally be available for students 24/7. Because yeah, if you’ve got a student who is working the swing shift or something, they can’t go to the career center during business hours, and you still have to reach them. Or folks who are parents or caregivers or have full-time jobs. They’re doing career research at 3:00 in the morning maybe. And so yeah. Yeah, I’m sure you can probably see exactly when they’re logging in.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

That’s when I get the emails too. And because somebody might be in California, and they’re sending an email at 8:00 or 9:00, and it’s 11:00 or 12:00 here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Oh man. You got the time zone difference too. So yeah, it makes sense why uConnect is a good solution for you. It just kind of makes all of the resources available 24/7, puts them all in one place, easy to access. I’ll include a link for people who are watching or listening to your virtual career center, but maybe can you paint a word picture for us on what kind of resources are on there and how you have it organized to make it easy for students to access?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Up until, actually this year, we had just been using uConnect CareerShift and Handshake. Those two resources, especially after launching uConnect, I saw our Handshake usage and applications skyrocket. It was over 300%. And it’s because it, I think, brought the platform a little bit more front and center. It was on the career page before, but now we have students that are signing up for the automated emails, so they get the notifications then. It is a lot easier to, I guess, those teaser opportunities that they’re seeing on the career pathways pages.

So we do pull in Handshake onto the Career Hub. Students can see what’s available, and then they’re pursuing the application. So that really has helped in increasing the usage with Handshake. This semester, we are launching Focus 2 and Big Interview as our two new platforms. With Big Interview, we also have the resume tool, the resume feature, that is available. Because we didn’t have a virtual resume feature everything. We did promote some of the free resources that are out there, but this is one that we wanted to pursue to help our students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. That makes sense. Again, it’s about having resources that scale your team’s work because there’s, what, four of you, correct, for how many students? Remind me.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Over 17,000.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. I’m not going to do the math, but the ratio, but it’s a lot of students per person. And can you remind me really quick who the other three people on your team are? So it’s you leading.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Internship coordinator, a military and veteran career advisor, and then an assistant director of career and experiential learning services.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, cool. Yeah. So it sounds like your virtual career center kind of scales every aspect of their work as well.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

It certainly does. And while we were building out the, we call it our Career Hub, as we were building it out, I had not done that in a silo. I had worked across the division that I work in, so I’m part of the student success division. I shared out the resource. I gave a tour to all the different offices. I worked with faculty and our faculty chairs to show them the resource, and give them that same tour. Ask for feedback before it was launched to students. I mean, it really is a great platform. It is so easy to use. So as people were saying, “Hey, you could add this,” or, “Maybe you should do this,” I could do that live time. And it really didn’t take a whole lot of time to be able to make those adjustments, but there was additional buy-in because everybody felt like they had a say in what this resource was going to look like.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, literally career everywhere. I love that. And yeah, your comments about being able to make changes in real time is one we hear from a lot of our partners here at uConnect. Just you don’t have to go through IT. You don’t have to go through central MarCom. You can just make changes. And as I think we’ve talked about before, or anyone in career services would know, the state of the workforce is changing on a daily basis, hourly sometimes it seems like. And so being able to just make changes quickly or add a new timely resource the same day is just huge.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

It really is. And first of all, also being able to have information available 24/7. And I remember when we were, even our IT department was in on the demo and in the conversation. And somebody had asked that was on the review committee, isn’t this something that could be done internally? And I said, “No, it really isn’t.” And so when-

Meredith Metsker:

Theoretically.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

But I think that on the whole being able to curate the information, that isn’t. I can decide I want this article to be shared out with our addiction studies students in the Rochester region. We didn’t have that capability on our website to be able to do that. And uConnect just makes that so easy to designate which information goes to which community. I refer to them as the communities of information, we can decide where it goes. And it really just is an easy thing for us to be able to be in control of.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. I’m thinking specifically of your military or your veteran students being able to find information that’s relevant to them on their community page. And then of course, there’s the email capability as well within uConnect. You can send automated curated emails based on that tagging system. So yeah, your military students are only receiving that information that is relevant to them via email. So yeah, that’s really cool. Okay. Is there anything else about the technology side of things that you’d like to mention?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I think that the other piece is, and this kind of even goes back to thinking about the non-traditional students, is sometimes we make assumptions that, okay, you’re 30 years old, you’re 40 years old. If I just put this out there, you’re going to know how to use it. You’re going to know the how and the why should I be using it. And being able to have a platform and a space to be able to explain how to use something, whether it be by, and I’ll use this example, but I interviewed Val Matta from CareerShift, and had the conversation with her about why should somebody be using CareerShift in there for networking and for identifying job opportunities? And that was a great conversation.

If you look at universal design, there is the video. We have a supporting document there or supporting article for people to find out more about it. So it engages all different types of learners, but they can sit there and they can watch it and read it on their own time, and really not have to worry about coming into a place or space, but has those questions answered of the why. How can I use this? Why should I be using this?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think that’s kind of another strength of the uConnect’s Virtual Career Center too, is that it brings all of those resources into one place without necessarily having to go log in to every single resource. Because I remember, even as a student myself, seeing an logo or an icon for, I don’t know, Parker Dewey or something at the time, or Handshake, and I’m like, I don’t know what that is. And it is not immediately clear to me what that logo means. Whereas with the virtual career center, you just bring in the job and internship postings. They’re just right there. So yeah, that’s really cool. I always love hearing how you’re using all your technology. I know there’s also, you’ve mentioned a Career Champion program before. Remind me, is that still kind of under construction or where are we at with that?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

One of the things that we had done over the summer is we started a career liaison. So that is, again, I work in the student success division. So we have career liaisons from all the other offices in our division sit in on our career team meeting once a month. And we also have somebody from our partnerships office, and also on that team is our new workforce development director. So there we went from a team of four on those meetings to now about 15 people that are in on those meetings. And that has been really helpful in hearing about, we have academic advisors. I’m in the division with academic advising and academic support, accessibility services and resources. We have student success and development coordinators. So each student has an advisor or mentor, and then they have a student success coordinator that they work with. They’re that go-to person for the student. We have health and wellness and opportunity programs.

So it is all of the services and supports for students in order to help them be successful. So wanting to be able to share out, not just share out the career resources and events and activities that we’re doing, but having input from the different offices on their engagement with students in the career space. And one of the things that has come out of this so far is we have developed a career kit, a career welcome kit. And each of the liaisons have brought them back, has brought the career kit back to their teams, asked for input and suggestions. And now hopefully at the end of this week, I’m going to have my next meeting with our marketing team on developing something visually for the career kits. So that’s our initial stage of the Career Champions. But we are putting together an ad hoc committee to decide what it’s going to look like here. Our first meeting will hopefully be later this month.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Yeah, I love hearing about all of that, and especially those career kits. I know you talked about that in our webinar last month as well. And people were in the chat clamoring to see the career kits.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I promise to share it in the Career Everywhere community as soon as it’s done.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So there you go. If you’re watching or listening to this and you want to see these career kit examples that Anita mentioned, go on over to the Career Everywhere community and join. So you can see them when she posts them. You’ll find it at community.careereverywhere.com is the URL I believe. Okay. So we’ve talked about technology. We’ve talked about your career liaison system you’ve got going on there. Are there any other strategies or things you’d like to mention about how you are scaling to meet your non-traditional students in an online environment?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I think that those are really two of the areas. After I went from an I to a we, so a lot of the work that had been done before, it was just being able to put myself out there and meet with students and to create programs. And not that there wasn’t a place and space for me because there was always that place and space for career, but after having a team join, then there was a lot more opportunity for strategizing.

We have now access to all of this data. How many page views are on the Career Hub? How many students are applying for career opportunities on Handshake? How many are completing assessments on Focus 2, how many are using Big Interview? So now it is an opportunity to take all of that information and evaluate and see where might we be able to improve, at what points are students connecting with career services.

We don’t want students just to come to us in their last semester, the last of the semester, and say, “Okay, I’m graduating next month, now what do I do?” Or the, and this happens quite often. I just completed my degree. Now what? So we want to be able to be able have those conversations sooner with them. And if it isn’t somebody on the career team, it’s certainly going to be our colleagues for them to be able to provide, hey, here’s this resource, here’s this career kit. Or if you want to find out more about being working in organizational psychology, here’s some resources.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I imagine it’s easier now that you have a team, you have some help, to kind of zoom out a little bit. Sometimes you’re not in the trenches constantly anymore. You can zoom out, think about that bigger picture strategy, do some reflection on the last year. I’m curious, in the process of you all doing that recently, has anything stood out to you in that data? Anything that surprised you or any areas of improvement that you saw?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

When I say we’re still kind of new to this. So certainly I’ve been looking at the applications on Handshake. How can we start increasing this? Well, having the Career Hub with uConnect, that has helped increase the engagement on Handshake. So some of the other things that I was seeing was the how and the why again. How can I use this? Why should I be using this? For the students who are in that exploratory stage, how can they use informational interviewing? How can they use some of these exploration tools to help them?

And I did not look back. I know that I had connected students with people for informational interviews, but it was like I was a team of one, and there wasn’t a lot of request for that information. But now as we have been growing, there has been a lot more questions about what is the data showing? So we are also working, we’re going through a self-study this year, and we are working with our decision support team, and looking at what we’re going to evaluate and how we’re going to evaluate. But certainly also the checkpoints, how many students are engaged in the career space beyond just the one-on-one appointments?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Well, cool. I’ll be excited to hear what you find out. Kind of speaking of the different ways that students engage with you, for these non-traditional students, how are you adapting your programming, your appointments, things like timing, format, delivery, all of that, to accommodate your students’ lives and schedules?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So programming has normally always been either noon, or 6:00 or 7:00 at night. But now, certainly leaning into technology a lot more, we were always able to have the ability to record a session. We have a platform or space here, LearnScape, so we record and can caption the recordings there. But they hadn’t necessarily been viewed as many times because people had to know where to find it, they had to know that they could look where to find it. And now we put those videos front and center.

So I have a weekly series called Ask5. And those sessions are recorded and posted on the Career Hub. And so for somebody that isn’t available when we’re recording, they can certainly view the recording at a later time. I think that being able to offer the recordings also gives safe space to some individuals. And I’m going to use an example of students with disabilities. So I have had a couple different guests on either Ask5 or in a Careers In Series talking about students with disabilities. And there were not any students that attended during the live conversation.

And probably about maybe, I think one of them, there was about two months later, I went and I looked to see how many times the recording had been viewed, and it had been viewed over 100 times. So I know that the information is being made available and it’s important to individuals, but for whatever reason, they did not or could not attend the session. So making sure that we keep with those times.

And then as far as the actual one-on-one appointments, with a larger team now, we do offer appointments during the traditional work hours. But then I’ve also opened up my schedule where sometimes I’ve met with students at 7:00 AM, I’ve met with students at 8:00 PM. Trying to accommodate their schedules. We do try to fit it in whenever possible during the day, but sometimes if a student is getting out of work at 4:00, meeting with them at 4:30. There hasn’t been a student where we have turned them away, with the exception of a request for Sundays. And I’ve had a couple of those. I’m like, I can’t meet with you on a Saturday or a Sunday.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, got to have some boundaries.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

But let’s try to find a time. So definitely flexible schedules.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense for the students you’re serving. I was wondering if you could share an example of maybe a program or an initiative that’s worked really well with your non-traditional and online students. I don’t know if that’s Ask5 or something else, but I would be curious to hear.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So actually, I was going to use Ask5 as my example, only because I’ve been doing it now over two years. And what I like about it is that I’ve been able to have a lot of alumni as guests who are working in their field. And I think that it’s important for our students to see themselves or their future selves in the guests, if that makes sense. That these are individuals that, same thing, they have walked that path. A guest that I had yesterday had lost his position in banking probably 40 years ago, and ended up coming to SUNY Empire, and that helped in that next career.

So I think that the stories that they’re able to share have been impactful for students. I have been able to use this, if somebody is exploring career paths, if I haven’t had somebody as a guest or a particular career path as a guest, I try to seek that career path out and have them as a guest. At the same time, even when I was a team of one, that was really helpful to me to find out, what advice do you have for that new student? What advice do you have for that future student? What is the challenges? So having those conversations, that I could then use during my counseling sessions with students. So that has been really impactful and important to even my own career development as well as being able to help students with their career development.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I was just thinking that. Not only are you creating this great content for your students, but you’re also building up this internal library of stories and examples and connections and advice. Yeah. That’s really cool. Can you remind me what format this is in? Is it like a video? Is it audio?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yep. We do it on Teams and record it, and then caption, and then shared out on the Career Hub. And there’s been times where we have had students that have attended. And then normally what I will do is it does get shared out, so not just on the Career Hub, but I will share it with maybe a faculty chair for that department area or that major. And then they share it out with students in their program.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Is it always the same five questions?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

No. The only same question that I will ask is, if it’s an alum, I normally incorporate how did your SUNY Empire degree impact your career? But everybody else is different. I ask them for a short snippet on their bio, and then I develop the questions based on that.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow. So for the alumni, you must be the marketing team’s best friend. Or I would hope so. You have so many good stories from alumni and good quotes probably.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I do. I do. And so I do work with, and have always worked with, our alumni office. Because we also provide supports and services for alumni. So I do share out, they have, I keep everything on, everything is on the Career Hub, but then I also have an Excel spreadsheet that has who the guest is, what the topic is, whether they were an alum, and then the link from the Career Hub on there. So it’s easily accessible. And I mean, I do share it out with the various teams.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. Again, it’s career everywhere in action. So Anita, what advice would you give to other career services leaders who are kind of in the same boat, and they want to better serve online or non-traditional students?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So I know I touched on this a couple of times, but I’m just not assuming that everyone is familiar with, say, new trends and everything that we know. I think also, again, that just because somebody is 30 years old or 40 years old, they do have their lived experiences, but maybe not necessarily that career experience. And that, I know I shared the story of the student that said, “I’ve worked many jobs, but now I’m pursuing a career.” So realizing that not everybody is familiar with all of the things that we as career professionals are aware of.

And then also the how’s and the why’s to use different platforms. I think that, whenever possible, it’s important to explain those two things, and have the information available, easily accessible for people so they can know the how and the why should they be using this, and how is that going to help them? And I think those are things that, if I’m going to use this, if I’m going to spend my time, how is this going to help me? What am I going to be able to find out about myself?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, that context is so important, especially when you only have maybe a second to capture someone’s attention and convince them that they should use this resource. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

And then I think also being flexible with your time in the offerings. So if you’re going to have something at 12:00 or 6:00, making sure that it’s recorded, and then able to share out with anybody who wasn’t able to attend. And one of the things that SUNY Empire, not necessarily is founded on, but it is one of the things that we always keep in mind, is that we are meeting students where they are. So thinking back to those career starters, career transition, and career advancement, even for those individuals who are looking for career advancement, what are their needs? How can we help them? Completing their degree is going to be one piece of that puzzle. What other supports can we provide them with to help them as they are looking for career advancement?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s great advice. I love that. In my mind, I’m summarizing it as don’t make assumptions and record everything. I love that. Okay. As I kind of start wrapping us up here, Anita, is there anything else you would like to add?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I think mine is just going to be a shout out of thanks and appreciation. So certainly to the Career Everywhere community. And I’ll also add my SUNY CDO. So SUNY CDO is the career development organization in SUNY. While I was a team of one, this has been my brainstorming and idea generating arm. If I needed to ask a question, if I was looking for advice, I could go to these communities of people and ask the question and have resources shared with me, or follow along in conversations to hear about what others are doing. So that has been incredibly helpful. So shout out of thanks.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. That’s really cool that you had the SUNY group, especially as a team of one. And then, yeah, I see you all the time in the Career Everywhere community. I’m like, oh, there’s Anita. Love it. So I’m glad that’s been helpful for you. If people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Either LinkedIn or my email address, and I can provide that to you to share out on the podcast.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, great. Yeah. For anyone watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include a link to Anita’s LinkedIn profile and her email. And as we mentioned, she’s also in the Career Everywhere community, so you can find her in there as well. Okay, Anita. So at the end of every interview, I like to do this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you. And then you will leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was Brenna Gomez of Oregon State, and she left this question for you. What is your favorite piece of art that you have engaged with this year and why?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

I love the old world arts. I was gifted with learning how to embroidery and quilt and crocheting. So my dad passed away a little over three years ago. And at the end of last year, I happened to find a bag that we had not given away of shirts that were my dad’s. So I made a quilt for each of the grandchildren, and gave that onto each of them as a gift. So as far as a piece of art that I engaged with this past year, that is my piece of art.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Not only did you engage with it, I mean you made it. You created that. And that’s so special that it kind of uses your dad’s old shirts and sort of tells his story and kind of keeps his memory alive for the grandchildren. So that’s really cool. Thank you for sharing that.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Yeah. As they were looking at their quilts, they remembered him wearing the different shirts.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. It’s making me think too, up in my closet right now, I have an old shirt of my grandpa’s as well, my mom’s dad. And I don’t know if I’ve ever worn it. It just kind of sits there in my closet, but it makes me smile every time I look at it.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

It was emotional when I first started making them. And then after, I was glad when they were completed, and then they were able to be shared out. But that was the piece of art that I truly engaged in this past year.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s beautiful, Anita. Thank you for sharing that with us. All right. What question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So I was going to go with a fun question of maybe pumpkin spice or peppermint for coffee. But I’m going to go with, thinking back to your very first job, what is a skill that you still use today?

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a really good one. Do you know what your answer would be to that?

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

So I was a paper carrier.

Meredith Metsker:

Nice.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

And I would say customer service is the skill that I have pretty much used in every job that I’ve had since then. And communication. But I’ll go with the customer service.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s a good one. See, I was a cart pusher at a grocery store. I’m trying to think what my skill would be. Maybe developing my own systems for things, ways to get things done. I was all about efficiency, or trying to be efficient and get as many carts on the line as possible. And I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in a past episode, but I actually got in trouble one time because they caught me on the security camera with three times as many carts on the line as I should have had. I was blocking traffic at one point. But I got the cart room filled up with one trip. And so I was very proud of myself, but I broke the rules.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Improved efficiency though. I mean, that is very important.

Meredith Metsker:

So yeah, maybe efficiency, developing systems, and a little bit of pushing the envelope. But okay. Well that’s a good question. I will be excited to hear what the next guest says to that one. All right. Well, Anita, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was a really fun conversation, full of great stories, and lots of good tactical advice as well. So just thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom.

Anita DeCianni-Brown:

Meredith, thank you so much for inviting me. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation.