If you haven’t listened to part one yet, start there first. In that episode, Dr. Barbara Blake walks through the origin story of ODU’s Monarch Internship & Co-Op Office—why it was created, how it’s structured, and how four distinct pathways are making work-based learning accessible to every student regardless of major, background, or circumstance.
In part two, the conversation goes deeper. Host Meredith Metsker and Barbara dig into what the office has accomplished in its first three years, how Barbara secured $8.5 million in funding from more than 20 sources, and what it looks like to turn a $5 million Mellon Foundation gift into 75 brand-new internships that never existed before. Barbara also takes on one of the field’s thorniest issues—unpaid internships—and makes a compelling case for why career services leaders need to stop accepting the status quo and start advocating for change.
She closes with some of the most practical advice in the two-part series: how to find your people on campus, how to “think small” when it comes to grants, and why doubling down on what you do best is the right move for any career office that’s stretched too thin.
Key takeaways
- Myth-busting is a mission-critical service for first-gen students. First-gen students often arrive on campus with assumptions about internships—that they’re all unpaid, that they last a full year, that they require quitting school. Barbara’s office treats dispelling those myths as core work, because students who don’t know what’s possible won’t pursue what’s available.
- The Mellon Foundation gift created internships that didn’t exist before. ODU’s $5 million, five-year grant from the Mellon Foundation funds the Monarch Humanities Internship Academy, which pays humanities students $20 an hour for internships—including at nonprofits that previously couldn’t host interns because they couldn’t afford to pay them. Since early 2024, the academy has created over 75 brand-new internships.
- Unpaid internships deserve real advocacy, not just workarounds. Barbara’s advice: reach across the aisle to faculty and departments whose students are required to do unpaid work, and ask what the office can do to help. Transportation stipends, scrubs, stethoscopes, gas cards—these aren’t glamorous solutions, but they keep students from stopping out. And at the field level, Barbara wants to see regional and national organizations pushing accrediting bodies to explain—and revisit—the policies that prohibit pay in the first place.
- Service to students is the biggest win. When asked what she’s most proud of, Barbara doesn’t lead with funding numbers or engagement metrics. She talks about a student who submitted 50 internship applications with help from her team and landed a well-paid national internship that changed his life. And a student who interned with a U.S. Congressman and wrote to say her whole world had changed. Those stories are what keep the team going on hard days.
- Scalable doesn’t have to mean impersonal. ODU’s virtual internship office, powered by uConnect, launched in fall 2025 and already boasts a 55% engagement rate—the highest among comparable R1 institutions in Virginia. Barbara describes the balance the office has struck: high-touch counseling on the ground, backed by a virtual platform that extends the office’s reach without losing its heart.
- Look for the helpers. Barbara’s number-one piece of advice for career leaders who want to do something non-traditional: find your people. Survey the campus landscape, identify like-minded faculty, staff, and administrators, and start building consensus before you try to build a program. A presidential mandate helped ODU, but not every campus has that—so start with whoever is willing.
- Think small when it comes to grants. Not everyone can write a $5 million grant, and that’s okay. Barbara’s team received a couple thousand dollars from a group of retired faculty to support social work students doing unpaid internships. Ten students got stipends. It was competitive, it was meaningful, and it started somewhere. The point is to start.
About the guest
Dr. Barbara Blake is the Chief Internship Officer and Executive Director of the Monarch Internship & Co-Op Office at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. An economist by training, she has taught economics for over 20 years, conducted economic research for NATO, worked in the corporate world for companies like Hanes Mexico, and owned her own consulting business. Since launching the Monarch Internship & Co-Op Office in July 2023, her team has secured $8.5 million in funding from more than 20 funders and built one of the most distinctive experiential learning models in higher education. Dr. Blake holds a master’s degree from the University of Leeds and has published and presented original economic research in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Resources from the episode
- Dr. Blake’s LinkedIn profile
- Monarch Internship & Co-Op Virtual Internship Office (powered by uConnect)
- Dr. Blake’s email: bblakego@odu.edu
- Part one of this conversation—if you haven’t already, start there for the full context on how the Monarch Internship & Co-Op Office was built and how it works
Meredith Metsker:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker. And for this episode, I am once again joined by Dr. Barbara Blake, the chief internship officer and executive director of the Monarch Internship & Co-op Office at Old Dominion University. As a reminder, this is part two of my interview with Barbara. We were having such a great conversation that I asked if she’d be willing to stay on a little bit longer so we could keep digging into the incredible innovative work she’s doing with internships at ODU. And she was kind enough to say yes.
If you haven’t already listened to part one, I would highly recommend listening to that episode before starting this one. In part one, we covered a lot of important context around the Monarch Internship & Co-op Office ODU, including why it was established, how it’s structured, and how they actually make internships accessible for every single student. In this episode, part two, we’ll get into the internship office’s biggest win so far, what their funding strategy looks like, how they address challenges around unpaid internships and what’s next for the office. So let’s jump back in.
So Barbara, a theme that I am hearing in a lot of your answers is this theme of access, meeting students where they are. And I know you have mentioned before that ODU is a minority serving institution with a high Pell and first-gen populations and a large military connected community. So I’m curious, how does that context shape your approach to internship and co-op access?
Barbara Blake:
Well, absolutely. If you look at national statistics, statistics from NACE, if you look at what we know about internships and access across the country, we know that without a doubt, there are folks missing. And so depending upon the state that you look at, you might see the most participants are white males or the most participants are white females. And so where is everybody else? And so it is such a pleasure to be able to work with our population. And I will say very specifically our first-gen population. So these are students that mom and dad didn’t go, maybe no one in their immediate family went to a college or university and graduated. And so this is the student who is coming in and perhaps having a very different experience than the student whose mom and dad or uncle or big brother went to university.
They understand that office hours is actually for them and not the faculty member. Those things, those just inherent things that you’re only going to know unless you’ve been on a college campus before or you have a resource to kind of tell you. And so for these students, they oftentimes don’t even understand internships and maybe they’re listening to others to go, “Oh, well, they’re all unpaid,” and there’s no way you can do that. And the market for internships has changed so much, especially in these high demand fields such as computer science, engineering. I mean, just in our local region, I have engineering firms that will provide a housing stipend, will provide a gas stipend, will provide a very nice hourly wage, right?
We have an in-house program for our college of humanities and those humanities students through my in-house program will earn $20 an hour, which can be very competitive to other external jobs and they don’t know that. So getting that message out and really busting the myths and really talking to them about what it means. Is it full-time? Is it part-time? Well, do I have to do this for 16 weeks? Can I just do it for two months? So really talking with them. So that is probably our greatest mission here because we know beyond a shadow of a doubt if we can get our students to really learn about that industry they are studying to enter into, and perhaps it’s multiple industries, right?
Maybe it’s not one clear industry, but it’s multiple pathways that if we can really educate them and not all internships are unpaid because sometimes those assumptions are made. There are made, “Oh, well, don’t I have to do that for a year?” No, you don’t have to do that for a year. So really doing the myth busting for these students, especially if they don’t have a family member or a trusted friend or colleague that will explain to them, “Well, this is what a co-op actually is.” And if we can just get to them and maybe they don’t know, then we can counsel them and tell them about the opportunities that they could have through this office and throughout the campus.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, that’s really great to hear all of that. And I wanted to dig in on one point. You’ve talked about the struggles and the challenges of unpaid internships a few times. And I know that you all recently got a $5 million gift from the Mellon Foundation. You’ve gotten some other funding to help combat some of those challenges with unpaid internships. Could you share a little bit more about the funding you’ve received and then what you’re doing with it?
Barbara Blake:
Absolutely. And resourcing is everything as we all know.
Meredith Metsker:
Yes.
Barbara Blake:
If we don’t have the resources, it’s very, very difficult to move the needle as they say. So we were very fortunate, a true effort by President Hemphill here at ODU. We received $5 million, a five-year grant. So that’s 2023 to 2028. And ultimately that $5 million was to work with our College of Arts & Letters to lift up humanities students, to show them that there is a pathway forward. That if a student comes home to mom and dad or their family and says, “I’m going to major in history,” they don’t all cry and say, “You’re going to be on our sofa forever.” That is not the case. And I’m here in Virginia and actually the humanities for Virginia wages are actually above average wages, over $85,000 a year. So there’s a very healthy market for humanities majors.
And the Mellon gift has just been an absolute wonderful, wonderful initiative in order to lift those students up. So it’s multifaceted, the grant. So obviously the first thing is we were using the money to create the Monarch Humanities Internship Academy. So I have a team of three that work exclusively with the faculty in the College of Arts & Letters, that work exclusively with students. And they also work with nonprofits around Virginia and the world to say, “Hey, do you have a great unpaid internship program?” Well, guess what? We can provide an award for those students. And so probably the proudest work I will tell you that we’ve done is since we kicked off in early 2024 is that we have created over 75 internships that never existed before.
Perhaps it was a nonprofit that said, “We ethically have a problem with having an intern in our office and we cannot pay them. We’re not going to do that. If we can’t have pay, we’re not going to do that.” And so with this funding, now those nonprofits can say, “Oh my goodness, this is great.” And so think about the Mellon, they know what they’re doing with their funding and their resource development and economic development, especially for nonprofits. Think of a nonprofit who doesn’t have a pay arm, but they need interns and they want that new young talent and they want to be impactful, but they have no funds. And now all of a sudden we can pay $20 an hour on an award for that student to support them during this unpaid time. It’s just a game changer.
The new initiatives, the way in which the nonprofit operates. And then of course our students, we’re lifting them up. So of course with the academy and we actually have a studio, so the studio director and that team shepherds the student because, again, they’re getting recognition on the transcript. Some of them are using it for their credit bearing coursework as well. So the studio shepherds them through so that they get their pay and they get their recognition on the transcript. Another part of that grant was to work with faculty and embed work-based learning in the curriculum. Maybe there really wasn’t an internship footprint in Asian studies before. Well, now with this fund, we can provide faculty professional development.
We can provide an expert to come in and look at the curriculum and say, “This is what work-based learning would look like in an Asian studies curriculum.” So we are changing the college for the future and for the better. So it’s a sustainable model as well. So it has just been a transformative grant. Our goal at the end of our grant period is to have 750 e-portfolios. So every student that goes through an internship creates an e-portfolio so they can really display all of their talent, all of their work, and that portfolio will live on with them.
And we have e-portfolio showcases with employers. And we know of our students, they’ve had internships, they have gone on to full-time employment. So it is just a wonderful, amazing gift. And it really speaks to the value of if you can obtain that type of resourcing, the fruition will be there. You will see the results of the investment. And I always say I’m so proud that at this point we have received as much investment as we have because I feel just like a nonprofit or like the stock market, people are going to invest in what they think will yield a return, right?
And so to have this continual investment in the Monarch Internship & Co-op Office is a great sign that we are on the right track and that a standalone internship office can really provide the attention that is needed in order for students to succeed. I feel like career services prepares students for what’s coming, the full-time job, prepare them with the resume, prepare them. Whereas here in the internship office, I am making sure they participate. That is my goal before they leave our institution.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. And in this answer, I could definitely see the economist side coming out of you. I was like, “I can tell that Barbara has worked in economics for a long time.”
Barbara Blake:
Yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
But yeah, you’re totally right. It’s so important and truly it sounds like it’s the gift that keeps on giving. So that’s really cool to hear about. And I want to just ask one more question about the unpaid internship thing before we move on. So you’ve talked very passionately about students who are doing unpaid internships, especially while also paying full tuition for any credits tied to those internships. I think that’s what I did in college and it was rough. It was hard to manage that. So I am curious, what is your take on how the career services field as a whole should address that issue? It’s a big question.
Barbara Blake:
Personally for me, and I do realize in higher education, we all have lanes, right? And oftentime between a professional faculty member or a staff member and a tenured teaching faculty, we see those lanes. We absolutely do. And I can understand how at first glance one would say, “Well, that’s not my lane.” Right? So if human services or social work has 300, 400-hour internship or practicum and that’s what that college dictates or that’s what that department says it is, that’s their lane. We’re going to try to help them. But I do believe that even the teaching faculty in those programs, they are aware of the hardships.
And I mean, what could be worse for an institution, for a faculty, for a department, college, school that you have a student to stop out at the clinical, at the practicum, at the internship? I mean, it’s horrible, right? And so I believe if I were to give advice, reach out to the faculty, reach out to the department. We all know in the health sciences and a lot of the health administration, those folks are prohibited from getting any pay, right? They may not receive pay. And so that is tough. And so I think in career services, student support services, that we can reach across the aisle to those faculty and say, “I know how much of a hardship this is. What can we do?”
And I remember myself doing that for the very first time in a particular college and getting this answer like, “Well, what could you do?” And I said, “Well, they can’t get paid, but what if they got a $500 transportation stipend? What if I provided scrubs and white coats, stethoscopes and gait belts? What if I did those things? Would that help you?” And then there was, “Well, yes.” And so find the common ground, advocate, help your colleagues at your institution if you do have the opportunity. At some of our larger gatherings, I personally would like to see some of our organizations do a bit more advocacy in these spaces and that I think if there’s an accreditating body that is saying, “Nope, they can’t get paid,” I think for a very, very long time that has been, okay, that is what’s going on.
And I think we need to stop here in 2026. And we really, I don’t necessarily say pushback, but please give me a definitive explanation as to why they can’t get paid. For example, in the health fields, I was once told, “Well, they’re not qualified. They have to work first before they’re qualified.” And the question was, “Well, isn’t that a medical resident? They’re not qualified either, but they’re getting paid.”
Meredith Metsker:
Right, yeah.
Barbara Blake:
Right? So let’s have a real discussion. So I would love advocacy through our regional national organizations. If there’s lobbying or if there’s anything that could be done at the federal level or at least at the state level. I am on a few working groups for the Commonwealth of Virginia. And when I am in Richmond, I absolutely try to advocate for discussions. Maybe nothing will change. But unless we actually let folks know what is happening, they will never know. And so that is something that deserves attention and advocacy. So when you can, try to advocate. But I think the biggest thing that you could do at an institutional level is to reach out to those programs.
I reached out to a program, this was when we first started and I said, “Oh my goodness, you have a 500 required internship, 500 hours in just one semester. That’s kind of tough.” And we had a discussion about it and I said, “No, what is the basis?” And we all know that maybe people could get a little touchy about that, but I’m trying to find solutions. I’m trying to find resources so that our students can go where they need to go. And ultimately it kind of went to the next level and they said, “Well, you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can take some hours down or deliver it in a part one and a part two.” And so if these discussions yield anything that’s creative that’s going to help the student, I say try, try, at least try.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. It never hurts to ask at least.
Barbara Blake:
I know it’s hard because a lot of folks in career, overworked, understaffed, have so many challenges, so many very important initiatives, right? Let’s have 50 very important initiatives that we’re supposed to track and work every day. And you can tell from the economist lens, what is your specialty? What is your economies of scale? What can you do the best? And I always say that to anyone, whatever you’re really good at, do it and double down on it. And that’ll always be a good basis for maybe taking away work or maybe giving more work in the area that you’re really good at. Because again, you can’t do everything super well unless you have a huge team and a huge budget. And a lot of career services offices, they don’t have that. They don’t.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a major challenge, for sure. So Barbara, you’ve touched on a few of your big wins in the three years that the Internship & Co-op Office has been in existence. And I’m curious, what are you most proud of since launching in 2023?
Barbara Blake:
Oh my goodness. Oh, I would have to say service to students. Service to students. And when a student comes in and is so excited to tell you about what they did this summer, and of course any kind of kudos to say… For example, I have an amazing team member, her name is Katina. And she literally worked with a student to put in over 50 of these internship applications. And he got one and boy did he get one. He got a national, just very well paid. He was given his own clothes with his name and boy-
Meredith Metsker:
Amazing.
Barbara Blake:
Exactly, exactly. It was in a different state. And that internship changed that student’s life. And I’m getting emotional. But that’s what on the days for my team when it’s been a doozy of a day and we are, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much work,” or this, that or the other, we all always come back to the same thing is that this is what makes it worth what we do. We have a student that actually has a summer internship with Representative Bobby Scott in Congress. And she just sent a note just in the last two weeks and just said, “My whole world has been changed by this and what I want to do and the way Washington works. And I would’ve never gotten here if it weren’t for your office and helping me and these types of things.”
So I would say the big, big win is that we literally have thousands of ODU students who perhaps would’ve graduated without an internship, perhaps would’ve stopped out, that maybe they did everything and then they got to that internship and just had some big hurdles and they weren’t going to graduate without assistance to get over that last hurdle to the finish line on the stage. And that is just amazing. So I would say that, service to students, creating new internships that have never existed before and being out of the box and creative. And what I love too is that sometimes in higher education, we think scalable and innovation and creativity cannot exist in the same sentence because, “Well, we’ve got to serve 25,000 students. We can’t do this or we can’t do that.”
And we just simply don’t believe that. Obviously we started in mind with how do we create a scalable system that still has a heart, that’s just not an online platform. We wanted the technology and the tools to help us counsel students and empower students, but we didn’t want them to think that it’s just them, “And oh gosh, look, I Googled internship and there’s 10,000. What?” We wanted to make sure that all the resources were in all the right places for the students so that they could get that internship and be successful. So definitely that is our big win.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. And sort of on the note of the technology, I’ll just say that here at UConnect, we’re very, very proud to partner with you all and power your virtual career office.
Barbara Blake:
Well, then I have to tell you, and no folks, I’m not being paid to say this, but we were looking for a while, right? We knew that we needed something, but we needed something that was flexible and did what we were doing because what we’re doing isn’t prepackaged in any way, shape or form. And we really appreciated… You literally, you literally were the first product because we wanted to create a virtual internship office. We wanted it to compliment our counseling services and what we do Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5:00. And so finding that that could be customized, that could show what we wanted to show and that was not an easy product to find.
And we went through a lot of demos. We went through a lot. And then we all found you and we got the customization that we needed. And I was just so proud because we launched our virtual internship office basically fall of 2025. So we’ve just finished our first year and we were going over some of the statistics. And we have, I think in Virginia for other R1s that have a similar type thing, we have the highest engagement rate. It’s like 55% and we have thousands upon thousands of clicks every day. And it’s just so exciting because one of the things when you’re in this line of work that we are in is what’s the magic mix, right?
Because you want that one-on-one high touch, but you’re going to have to have automation. You’re going to have to have portals that people can log into, including faculty. So what’s the magic mix? And I feel like right now we have a great mix. We have the programming, the initiatives, the web conference. We have students in suite and we have our virtual internship office and I just love it. So we do thank you for that.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. I’ll be sure to include a link to the virtual internship office in the show notes so folks can go check it out because it is interesting how you all have that platform set up and how it is so focused, but has so many resources in one place.
Barbara Blake:
Absolutely.
Meredith Metsker:
So I’ll be sure to include a link. So Barbara, I’m curious, you’ve talked about what has gone well so far. What is next for the Internship & Co-op Office? What is on your vision board?
Barbara Blake:
So what I see is that, well, continuing the culture change, continuing really speaking our names and making sure that the word is out because we still have that student that we are actually in the Webb Student Center. So we’re here with the food core, we’re here with the clubs. We’re here with all the great stuff. It’s a wonderful piece of real estate to be in. And we will have that student that just kind of says, “Well, what do you do here? Can you help me-“
Meredith Metsker:
There’s always one.
Barbara Blake:
Yeah, exactly. Well, there’s more than one here. And then we talk with them because I’m sure others will appreciate it. Sometimes when you present and present and present and you’re here and you’re there and you just go, “Oh my goodness, people are going to get sick of us because everyone’s trying to talk about it.” But then you hit that faculty member that’s like, “Well, where are you? What are you doing?” Or you get those students and you’re like, “Okay, just when we thought we reached critical mass, we have not reached critical mass.” And so just continuing what we’re doing, uplifting students.
Our office oftentimes too, we’re the problem solver. So let’s say somebody has an amazing internship that they want to do, but they have some issues. They need support, they need this, they need that. And so we kind of go in to see what we can do. I’m really proud to say that I have just received a $450,000 state grant and a big-
Meredith Metsker:
Amazing.
Barbara Blake:
Yeah. And so a big part of this money is the student does not have any transportation to go. So I can give them a transportation grant, right? And it could be a bus pass. They could use it for whatever they need to. So I’m really excited about that because as folks know, when you’re working on grant monies, it can be cyclical. And so we gave out around $200,000 in the summer of ’24. So that’s the last time we did a big sort of… We served hundreds of students and were able to document these experiences. And these were students. And again, these are students that we’re not going to go, right? They have no familial wealth. They don’t have the credit card that they could, “Well, I’ll just put it on there for 30 days and when I get my first paycheck, I can pay.” Right? Nope, nope, nope, nope.
So they have very few resources and they need help in order to get started. And so I’m really excited for that. So this academic year we will be distributing those student support grants because students need to be able to dream that if they want to be in the Smithsonian, in D.C. and do an amazing internship, that they’ve got a shot at it, that there’s an office that can help them. So we’ll always continue that good work. I myself personally, I’m writing a book about internships and creativity and innovation, especially through an economic development lens because what I’m seeing is we have a lot of higher educational professionals that are not really looking to the economic development space for funding and there is absolutely money there.
And so kind of tapping into all the resources because that’s the bad thing about silos, right? So if we’re in our silo and this is where we get our money from and this is what we do, well, you might be missing some amazing opportunities for funding and new initiatives that speak to your students and could have a dramatic impact on your institution when it comes to enrollment or graduate persistence, any of those things. And so I’m excited for that to talk a little bit about that because I really do feel that we are at a very critical moment for career services. As we all know, the ROI for higher education, it is there, it is in front of us and we have to justify our existence.
And so if you have X number in funding, well, how many students are you serving and how do we see those metrics in action? That’s not optional anymore. That’s mandatory. That’s really it. And especially now as we’ve seen some changes out of Washington as far as skilled education, apprenticeships and the like, I do feel like higher education needs to make it completely known why should your student come to our institution? And we do have to make that case. We have to make that case for after graduation that your student’s going to be better off for coming to the institution. And I would say some other things for Monarch Internship & Co-op Office, we’re looking at more MOUs individualized with companies so that our students have a competitive advantage. That’s really important for us.
And so just using that economic rationale of how can Old Dominion University, and we’re in Southeastern Virginia, so we’re coastal Virginia, Norfolk, Virginia Beach. We laugh and say we’re the world’s longest cul-de-sac if you’ve ever been here through our many bridges and tunnels. And so what is our role in the regional economy and how do we connect any gaps so that we have a very large shipbuilding, DOD, U.S. Navy presence and maritime and supply chain, so how do we reduce that gap between higher education and the industries that are here? And so probably some new initiatives around that, but just proving that universities, colleges, you belong in all the spaces. You do.
You belong in all the spaces, even if it’s just because of research and the research that your faculty are doing or that you could have a partnership with a community college or here we have the apprentice school, which is at Newport News Shipbuilding. All these collaborations, all the ways that we can work together, there are many creative and innovative ways. So we’ll probably do more work in that area. But again, just hoping too, because as I said, we didn’t have an infrastructure for any of this. So we had to develop datasets, surveys and the like. And so now as we round the corner, we might actually have a couple years of data. So we can look at that and we can say, “Okay, well, if we look at the internship rate in 2020, what was it in 2025?” So that’s going to be some exciting stuff to do as well, but really excited for the work here.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. It sounds like there’s a lot of exciting things on the horizon. And I do feel like we’re going to have to check back in when your book comes out because I think that angle about getting creative about funding and where to find funding and kind of really stepping into the university’s role as an economic driver, I think that will be very interesting to folks. So might have to have you back when that book is done.
Barbara Blake:
Be happy to come back.
Meredith Metsker:
All right. Well, Barbara, you’ve already offered some great advice throughout this conversation, but is there any other advice you would give to career leaders listening to this episode who want to do what you’re doing or do something like it, particularly if they’re working within a more traditional career services model?
Barbara Blake:
My big advice for anybody who wants to do something non-traditional, and it was actually Mr. Rogers who said it, look for the helpers, right? Look for your squad.
Meredith Metsker:
Such a good quote.
Barbara Blake:
Yeah. Look for your squad, look for your people and start that consensus building. And that’s the most important. I mean, in a lot of ways we were so lucky because this is a presidential initiative, right? So the doors opened, we really benefited from that. And I have a very keen appreciation for those who are institutions who don’t have that, that they don’t have the top down leadership and maybe they desperately need that leadership. You need people who will speak out about the new ideas, the new ways of being instead of those traditional models. And I would just say number one, scout around on your campus and find those folks. Is it teaching faculty? Is it other student support services? Is it in the registrar’s office?
Just look around and find like-minded folks who know that maybe change is really necessary. And that’s one of the ways because if you build the consensus and if you have a structure on your campus, if they’re advisory councils or just maybe high impact practices, commissions, or whatever the structure is in your institution, you need to make sure you have a real firm understanding of it. Who’s dealing with what and who are the councils? Who are the groups that you could speak to? So survey your landscape, find the helpers, the like-minded. Maybe they care about this and you care about that, but you’ve got a shared space. And you could go together to try and talk about institutional resources, funding.
I have to say that I always feel like that if you can write a grant, if you can bring your own money to the table, that is instantly going to open some eyes. And I do understand not everybody’s a grant writer, but I will say start small. One of the things that we did over the past couple of years is we have Town and Gam, which is this group of retired faculty, but they give back and they give grants out to various programs on our campus. And I went to them and I said, “Our human services or our social worker students, they have to do these big, long internships and they don’t get any money at all.”
“And they’re working in the courts, schools, hospitals. And sometimes they’re bringing food for kids who don’t have anything to eat. They put in these positions where they’re spending their own personal money and maybe they don’t even have that to give, but they find a way anyway.” And they awarded us a couple thousand dollars and highly competitive. I think we had like 75 students, but 10, and this was chosen by faculty, 10 got this stipend, this check to help them persist. And so think small. It doesn’t have to be something so huge. So think small. That’s what you can do on campus trying to rally the troops.
Think about all your connections with other institutions. Do you have a workforce council? Do you have an economic innovator or regional think tank? Look in your community to find those organizations and send an email over, give a call over and just say, “Hey, can we work together to do things differently for whatever it is?” If it has to do with internships or job shadowing or whatever is it that you need in your office, but you currently don’t have or don’t have the capacity to do. So I would definitely look for resources and champions within your institution. And I would say go out to the workforce boards.
And then of course, as we often do, we’re just talking about NACE this year, is to those regional and national organizational conferences and events is find folks to maybe do something together. For those of you listening, if you are interested and want to contact me about doing something together, let’s have a conversation. I’m always open to that. And just expand your network. See the people who are doing the work where you want to go and reach out to them and say, “Can we have a conversation?” And so that would be my best advice. But depending upon how many years that you’ve been in your role, sometimes it’s really hard. And we all know that it’s just not higher education, but it’s with any industry that you can get stuck in those things that you have to do every day, right?
And that’s not going to change and I have to do this. And so it is easy to become a bit cynical about new programming. Try to resist it because you just never know what could work out, something small or something big, but it could make a big difference and change up your workday. But just anything is possible and just hold onto that hope because I do know that it is very difficult, especially when you want your office to go this way and it seems like the whole institution’s going that way. I know how difficult that can be, but look for your people. Look for those people that will help you remain hopeful.
Meredith Metsker:
Great advice. Well, Barbara, before I start kind of wrapping us up, is there anything else that you would like to add?
Barbara Blake:
At this time, no. I don’t think so. I think I’ve had a lot of my message to go out there today.
Meredith Metsker:
All right. Perfect. Well, if folks would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where is a good place for them to do that?
Barbara Blake:
Please go ahead and visit our virtual internship office at internship.odu.edu. All of my contact information there is there and you can look around at our various programs that we have in the office. You are more than welcome to email me. It’s bblakego@odu.edu as well. But please, I would look forward to a conversation.
Meredith Metsker:
Perfect. And I will be sure to include links to all those things and your email in the show notes. So for anyone watching or listening, keep an eye out for that. All right, Barbara, at the end of every interview, we do an answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was also a Barbara. It was Dr. Barbara Zarrillo of Post University. And she left this question for you. If you could wave a magic wand and solve one challenge in the career services world overnight, what would that be? No pressure.
Barbara Blake:
That’s good. I know. That is a really good question. And I would say I would do this for all of us. I would. I would wave the magic wand and it would simply change everybody’s minds on campus to say, “Just because we have a career office or an internship office doesn’t mean that they own the entire space.” I would wave the magic wand and I would make sure that everyone on that campus at that university or college would say, “We have a responsibility and we have a duty because our mission is to educate students, is to serve students and have a vested interest in where they go from here.”
I would wave that magic wand and say from the faculty member teaching geography, “Well, where is your geography student going to go?” To the career services professional planning the next job fair, to student organizations. And how do you connect to the larger economy? And what are these roles that you could use in your next chapter so that everybody had a little bit of work-based learning in their dialogue, whatever they did? So that’s what I would change for sure.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. That’s a good kind of callback to the cultural change thing you were talking about earlier.
Barbara Blake:
Absolutely.
Meredith Metsker:
That’s the hardest part.
Barbara Blake:
It is.
Meredith Metsker:
So if we could just wave the magic wand and change that culture overnight.
Barbara Blake:
Absolutely.
Meredith Metsker:
Love that. All right. Well, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?
Barbara Blake:
Oh, okay. Well, shocker and surprise here that it’s about internships. So all right, to the next guest I would say what internship or first job, in case they didn’t have an internship, taught you the most and what was the most ridiculous task you were asked to do in that first experience? I’m so excited. I’m going to follow the next because I want to know the answer.
Meredith Metsker:
That’s a great question. And I was telling you earlier, I love questions like this where the next guest gets to tell a story because there’s always a good story.
Barbara Blake:
Oh, I bet there is.
Meredith Metsker:
I’m curious, what would your answer to that be?
Barbara Blake:
Oh my goodness. So I am from the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina, from High Point, North Carolina. And I went to High Point University, International Business and Spanish. And so I lived in the College of Business, shocker. And so my first internship for a summer was in Thomasville, North Carolina. And I worked with inventory in a manufacturing environment. And not to date myself too much, but this was before 2000, this was the ’90s. And I literally was one of two women.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Sounds about right.
Barbara Blake:
Yeah. Well, but just being in the space and say, “Well, I can count inventory too and I can track.” And we were talking about the loading docks and just a lot going on. But I learned a lot and had a lot of fun and just I wanted to be there. And I knew that there was a place for me there, even though maybe some folks didn’t think that I needed to be out on this loading dock doing inventory. But I really enjoyed it. And nicest people when I finished at the end of the summer, got a party and I would’ve seen that coming when I first started. And that’s the beauty, right? This is the beauty of it all.
And that’s why every student deserves an internship because you learn so much about life. You really do. You really do. Those communication skills, people skills, because we live in a people world, right? And being able to manage yourself, whatever comes your way. And so that’s why every student deserves an internship and they’ll end up with a great story too.
Meredith Metsker:
I love that. I think that’s a great place to wrap up. Well, Barbara, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today.
Barbara Blake:
You’re welcome.
Meredith Metsker:
This was such a great conversation and I feel like we covered just so many great topics. So I just really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your experience and your wisdom.
Barbara Blake:
Well, thank you. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you. And our community can be small. And so any chance that we can get together just to talk about the good, bad and the ugly is always a great time. So I do appreciate it very much and thanks for the invitation.
