MoCDA Spring 2022 Virtual Conference Agenda

8:45 am - Welcome & Check-In

9:00 am - Keynote Address 

Crafting a Common Understanding with Clients: Needs Assessment in Career Services

Presenter: Julia Panke Makela

Keynote Description:

What drives our clients’ career choices?

What motivates our clients to engage in career services?

Where are our clients getting “stuck” in the process, and how well do they recognize this?

How well do we, as career professionals, help our clients overcome barriers and achieve successes?

You are invited to engage these questions – and more – as we explore the way our clients experience both their career journeys and our career development programs and services. Discover a framework for tackling client needs assessment in a meaningful and manageable way. Learn strategies for inviting a variety of stakeholder perspectives and benefiting from a diverse range of assessment approaches. Take this experience back to your own office to create a common understanding of the career development process with your clients, appreciating each other’s goals and motivations. Together with your clients, identify challenges – the gaps between where career services are now and where you want them to be. Then, prioritize actions to bridge those gaps.

About the Presenter:

Julia Panke Makela, PhD, serves as the Director for Career Development at the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a National Career Development Association (NCDA) Fellow and a Certified Career Counselor with more than 20 years of experience embracing counseling, research, and program evaluation roles.

Julia is especially passionate about building community around practitioner-engaged program assessment that gathers evidence to inform and continually enhance career development practice. She is the lead author of the NCDA’s program assessment monograph, Learning outcomes assessment step-by-step: Enhancing evidence-based practice in career services, as well as a variety of assessment-related articles in academic journals and professional association publications. She established and leads the Assessment and Research in Career Services (ARCS) Network, a listserv designed to facilitate conversation and collaboration among career services professionals who are engaged in assessment and research within practice environments. ARCS currently serves an international audience of more than 350 active members.

10:10 am - Session I

Transforming Career Services: Meet SuccessWorks

Presenter: Rebekah Pryor Paré

• Associate Dean for the L&S Career Initiative
• Executive Director, SuccessWorks at the College of Letters & Science

Rebekah Pryor Paré is the Associate Dean for the Letters & Science Career Initiative and the Executive Director of SuccessWorks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rebekah oversees the college-wide enterprise intended to enable all L&S students to enjoy rewarding careers and satisfying lives. Since launching the newly reimagined career center, SuccessWorks, her work increased student participation in career preparation four-fold, underrepresented student participation three-fold, improved student career outcomes by 14 percentage points, and engaged faculty and academic departments as partners in student career development.

Rebekah is passionate about support liberal arts and sciences students in their career development and helping all students find success. Since 2020, Rebekah has served as the chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Liberal Arts and Sciences Career Initiatives Peer Group. She has also trained some 20 institutions from across the globe on her innovative model of service delivery. In her free time, she plays the piano for “Ladies Must Swing,” a 19-piece all-female big band, she relishes.

11:15 am - Session II

Reflections on Establishing a Career Coaching/Counselling Practice 

Presenter: Kent Noel

• President/Co-owner of Career Life Solutions, LLC 

Kent Noel - earned Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and M.Ed. and Ed.S. in Counseling from the University of Missouri and is licensed as an LPC in both Missouri and Kansas.  He served as Director of Assessment for Carr Assessments in Overland Park, KS for 16 years prior to becoming Co-owner of Career Life Solutions and KKE Holdings with his spouse, Karen.  He is starting his seventh year of private practice specializing in Pre-employment Selection, Career Counseling, Executive Coaching, Staff Development, and Succession Planning.  He is Past-President of the Missouri Counseling Association and currently serves on the MOCDA board.   

12: 00 pm -  Discussion and Networking 

Rethinking and Rebuilding Teams Amidst the Pandemic

With the pandemic and the "Great Resignation," there have been many changes for our work as career development professionals and our own work environments. Join us for a discussion about how members are rebuilding and rethinking our teams.

12:45 pm - MoCDA Business Meeting

1:30 pm - Closing Remarks 

3.5 continuing education contact hours for conference attendees have been approved by NCDA.