Recently I met with a former student who is now in Los Angeles working in the entertainment industry in production. He graduated from a Washington, D.C. high school in 2011 and continued on to Pepperdine University graduating in 2015. At that time, I
was working for a college access and success program as his advisor and supported him through college. We reconnected recently and he asked me given what I know now, how I would change my practice. I immediately answered, “I would have spent more
time supporting students with career development."
Over a decade has passed since the high school class of 2011 has entered their first year of college and I’m now working for Students Rising Above (SRA), San Francisco-based nonprofit with a mission of enabling social and economic mobility for low-income,
first-generation students. SRA serves 500+ first-generation, low-income students annually, working with them from their senior year of high school through college graduation to obtain a post-secondary education and prepare for fulfilling careers.
SRA’s students source a diverse and inclusive workforce and a thriving economy. The organization’s founding program, Rising Stars, serves students from all nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area. 98% of students are people of color, and all come
from low to moderate income backgrounds. To support these young people with the tools and resources they need to excel, SRA provides advising for college access and success, healthcare navigation, social-emotional support, financial literacy, career
guidance and readiness, and professional development and mentorship.
History
Based on input from our advisors, one-to-one student engagements, and surveys, SRA learned that students wanted support with internship opportunities and exploring career options. We listened and in 2007, the Career Development team was created to support
students’ growing needs. Career development, like college advising, is a specialized skill and requires dedicated staff. What first started as one volunteer helping students secure a summer internship has now grown into an entire team that uses an
internally-developed, robust career development curriculum with career exposure events, professional development programming, invaluable hands-on, skill-building experiences, and more!
The curriculum is built around 7 pillars that SRA identified in the previous decade to support students through their career journey as early as their first year of college.
Networking
Career Exploration
Experience Building
Leveraging Resources
Application Materials
Professionalism
Adulting and Career Development
The curriculum was delivered through a triage approach. The Career Development team collaborated with the advising team to deliver aspects of the curriculum and to host workshops and networking opportunities. For example, within our Career Development
department is an internship team that is responsible for developing partnerships with external companies and organizations to provide internship opportunities to our students. The internship team collaborated with the advisors to identify students
to apply for the opportunities. The internship team and advisors triaged supports around the students to help them with the application and interview process.
Current Approach
As SRA evolves and learns more about students' needs, so does our approach. The original 7 pillars have been nested within the three overarching pillars below and are still delivered via a triage approach.
1. Increase and contribute to all SRA students’ economic capital
Offer paid opportunities to students
Offer opportunities to contribute to a student’s ability to earn economic capital in the future
2. Increase and contribute to all SRA students’ human capital
Provide career development related skills/knowledge-building programs, services, experiences and resources
Provide career exploration opportunities
3. Increase and contribute to all SRA students’ social capital
75% of SRA’s students major in liberal arts and go on to choose careers in the
humanities or social services. Despite significant projected growth in STEM-related jobs and a median wage
of more than twice that of non-STEM jobs, just 18% of SRA’s students pursue STEM or computer science majors and career paths. Fewer than 5% earn business degrees,
Jobs in medicine pay well, but just a handful of SRA students have majored in pre-med or gone on to
medical school. SRA’s mission will be better served by expanding the horizon of career choices for its students.
The Opportunity
Building on its longstanding success in college advising, in FY 22-23, SRA is introducing a new facet of the career development program to provide students with the education, inspiration, and experience they need to make strategic career choices.
Individual personalized advising is what makes our college advising team successful. As we evaluated our Career Development programs, we identified a gap – the program did not have the same type of individual career advisors to support students.
This newly structured program that includes individualized advising will begin as soon as students are enrolled with SRA and will be administered by a new team of professional career counselors. The career development program will include:
Individualized career exploration planning
Education on investment/ROI of potential career paths
Individualized internship matching and support in application process
Stipends to accommodate unpaid internships as necessary
Career insight events
Career mentoring (1:1 match)
Interview coaching and preparation
Resume creation and network development
Financial literacy
The above will be structured by class and students’ progress within SRA’s program.
Outcomes
Our goal is that first-year outcomes will include:
An increased proportion of SRA’s students will declare STEM, business, and professional-track majors
Fewer students will change majors as a result of gatekeeping courses
A greater number of students will complete professional-track internships
All students will engage in resume creation and network development
A greater number of students will be matched 1:1 with career mentors
Full-term (5 years+) outcomes will include:
An increased proportion of SRA’s graduates will secure major-related career-ladder positions within one year of earning a degree
First-job starting salaries for SRA’s graduates will progressively increase by cohort
An increased proportion of SRA’s students will be debt-free within five years of graduation
Longitudinal data (10, 15, 20 years) will evidence increasing socioeconomic mobility within SRA’s graduates
Comprehensive career development is new in the college access and success industry and it’s the reason we don’t have national data to use as benchmarks. As SRA improves our data infrastructure and programming, we’ll be able to set organization
benchmarks on some of the outputs we plan on achieving after year one of programming. Creating a learning culture within the organization is important. We’ve adopted the learn, prepare, engage, improve double loop learning
cycle in which we are constantly evolving our practices each year as we continually interrogate our curriculum and engage with students to ensure we are centering programming to students’ needs.
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75% of SRA’s students major in liberal arts and go on to choose careers in the
humanities or social services. Despite significant