Thought Leaders Symposium

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This is the premier professional learning and sharing event in North America for college & university career centers.  Each session is focused on cutting-edge topics impacting the career services industry.

Plenary Speakers:

Ashley Byrd-White received the NACE/ Spelman Johnson Rising Star Award this year. The NACE/ Spelman Johnson Rising Star Award is given to “an individual who demonstrates strong leadership potential, and contributes to the career services profession and the NACE organization” according to the NACE website.

Ashley serves as the Assistant Director for Career Education in the University of South Carolina Career Center. She has been with the Career Center for 4 years initially serving as a Career Development Coach. Prior to her work in the Career Center, Ashley served the University of South Carolina students as a Leadership Coach in the Department of Student Life.

As an Assistant Director for Career Education, Ashley works on educational efforts for both students and faculty/staff. She has created, facilitated, and assessed the Career Champion program which educates and empowers campus faculty and staff on having career conversations with students. Since the start of the Career Champion program, nearly 250 faculty/staff have gone through Level I. Ashley has continued the growth of the program by adding in a Level II and a Level III training which covers additional career development topics. In addition, she is leading the efforts on the Carolina Career Ready program that covers the NACE Core Competencies for students. She also serves as a career coach for the UofSC alumni. In addition to her regular duties, Ashley serves on the First-Generation College Student Work Team, is the Career Center liaison EAB Navigate, and routinely supports campus partners in various office initiatives.

Michael True is president of INTRUEITION, the parent company of InternQube.com. Mike provided leadership in the field of internships at Messiah College for over 28 years, most recently as Senior Associate in the Career & Professional Development Center. He has created multiple resources for his colleagues, employers, students, and faculty.

For his colleagues, he began Internship-Net in 1995, an internet listserv now serving over 1,450 internship professionals throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. For students participating in internship and co-op experiences he wrote a book, InternQube: Professional Skills for the Workplace, and created a companion website – InternQube.com. For employers he compiled a free booklet entitled Starting and Maintaining A Quality Internship Program which is currently being used by hundreds of colleges, universities, employers and chambers of commerce across the United States and internationally. In 2016 he released Faculty Manual: Academic Standards and Best Practices for Internships. His most recent contribution is “Higher Education & Experiential Learning: Select Trends and Future Ideas” in the 2018 publication, International Internships: Mission, Methods & Models (a collection of papers from the Global Internship Conference).|

He has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Money Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week, Newsday, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, as well as other national and regional newspapers and magazines regarding internships. He has served as Chair of the Internship/Co-op Special Interest Group of the National Society for Experiential Education and is a certified trainer with the Cooperative Education and Internship Association.

Mike has been named one of ten Visionary Leaders in a national survey, presented with the Exemplary Leader Award and Higher Education Leader Award by NSEE, the Dean Herman Schneider Award from CEIA, and has received several other honors from various other organizations.

Dr. Matthew Hora is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts & Applied Studies, a Research Scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, and the Founding Director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After several years of experience in organic agriculture and food systems research, he received his master’s degree in applied anthropology from the University of Maryland – College Park. Dr. Hora then worked as a program evaluator of public health and STEM education initiatives before earning his Ph.D. in the learning sciences from the Department of Educational Psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012.

Dr. Hora’s work focuses on discerning the cognitive, cultural, and contextual factors that underlay organizational change processes. Using theory and method from cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and systems engineering, he has explored issues related to curriculum planning, classroom instruction, and data driven decision-making in postsecondary STEM departments. These perspectives are now being applied to the problem of education-workforce dynamics, and the degree to which these complex factors can and should be considered when developing public policy regarding education and workforce development. His research utilizes a wide range of qualitative methodologies gleaned from a variety of disciplines, including grounded theory, decision modeling, scaling and data reduction techniques, and case study methods.

The Symposium will also feature the following speakers:

• Sabrina Iaria – Hofstra University
• Toby White – SUNY Potsdam
• Brooke Buffington & Ross Wade – Elon University
• Courtney Jones – North Carolina State University
• Celine Park – Moorpark College
• Kathy Horner – Clemson University
• Briana Randall – The University of Washington
• Steve Savitsky – Northeastern University
• Joshua Iannuzzi – New Jersey City University
• Steven Rothberg – College Recruiter, Inc.
• Makesha H. Dockery – Georgia State University
• Kasandrea Sereno – University of South Florida
• Cindy Hyman – University of Denver & Cheryl Clark Bonner – Penn State University
• Josh Miller – XYZ University
• And Many More…

CLICK HERE to See the Full Schedule!