Christa Matlack was on the Digication Scholars Conversations
Christa Matlack chats with Kelly Driscoll, the co-founder of Digication. They discuss why reflection and self-awareness matter in our careers. Christa is a Career Coach in STEM at the Center for Career Advancement at Bucknell University. She shares her experiences and the lessons she learned.
She highlights how her diverse background helps students find their way.
Christa's career journey shows the benefits of balancing academics with Co-curricular activities. It highlights how a well-rounded education matters. Her experience also shows the benefits of using ePortfolios.
Christa's Journey: From Student-Athlete to Career Coach
Christa Matlack's journey began just down the road from Bucknell University in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. She grew up in the area and knew about Bucknell. She hadn’t decided on getting a university education but then came recruitment to play soccer.
Despite her busy sports schedule, Christa managed to keep up with her studies. She studied biology and also took classes in studio art and philosophy. She played soccer at Bucknell for all four years, contributing to the team's success in reaching the conference tournament each year.
After graduating from Bucknell, Christa earned a master's degree in biology from Clarion University of Pennsylvania, now PennWest Clarion. Her biology major and studio art and philosophy minor helped her see problems differently.
Being a student-athlete taught her valuable skills. She learned time management, discipline, and teamwork. These skills would later help her in her career.
The Importance of a Liberal Arts Education
Bucknell's liberal arts education was crucial to Christa's development. It provided her with a well-rounded skill set, and her diverse educational background allowed her to approach problems from multiple perspectives.
Her experience fostered both analytical and creative thinking. The liberal arts education helped Christa develop transferable skills such as critical thinking, communication, and resilience. These skills enhanced her academic and athletic performance and equipped her to help students navigate their career paths effectively.
Career Path and Lessons Learned
Upon completing her graduate degree, Christa pursued a greater sense of career direction.
She applied for college soccer coaching jobs and biology research positions and got many callbacks for soccer coaching but none for biology.
She added a master's and then moved to a research technician role at Geisinger. However, she realized that advancing in this field required a PhD and felt she needed more time to prepare.
This realization led her to a job in product development at First Quality Enterprises, where she spent four years designing tampons. A twist of fate led her to begin her career as a soccer coach at the University of Scranton. There, she found a passion for coaching and helping young athletes.
Christa's career changed again when she became the interim head coach at Penn College in her hometown. She blended this role with her full-time job at First Quality.
This experience reinforced her love for coaching and working with students. However, the demands of full-time coaching and motherhood led her to seek more work-life balance.
From Coaching to Career Coaching at Bucknell
Christa's diverse experiences culminated in her current role as a STEM Career Coach at Bucknell University. In 2021, she applied for the position, which nicely matched her STEM background and interests.
Her background in higher education, STEM, and industry experience made her an ideal candidate. In this role, Christa leverages her journey of navigating various career paths to help students find their own. She emphasizes that one's major does not have to dictate one's career path and encourages students to explore what is meaningful to them.
Christa's journey from student-athlete to career coach shows the value of a liberal arts education. It also highlights the importance of being flexible and resilient in career development. Her experiences have prepared her to help students with their career paths.
She shows them how their education and experiences can lead to many rewarding job opportunities. Building portfolios requires considering how learning materials show what students have learned. This high-impact practice promotes critical thinking skills, ownership, and agency.
My career path 100 percent set me up for what I'm doing now. My experience of navigating it and also having a similar feeling of not knowing what you want to do. So now I’m teaching them how to navigate it and letting them understand that like your major doesn't have to be what you do at the end of the day for a career. It may not even line up.
The Role of ePortfolios in Career Development
Student portfolios have many uses in student development. Our featured guest and Bucknell University mainly use ePortfolios as a high-impact practice for specific skill development.
High-impact practices, or HIPs, are active learning methods. As this National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) reveals, they help students learn deeply by increasing their engagement.
As a tool for high-impact learning, ePortfolios help students engage in active learning and deep reflection. That's because ePortfolios go beyond static resumes. It encourages students to curate projects, achievements, and experiences that showcase their skills and growth.
Building portfolios requires thinking about how learning materials show what students have learned. This process helps develop critical thinking skills, ownership, and agency. Christa further discusses how Bucknell uses ePortfolio to support student career journeys.
How Bucknell University Uses Digication’s ePortfolio Platform to Support Career Journeys
Bucknell University sees the potential of ePortfolios as a high-impact practice for supporting student exploration and development. Thus, it launched Pathways, designed to introduce students to career opportunities while fostering self-reflection and self-discovery through ePortfolios.
Pathways encourages students to stay informed about career opportunities and evaluate the connection between their academic experiences and their lives beyond the classroom and into their long-term jobs.
The ePortfolio is structured into two key strategies:
- The My Career Journey template.
- The four-credit career courses.
1. The My Career Journey Template:
This template serves as a springboard for first-year students enrolled in Foundation Seminar classes. Sarah Bell created 'My Career Journey' at the Center for Career Advancement (CCA). It helps students understand CCA resources and encourages them to explore different career paths.
How The ‘My Career Journey' Template Encourages Self-reflection and Exploration
The My Career Journey ePortfolio template guides students through self-reflection and career exploration, helping them better understand their personal and professional aspirations. This comprehensive template incorporates a three-pronged technique to facilitate deeper self-awareness and career planning.
The three techniques are:
- Self-reflection prompts
- Career Resources
- Alum resource
Self-Reflection Prompts
One primary way the template encourages self-reflection is through a collection of prompts. These prompts help students think critically about their values, interests, strengths, and future expectations.
Some of the key prompts include:
What career paths can you cross off the list? Here, students reflect on careers that are not interesting and consider why.
What topics and ideas are sparking your curiosity? This prompt helps students identify subjects and ideas that excite them.
What is your definition of success? Here, they reflect profoundly and define what success means to them. They also consider what’s important to them, their core values, and how they influence your decisions.
What are your strengths and weaknesses? This reflection prompt instructs students to reflect on their skills and areas for improvement.
What activities do you like to do? This open-ended question asks about hobbies and interests that align with a fulfilling career.
These prompts encourage students to think about themselves. This helps them understand their motivations and preferences, vital for making sound career choices.
Career Resources
Beyond the initial self-reflection, the template includes pages geared toward leveraging career center resources. Christa has integrated these resources to provide specific guidance tailored to individual career paths. This section contains general career resources and major-specific prompts.
The general career resources section includes tools and information the career center provides to assist in career planning.
Major-specific prompts include questions like, "Is there an area within your major that stands out to you?" These questions help students focus on the aspects of their field of study that interest them the most.
Another example is, "Which part of computer engineering interests you the most?" This question encourages a deeper look into a wide field.
These specific prompts and resources help students narrow their career interests and explore potential career paths more thoroughly.
Alumni Resource Section
The alumni resource section is another valuable feature of the ‘My Career Journey’ template. It includes a directory of graduates, a complete list of former students from different majors, and their job titles, locations, and companies.
Christa helps with this section with prompts. These prompts encourage students to look at graduates’ career paths. She points out trends, like how graduates start in their field and later change careers.
Prompts include:
- "What surprised you?"
- "What did you notice?"
- "Did you see any careers in the later alumni classes that interest you?"
This section teaches students that career paths are rarely linear and that careers evolve often. It also provides opportunities to network with former students through the alum directory and the social networking site LinkedIn.
Lastly, Christa and the CCA also organize alum panels and campus programming. These events allow graduates to return to campus and share their experiences. Academic departments or industries, like data analytics, often organize them, offering students direct insights and connections to professionals in their fields of interest.
The My Career Journey template helps students reflect on themselves and explore careers. It gives them tools and insights. This support helps them make informed choices about their future jobs.
It (The My Career Journey Template) was designed to get them to start thinking that, “Oh, maybe I don't have to do something that lines up with my major”. Like it doesn't have to be a straight path. It can, you can go straight for a while and then veer off to the left or the right. And you could always circle back and end up figuring out what the right career is.
2. The Four-Credit Career Course
This course leverages ePortfolios as a central learning hub. However, the university still offers one-on-one appointments because they are essential. To help more students, it also collaborates with different departments and student groups.
During the semester, students create a learning ePortfolio. This ePortfolio records assessment results, assignments, and reflective exercises and helps students connect class discussions to future careers.
Students can also upload resumes and other career-building materials, creating a comprehensive record of their development. This record lets students review past experiences, including coursework outside their major, which may be important for their future careers.
ePortfolios become a tool for active learning and deep reflection on a student's career journey. This engagement with their development makes it a high-impact practice for career development.
Transforming Career Services: A Holistic Approach
Career services are changing a lot to meet the needs of today's students. Christa Matlack aptly summarizes this need: "It's just like anything else. It's keeping up with the times, right?"
Today's students are skilled with technology. They focus on abilities that fit a changing job market. They juggle various commitments and require flexible, personalized career guidance. Traditional career paths hold less relevance, and mental health and well-being are key considerations. Career services need to change to meet new demands. They should support different work options, such as freelancing and entrepreneurship.
In response to these demands, Bucknell University has strategically shifted its approach from a one-on-one to a one-to-many model.
Traditional career services rely heavily on one-on-one meetings, which can be limiting and take time. Now, Bucknell uses different strategies to connect with more students. They aim to reach students in their own time and space.
Let’s dive deep into the strategies:
Fostering Collaboration Across Campus
At Bucknell, this shift involves extensive collaboration across campus. The university still offers one-on-one appointments because they are essential. It also works with different departments and student groups to help more students.
This approach includes class visits, collaborations with student groups, and faculty partnerships to integrate career services into coursework. Bucknell boosts student engagement and participation by meeting students where they are, leading to higher attendance than standalone events.
Four-Credit Career Courses and ePortfolios
One of Bucknell’s notable initiatives is the four-credit career readiness course, "Jumpstart Your Career." This comprehensive course seeks to equip students with the necessary skills for career success. Throughout the course, students build an in-depth learning ePortfolio, a hold for all their assignments and reflections.
The course covers various aspects of career readiness, starting with self-awareness and career exploration. Students then progress to targeted job searches, resume and cover letter writing, interview practice, and negotiation skills.
By the end of the course, students will have a strong ePortfolio that shows their reflections, experiences, and skills. This will make applying for jobs and internships less scary.
Tailoring ePortfolios for Specific Audiences
Bucknell recognizes the importance of tailoring ePortfolios to specific industries and employers. The university champions Digication's platform precisely because it allows students to easily curate and showcase their experiences for different audiences. This flexibility empowers students to create targeted versions of their ePortfolios, highlighting relevant skills and experiences for each job application.
Bucknell further emphasizes the importance of tailoring self-presentation by hosting employer and alumni panels. These events expose students to how industry professionals approach data analytics and other career paths. By connecting with these professionals, students gain valuable insights into tailoring their ePortfolios and presentations to resonate with specific employers.
This shift and strategies enable career services to disseminate crucial information more efficiently, exposing students to diverse topics and skill development opportunities. Workshops and group discussions foster a dynamic learning environment, encouraging peer interaction and support networks.
Additionally, personalized guidance helps students. Flexible learning options and easy-to-use ePortfolio tools also support their growth. These resources enable students to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need, which is essential for success in the changing job market.
Using ePortfolios to Showcase Skills and Experiences
ePortfolios empowers students to showcase their skills and experiences dynamically and engagingly, complementing their resumes and providing a more holistic picture to potential employers. Christa Matlack suggests the following techniques for using ePortfolio to showcase skills and experiences:
Crafting Compelling Narratives in ePortfolios Using the STAR Method
Using the STAR method in ePortfolios allows students to craft compelling narratives that effectively demonstrate their skills and experiences. Students can write detailed stories about situations, tasks, actions, and results. These stories show their problem-solving skills, teamwork, leadership, and other vital abilities.
Adjust these stories to match the company's mission, vision, and values. This will make the ePortfolio a strong tool for job applications. For example, a student can talk about a project where they led a team to success. They should connect this experience to the job they want.
Selecting Relevant Experiences and Skills to Showcase
Selecting the most relevant experiences and skills to showcase is crucial for creating an impactful ePortfolio. Christa tells students to go beyond just mentioning their major. They should also share unique experiences that make them stand out.
An engineering student should focus on technical skills and show involvement in clubs, event planning, or leadership roles.
Bucknell University helps students connect with the school community. They use the alum directory and LinkedIn for this. These connections provide valuable insights and advice.
Alum panels and industry events help students customize their resumes and ePortfolios for specific employers, ensuring their skills and experiences are relevant and appealing.
Complementing Resumes with ePortfolios
ePortfolios complement resumes by providing a more holistic view of a candidate. While resumes offer a concise summary of qualifications, ePortfolios allow for a deeper exploration of skills and experiences.
Christa highlights techniques to demonstrate the design process and iterations, including pictures of projects, sketches, and final products.
Additionally, ePortfolios can include multimedia elements, detailed project descriptions, and reflective narratives that go beyond the limitations of a traditional resume.
Bucknell’s Jumpstart Your Career course includes a final project. For this project, students create a showcase ePortfolio. They can use this ePortfolio with their resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile. It helps them with networking and job applications.
Tips and Creative Ways for Using ePortfolios in Networking and Job Interviews
Even though ePortfolios have many benefits, employers need to learn about them. Students must find creative ways to include their ePortfolios in their job search. Christa suggests several innovative strategies:
Add a QR Code to Your Resume: A QR code on your resume links to your ePortfolio, making it easy for employers to find more information about you.
Include it in Your Email Signature: Include your ePortfolio in your email signature so others can easily access it.
Use it During Networking Conversations: When networking, mention your ePortfolio. It clearly shows your skills and experiences.
Business Cards: Students can give out business cards with QR codes during interviews. These codes link to their ePortfolios, allowing interviewers to see their work immediately.
Highlight Unique Experiences: Use the ePortfolio to share your story. Include unique experiences and achievements that may not fit on a regular resume.
Interview Discussions: During interviews, students can reference specific projects or experiences from their ePortfolios, providing a visual and detailed narrative to support their answers.
These techniques help students stand out and ensure employers fully understand their qualifications and achievements.
Adding Valuable Content in ePortfolios for Employers
Use ePortfolios to showcase skills and experience by adding helpful content over time. Employers value specific types of content in ePortfolios that provide insight into a candidate's skills, experiences, and personal growth. Key elements that employers find valuable include:
Detailed Project Descriptions: Employers appreciate thorough explanations of projects, including objectives, processes, and outcomes. The details help employers understand the candidate's problem-solving, project-management skills, and career goals.
Visual Evidence of Work: Photos, videos, and diagrams show the journey from the first idea to the final product. This can highlight a candidate's technical skills and creativity.
Reflective Narratives are Important. They tell stories about tough experiences, show how the candidate faced challenges, and share what the candidate learned from these situations. These narratives show resilience, creativity, and a capacity for growth.
Event Planning and Leadership: Being involved in clubs and planning events requires essential skills, including teamwork, communication, and organization.
The Future of ePortfolios in Career Services
ePortfolios can impact hiring by making candidates' skills and experiences more accessible and transparent. Christa Matlack points out that ePortfolios have changed education faculties. They help students share their work easily with search committees and potential employers.
This transformation in the education sector presents new opportunities for students in other fields, such as STEM fields like engineering and Veterinary Medicine. By having ePortfolios in job applications, engineering students can show a fuller picture of their skills.
They can highlight projects, designs, and problem-solving methods in ways that regular resumes cannot. This approach improves their visibility and meets the growing need for clear and reliable proof of skills in many industries.
Transform Careers With ePortfolio and Reflective Practices.
The future is bright for students trained to match their skill sets with current market demands. As Christa Matlack suggests, ePortfolios are poised to transform how students present themselves to potential employers.
Students create a strong story that makes them unique. They reflect on challenges, show their diverse skills, and demonstrate self-awareness. Don't wait for an opportunity to knock—embrace an ePortfolio now to transform careers.