Professional Speaking: CEW’s Careers Conference 2013 to Discuss Careers in Rapidly Changing World
December 20, 2012
Career development begins at birth. By kindergarten, kids are already imagining the job they want when they grow up. Once they’re adults, dreams of a great job and fulfilling career only get more intense.
The 27th Annual Careers Conference, organized by the Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will provide quality professional development for those who work with students and adults of all ages on career and education issues. The two-and-a-half day gathering, held January 28-30 2013 in Madison, WI, is unique among conferences in the field of career development and careers education in that it is designed specifically for practitioners. The seminars, speakers, and tours found at the Careers Conference provide the latest practices, strategies, and programs that allow practitioners to better address the changing needs of their clients and students. Also vitally important for attendees are the networking opportunities the conference provides, which allow participants to build connections with other practitioners from across the country.
“Everyone needs to know how to make wise career decisions throughout their life. This conference is for the people who spend a lot of time thinking about jobs and careers,” said conference manager Carol Edds. “People change jobs and careers way more than ever before and, more than ever, they need to know how to manage that whole process. There is such a huge need right now in our state and across the country for the resources that allow workers to make the best decisions on which careers to choose, whether to go back to school or to get retrained, whether to switch careers and what they should switch to,” Edds, the senior outreach specialist for the Center on Education and Work, continued.
John Zach, the career development coordinator the UW-Stevens Point Career Center, has attended the conference each of the past 20 years. “I’ve gone to a lot of conferences through the years, and I think the Careers Conference is the best at making sure there are always quality people there from every different track,” Zach said. “There’s always something useful for me going on – the toughest part is choosing which seminars to attend, because that means I’ll have to skip others I also wanted to go to.”
Dr. Aneneosa Okocha, a professor in the Counselor Education Department at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, is one of the featured presenters at this year’s conference. Her program, “Exploring the Intersection of Career Counseling and Mental Health Concerns” will focus on “Integrative Holistic Career Counseling” and highlight the state-of-the-art practice of this area. Okocha said the conference allows her to keep up with the profession’s technological and theoretical cutting edge.
“They often get presenters who are leaders in their fields, who disseminate information, such as which occupational fields may be on the rise or declining,” Okocha said. “And they are particularly good at bringing in exhibits showing the latest technology, so I can test out the latest tools or resources before integrating them into the classes I teach.”
This year, in keeping with the aspiration of providing attendees with insight into the important trends in the field, the organizers of the Careers Conference planned seminars on mindfulness and personal branding. Susan Chritton, author of Personal Branding for Dummies, will be doing two workshops designed to give participants ideas on applying personal branding to their lives and careers. “I’m going to explain why it’s important to create a personal brand for yourself. We’re going to have all these brilliant people at the conference who do wonderful work, but they have to make it memorable or no one will look at it,” Chritton said.
Caroline Dowd-Higgins, author of This Is Not the Career I Ordered, is one of seven speakers the conference will feature. She will be discussing another hot topic in career counseling: flexibility and adaptation to the new, post-recession economy.
“The recession created a new normal that is here to stay for career development professionals in education and the private sector. The tried-and-true strategies of the past must be customized to adhere to the market trends and the talent pool with whom we work,” said Dowd-Higgins, who is also director of Career and Professional Development and adjunct faculty at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. “It's a jungle out there but there are some essential survival strategies that will help us all reignite the passion we have for this profession and empower us to do our jobs more productively.”
The conference’s keynote speakers include Ray Ricafort and Annie Mais of the PBS documentary television show “Roadtrip Nation” and Dr. Rich Feller, Professor of Counseling and Career Development at Colorado State’s School of Education.
“Roadtrip Nation,” which sendsyoung people around the world to interview people who have lived life doing what they love, has run for six seasons on PBS. The show “endeavors to facilitate transformational experiences and encourage individuals to look introspectively to harness their individual interests,” according to its website. Ricafort is a former host of the show and Mais is its director of education.
Feller, a Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State, is the author of more than 100 publications, including three books: Career Transitions in Turbulent Times, Knowledge Nomads and the Nervously Employed, and A Counselors Guide to Career Assessment Instruments. He will speak on the power of finding positive and clear messages to keep students, colleagues and organizations encouraged to seek new ways to do their best work.
Over the course of the conference, attendees will have the chance to choose from more than 120 practitioner sessions, pre-conference workshops, off-site tours to workplaces, hands-on technology workshops, and plenty of networking opportunities. This year the always-popular off-site tours will visit Camp Randall Stadium, The Center for Construction, Manufacturing, Apprenticeship, and Transportation at Madison College, the Wisconsin State Capitol, and Epic Systems headquarters.
Carmen Croonquist, the director of career development at the Adler Graduate School in Minneapolis and president of Intentionaliti Coaching & Consulting Services, said the tours are one of her favorite aspects of the conference. Another is the geographic and professional diversity of the attendees – in 2012, the conference attended hundreds of career development professionals from 29 states and four countries. “One thing that I find really appealing about the Careers Conference is that you meet people from all over the country and get such a variety of experience and perspectives,” Croonquist said.
Last year, Croonquist got even more than she bargained for out of the conference’s international component. Following her presentation, she was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference in Iceland. That opportunity has led to an invitation to keynote the Nordic Career Network’s Scandinavian Career Counseling Conference in May. “It’s an important event, because it’s at a time of the year when there is no competition from other conferences,” Croonquist said. “It’s a rare opportunity for exposure.”
As for the type of exposure that comes from the first-hand experience of Wisconsin winter cold, Croonquist said, “It’s an experience you’re able to brag about – you can say, ‘I survived Wisconsin in January.’”
The weather won’t deter Croonquist from attending the Careers Conference again this year. “It’s too valuable to me to miss,” she said. “It’s one of those events where people come together from all over and share great ideas.”
For more information on the conference, see the conference website.
