Professional Development
Current and future makeovers at Career Services
By Arthur Lord

As part of an ongoing effort to expand the professional development capabilities and activities of SAIS, the Career Services office underwent its biggest physical change in over twelve years when it reopened this past January in expanded offices. And the new office space is only the first of many steps aimed at helping all SAIS students develop more effective professional growth strategies, according to Director Ron Lambert.

The expanded and updated office came as a surprise to many students – particularly the ones looking for the Registrar’s Office, which used to reside next door to Career Services.

Lambert explains that this major renovation was motivated by a SAIS-wide effort led by Dean Ted Baker to “create better spaces for students, staff, and faculty.”

With the acquisition of a new floor in the Bernstein-Offit Building, the Economics Department moved en masse, leaving room for internal restructuring within the Nitze main campus building. Career Services took over the former Registrar’s office, and after significant construction turned it into a new, sleek, and professional office.

Even though Career Services staff was forced to work out of classrooms for 2 months as a result of the construction project, their new space – which will be complete once a glass wall enclosing the Career Services classroom is installed – provides a timely facelift to SAIS Career Services at a time when competition with other international relations graduate school programs is increasing.

In addition to the more professional looking office suite, Career Services has also added a dedicated interview room and now hosts the Alumni Relations office within its suite, though the Director of Alumni Relations continues to report to the Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations, Amir Pasic.
Career Services human capital upgrades have complemented the physical upgrades,  Martina Leinz joined the staff in November to coordinate the Professional Skills Course program and Collen McCusker came on in January to fill a vacant counseling position, bringing the Career Services staff to 6 full time and one half-time.

Increased staff resources have allowed for Career Services to embark on an ambitious new plan to enhance employer outreach, focusing on developing and cultivating alumni and recruitment office relations with the top 200 SAIS employers in the private, public, multilateral organization, and NGO realm.

The office overhaul, notes Lambert, is a significant milestone for Career Services at SAIS, reminiscing that “when I arrived here [in 1995], Career Services was incredibly small and under-resourced,” only able to operate on weekday afternoons and not offering support to MIPP students or alumni.

These changes may go a ways in improving students’ perception of Career Services’ capabilities and competencies, which, like at most graduate schools, tends to be mixed. A large number of students feel grateful that such a professional and committed staff make themselves available to help them prepare for life after SAIS by aiding them not just in finding jobs but in finding careers. Yet at the same time, there are ongoing concerns about the office’s operations.

Philip Reiner has strong praise for the Career Services office, saying that in his search for a summer job, “[Career Services counselor] Mike McKenzie was of the utmost help.”

Tabitha Mallory describes Career Services as “amazingly professional, helpful, and [with] an abundance of information; however, they also run their outfit like a military establishment.”

Saqib Rahim, an aspiring journalist currently spending his second semester in Bologna, on the other hand, noted that when he met with a counselor in the fall “he seemed to be guiding me toward his area of expertise” instead of what Rahim was really interested in, the world of journalism.

That said, Rahim reflects that “career counselors aren’t really supposed to tell you what to do, or to get you a job. They should just ask you the right questions, to get you thinking along the right lines.”

Career Services seems well-attuned to how they’re perceived among the current students and alumni, providing frequent opportunities for students to give input on how to be more helpful in their professional development, such as course evaluations for their professional skills workshops and career service staff devoting considerable time to one on one meetings as well as drop in hours.

Lambert stresses that Career Services will continue to progress and adapt in order to become an even better complement to a SAIS education. Looking ahead to the next five years, Lambert says that Career Services’ biggest challenge will be to continue to “integrate professional development more effectively throughout the SAIS experience – without changing the emphasis on high quality academics and scholarship that attract students and faculty to SAIS.”

Additionally, Careers Services hopes to work with its partners in the Bologna and Nanjing campuses to further their capabilities, with talk of adding video conference facilities to the new Career Center office so that Bologna and Nanjing students can participate in various DC- based career development opportunities. The new office in the Nitze building will also be increasingly used for employer presentations, professional skills workshops, and career club meetings.

Altogether, this might not mean Career Services will be able to hand away jobs to all graduates along with the diplomas they’ll receive on that bright sunshiny May day, but they will do all they can to make more students know what they can do throughout their SAIS experience to develop a better sense of who they are, where they want to go, and how to get there.

Arthur Lord is a 1st year MA candidate in Strategic Studies