A Changemaking Story — University of San Diego
This essay tells the changemaker story of an experiential program launched by University of San Diego’s Career Development Center (CDev) called Torero Employer and Alumni Mentors
(mentoring.sandiego.edu). Known shorthand as TEAM, the program (powered by PeopleGrove’s mentorship solution) in its original iteration under the name “Torero Connections” was conceptualized in 2017 as University of San Diego’s formal mentoring program designed to match USD students with alumni mentors for career exploration and support. When I joined the College in 2018 as Assistant Director of Alumni Career Engagement, I was tasked with developing and scaling the program with the intention of expanding its scope to greater number of users and connections. I have since been leading and implementing the portal’s growth strategy.
The portal has grown over 700% in total number of users from 660 in 2018 to 5400+ community members today and resulted in a total of 4000 messages sent between all users, 900+ users with a connection, and 100+ alumni referred job opportunities within the last six months. Community users have reported the portal’s value in offering direct line of communication with industry professionals, helping them build confidence, gain insider perspective on various career paths otherwise difficult for them to obtain, and get access to myriad professional and volunteering opportunities.
From an education perspective, changemaking entails integrating students in the process of their own learning so they can build social emotional learning (SEL) skills critical for long term wellbeing and success in ways that are congruent with their learning style preferences. According to experiential education theorists Dewey and Kolb (based on Richard Millwood’s guide to learning theories for Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning) experiential learning integrates personal and contextual experiences by allowing users to reflect on their experience, use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience and make decisions and solve problems.
TEAM embodies experiential learning by enabling USD community to share their knowledge and life experiences through an easy to use interface. As a result of reflections from their career engagements, community members develop greater self awareness and other awareness. Portal’s LinkedIn integration allows for a seamless sign up process that makes it easy to get registered and share career advice, industry connections, and specialized knowledge. Depending on users’ preferred communication styles, the portal’s built in chat, email, phone, and video conferencing capabilities promise a fun and convenient way to build new connections and stay connected. In the course of their networking efforts, students learn how to write approach emails and develop key communication and relationship building skills they need to thrive and reach their potential. The platform allows them to build the confidence and “can-do” attitude they need to take initiative and work towards their career goals.
Consequently, the portal serves as a human library of nearly 5400 Toreros interested in sharing their backgrounds, life stories, and career journeys. In line with experiential philosophy, students, new graduates, and alumni in career transition can reflect and apply the insights from their virtual engagements to propel their aspirations forward. For some, these relationships ultimately result in shadowing experiences, internships or full-time jobs. For others, they consist of knowledge sharing for the purpose of building new ideas and projects. By helping connect users to their passions, TEAM is instrumental in creating future generation of leaders and changemakers and manifesting positive transformation in the lives of all involved.
Ken Robinson and Laura Hay define transformation as a collaborative mindset that integrates others in the process of both identifying the need and designing custom solutions resulting in meaningful outcomes. In what follows, this brief will explain the evolution of TEAM using the changemaking framework comprised of Feel-Imagine-Do-Share. In doing so, it will underscore the importance of empathy, teamwork, and leadership in recognizing the need and mobilizing others in co-designing a program based on community building, knowledge sharing, and opportunity generation.
Feel
Changemaking journey starts with ‘feeling’ or deeply empathizing with a need (Changemaker Journey, Ashoka Youth Venture). It is putting empathy in action for the collective good. Gallup research suggests that our odds of being happy at work are 2.2x higher if we have mentors that support and encourage us. It also goes that we are almost 5x happier in life if we are happy at work (2014 Gallup Purdue Index Report). As LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky recently wrote on Business Insider, professional development is hardly linear making access and active engagement with a wide network of successful professionals all the more important for building an informed vision of the professional landscape. The spark that initiated TEAM was the realization that students needed a safe space where they can connect and learn from each other and the wider USD community of alumni, faculty, and parents. A framework was needed to leverage the collective strength of the Torero community where all involved worked towards the betterment of others.
Imagine
This phase entailed inspiring those involved towards collective visioning so that each person is aware of the needs and perspectives around them. Once user needs were established during the “Feel” stage, iterative brainstorming sessions gave rise to technology assisted long term mentoring as the preferred solution to support student learning and career success. This would help build an authentic Torero community where all involved would be empowered to recognize to be their best selves and take charge of their own growth and learning. Learning would be user centered and user driven and rest on one’s ability to build and sustain the connections made through the platform and follow through on insights and actionable items resulting from networking conversations.
Do
The process resulted in the test launch of a prototype in the form of a virtual yearlong student to alumni mentorship program. In a pilot survey sent out to platform users a year after the prototype’s deployment, student and alumni users shared their excitement for the existence of a virtual networking community exclusive to USD but raised concerns that student adoption was low and mentor industry representation was limited. As a result of user feedback, the long term formal mentorship model was abandoned in favor of a nonhierarchical flash connection model that allowed for horizontal student-to-student and alumni-to-alumni consultations in addition to the traditional student- to-alumni engagement. With this adjustment, all users would now be able to seek guidance from each other regardless of length or type of experience.
As social entrepreneur and Ashoka Senior Director Vipin Thekk reminds us cultivating trust is a key part of any changemaking activity. To create relationships built on trust, users need to be proactively involved in the process of creating the interventions designed to serve their needs. Consequently, this phase entailed successful relationship building over a dozen meetings with campus community partners including CDev Employer and Parent Boards, International Services, Athletics, Military and Veterans Affairs, Alumni Association Board, Internship Coordinators, faculty members from all departments, among others. These meetings conducted by the Assistant Director revolved around understanding stakeholder needs, collecting feedback based on current experiences, and creating excitement and buy in for the community-wide visioning process.
Driven by ongoing feedback, reflection, and iteration, the Assistant Director created a story board with proposed action plan that included a call for rebranding the portal by customizing its name and feel, actionizing a staggered launch model, devising strategies to build flexibility into the platform such as multi-level interactions (peer, traditional, and reverse mentoring) as well as capitalizing on the platform’s unique elements such as flexible timelines (ability to deactivate-reactivate availability), specialized communities, and alumni job board to incentivize user account creation.
What followed was a yearlong process of robust marketing and operational effort that culminated in the production of program specific teasers, tutorials, learning modules, digital newsletters, and print publications such as brochures and postcards in which the Assistant Director worked in tight partnership with Marketing colleague to operationalize the communications strategy set forth in the storyboard. Throughout the process, Assistant Director solicited ongoing feedback from the community to make modifications as necessary to enhance the portal’s efficacy and usefulness.
As an illustration, in conversations with our Law School partners it became apparent that we needed to create a new user type for Law Graduate Students as their professional and academic needs differed from the rest of the student population on the platform. Similarly, in response to critical feedback from the community, new search filters were created for our minority users such as first generation college students, black students, and international students to make it easier for them to find and connect with each other through the platform. More recently, when concerns aired that the portal’s built in job board might compete with the college’s centralized job portal provided under a different contract, our Employer Relations partners were provided an opportunity to voice key concerns and weigh in on potential solutions.
Consequently, capturing ongoing feedback from the community, reflecting regularly, and immersing key stakeholders in the portal’s design and features allowed us to tweak as needed to better serve the needs of the community.
Share
We are now in the last stage in TEAM’s changemaking journey in which we have put on our listening ears once again to hear from the community with their reflections. After three years’ of hard work guided by design thinking and true changemaking ambition, we now have a common language to talk about TEAM through user FAQ guides, outreach templates, and marketing assets and gained campus wide recognition and visibility through intentional and timely media coverage. In addition to serving as a human library of advice and insights, TEAM is also being used as a curriculum and teaching aid, a career readiness tool, and topic coverage in networking workshops.
As below feedback from platform users indicate, TEAM helps connect users to their wellbeing by giving them a sense of purpose and supporting them in achieving their goals. For many participants, the idea of helping another person through one-time conversations is alone meaningful. The platform is viewed as an equitable space where there are opportunities for everyone and sharing is made easy, fast, and fun.
“I love being a part of TEAM! … While I don’t currently live in San Diego, I like to find ways to give back to the amazing Torero community that gave me so much. Recently, several current students have been reaching out to get advice and insight into my career path within the sports industry. It has been very rewarding to correspond with these students and help pay it forward in some small way.”
“I gained valuable knowledge from these conversations that helped me get my current position and gave me the confidence to start asking other connections for career advice. Every thirty minute conversation has me walking away thinking about how many amazing Toreros we are connected to and a new way that I can be a better worker and future candidate for a job.”
“I wish I would have been able to connect with a mentor to shine light on my gifts and interests. Now that I have found my way, I am happy to help students through TEAM. When we leave school, we are all on a journey towards finding a career that fulfills us, I hope that all students can discover their own gifts and find a career that feels natural to them, just as Amador Collective is a true fit for me.”
As Ross Hall said, we need to create social emotional environments where people believe in their capacity to grow and thrive. As Assistant Director and TEAM Community Manager, I love actively listening to the community to ensure that the platform remains as a space where users feel safe to share and fully immerse themselves in each other’s growth. Today, TEAM, through its various functionalities that transform connections into opportunities, is that environment for Toreros everywhere. However, technology is only as good as its application and ecosystem.
For the program’s continued success and growth, it’s essential that we lean on our collective empathy and leadership to continue to equip TEAM users with the changemaking skills they need to build meaningful Torero connections for lifelong learning and sharing.
References
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Roslansky, R. (2021, June 8). LinkedIn CEO to new grads: ‘It’s not mandatory to know what you want right after graduation’. Business Insider.
https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-ryan-roslansky-advice-new-grads-covid-2021-6.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyE5Re_gw04
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Thekk, Vipin. EDUC515i: Changemaking in K12 Education. May 28 2021. University of San Diego. Class Lecture (Zoom)
