Career Readiness Conference Recap

On February 1, 2020, UC San Diego’s inaugural career readiness conference for first-generation students was held in the Student Services Center, Multipurpose Room. The development of “First, but not alone: Power in numbers” emerged from the understanding of the unique needs and challenges faced by our first-generation student population in their efforts toward gaining the skills necessary to navigate their careers beyond their time at UC San Diego. The success of the conference was made possible through the collaborative effort between the Student Retention & Success unit, Career Center, and Teaching + Learning Commons, the strong support from UC San Diego alumni, and especially through the passion, excitement, and willingness of our first-generation student population to dedicate their time toward their professional development. 

The conference began that Saturday afternoon with an inspiring keynote speaker and UC San Diego alumnus, Cristina Aguirre, who is the Chief Programs Office at Barrio Logan College Institute. Throughout Cristina’s keynote, she shared personal narratives that showcased her resilience and acknowledged the various challenges faced through her journey as a first-generation college graduate. The keynote set a tone of perseverance that helped carry and shape the impact of the three plenary, scaffolding workshops that students participated in through the duration of the conference. 

The workshops included a design-thinking, five to ten year plan workshop which was hosted by Student Success Coaching, followed by an introduction to experiential learning which was hosted by the Academic Internship Program (AIP) counselors and Engaged Learning Tools (ELT) specialists, and finally an interactive, career readiness workshop which involved rapid resume reviews, experiential learning opportunities, feedback on personal statements/cover letters that were conducted by peer leaders from AIP, the Writing Hub, Career Center peers and advisors, and success peer coaches. As a result of engaging in these workshops, students reported an 41% increase in agreement of feeling prepared to navigate career readiness compared to how they felt at the beginning of the conference and shared that “Networking/connecting to others was actually very informative and helpful in terms of learning how to navigate post-grad.”

 The evening ended with a networking dinner, where UC San Diego first-gen alumni from wide-ranges of career fields and backgrounds came to “break bread”, show support, share their stories, and offer words of advice and encouragement for the student participants. More notably, the conference was successful in strengthening the Triton first-generation community on and off-campus through building bridges of connection between first-generation students and alumni. Alumni and current students shared positive feedback which acknowledged that the conference provided “a space I wish I had had when I was preparing to graduate” and shared that “I really liked the advice and the fact that they let us know it ok to feel a bit lost and confused.” With the success of “First, but not alone: Power in numbers,” the hope is that future iterations of this conference will continue to provide a space of community and career-readiness support for the greater first-generation student population at UC San Diego.