Handbook for the College and University Career Center

This professional reference provides a comprehensive historical, theoretical, and practical overview of career centers in colleges and universities. The authors present and discuss various models of providing career services as well as ways to work with various constituent groups of clients. The volume emphasizes the pragmatics of planning, managing, and implementing career centers and provides examples of forms, policies, and strategies that have been proven to work. While the focus of the book is on practicality, the book emphasizes how theory should guide practice. The reference gives direct and proven examples of how to implement a comprehensive array of career services in a college or university. The authors address three points that are fundamental in providing career services. First, they trace the evolution of the delivery of college career services and they review various career center models. Second, they provide information and strategies that are necessary for the planning, organization, staffing, funding, and management of a college career center. Third, they review a range of services that may be provided by career centers, including counseling, assessment, computer-based guidance systems, programming, career information, and placement. Each chapter includes a list of references, and a selected bibliography concludes the work. The result is a reference bound to be of value to a wide range of student services personnel.