October 16, 2024
The Career and Life Design Center at Oakland University was recently awarded a 2024 Career Spark Award by Handshake, the leading early career platform in the U.S. The award recognizes top career centers in the categories of student engagement, employer engagement, and reporting analytics.
“I am extremely excited for our Career and Life Design Center at Oakland University to be recognized with the Career Spark Award, which has place us in the top 2% of Handshake’s more than 1,500 college and university partners,” said Wayne Thibodeau, senior director of the Career and Life Design Center at OU.
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| Wayne Thibodeau |
The traditional Career Services office was transformed into the Career and Life Design Center in August 2023. The foundational Life Design model inspires a human-centered approach to creating innovative programming and resources that support student’s career and life pursuits through foundational pillars of Explore, Discover, and Connect.
This approach is based on the Design Thinking model described in the book “Designing Your Life,” by Stanford University researchers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The book shows how the “design thinking” behind innovative technology, products and spaces can be used to design and build one’s career and life.
OU’s Career and Life Design Center employs a design thinking approach to empower students to design their lives with purpose and strive for their potential.
Students are encouraged to explore and develop their interests in a multitude of ways, including through on-campus jobs, experiential learning opportunities and student organizations. Such experiences not only help students identify their interests, goals and values, they also provide avenues for students to engage with their peers, as well as industry professionals who can offer mentorship and guidance in bridging the gap between the academic and professional worlds.
“I am proud to launch the first dedicated Career and Life Design Center of its kind in the state of Michigan,” Thibodeau said. “It is exciting to be recognized for our innovative, transformative approach using design thinking principles for student engagement, employer engagement, and using data for telling our story about the impact OU students have in the region and beyond.”
To learn more about the Career and Life Design Center at Oakland University, visit www.oakland.edu/cldc.