Employer Name  

Career Services - Northern Illinois University

Employer  Website

www.niu.edu/careerservices

Job Title  

Counseling Psychologist/Team Leader

Additional education-please indicate the name of the institution, the specialization/program and the year  

Ph.D., University of Missouri - Kansas City, 2001

Briefly describe what you do   

I provide career counseling, outreach, and other services to students at Northern Illinois University. I primarily help with career decision-making, but I also assist with the internship and job search. Additionally, I am a team leader supervising other career counselors as we work on various projects. I have a license in clinical psychology from the state of Illinois.

What other jobs have you had? Please include job  title and name of organization 

Coordinator of Career Services, Counseling & Student Development Center, NIUPredoctoral Intern, Counseling and Career Development Center, Grand Valley State University Research Intern, Kansas City Power & Light & Sprint PCS

What are the key skills, abilities, and personal qualities necessary to succeed in this type of work?  

Listening is the chief skill for success as a counselor or psychologist of any sort. We all think we do it, but very few people do it well. For career counseling at a university, you need a thorough knowledge of what the school has to offer to present as many options to students as possible. You also need to be familiar with various theories of career and student development. Resourcefulness is another highly valuable skill. A lot of career counseling is about answering questions - either explicit or implicit ones - and you need resourcefulness to be able to find the answer or to help students find the answers themselves.

Appreciation of diversity is another very valuable attribute. Recognizing that your way of seeing things is not necessarily the same as other people and recognizing the background factors that influence that way of seeing things is critical to the counseling process (and is a great ability for just about any career).

What do you enjoy most about your current position?  

I really enjoy working with the students. It's very rewarding to see myself entering their lives at a critical moment, providing as much help as I can, and then exiting again. The tried and true analogy of "teaching them to fish rather than giving them fish" is very appropriate here. Whether people actually choose a major or career when they leave my office is not as important as having them know how to make the choices and know that they always have options.

Most important/valuable lesson or activity in college that impacted your career  

I was really involved in student organizations while at Trinity, but I was never particularly focused on how those activities related to my future plans and goals. I think the lesson I have learned in retrospect was that, instead of doing "everything," it's important to consider your career direction and choose the activities that would be most helpful for that direction. I knew the student org. activities could be helpful, but I wasn't as proactive in my career development as I could have been.

What advice for someone entering this field?

Scope out all of your options before committing to one direction or another. I committed myself to getting my doctorate in psychology while at Trinity, because I thought "That's the top degree you can get, so that must be the best." But I also knew that I wanted to work with college students in some capacity, and there are a variety of Master's degree programs that will help you do it, and I didn't realize that at the time. Just because the degree is seen as the pinnacle of education doesn't mean that it's the right thing for you and your career.

Questions?

Email askalumni@trinity.edu
Put the name of the alumni you wish to contact in the subject line, then type your question.