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UIA Member Spotlight
In 2018, seven UIA member institutions joined together to innovate around strengthening the college to career pipeline for underserved students on their campus. By the end of the Bridging the Gap from Education to Employment (BGEE) initiative, over 1,947 students were served through 7 career readiness programs, and 33 robust employer-campus partnerships.
One such intervention, the Career Champions Program at Oregon State University, specifically focused on engaging faculty and classroom instructors on incorporating tangible career connections within the classroom for first generation students, students of color, and low-income students. This innovative cross-campus professional development opportunity, which was originally overseen by former UIA Fellow, Brenna Gomez, is run in partnership with the Office of Academic Affairs and the Career Development Office at OSU.
Brenna’s great work continues under her new role as the Director of Career Integration in the Career Development Center, which was a direct outcome of the BGEE initiative. We look forward to seeing how she, along with her OSU colleagues, continue to grow the program beyond the pilot project while advancing diversity, equity and inclusion for all OSU students.
Featured Fellow
Dr. Claudine McLaren Turner
University of Central Florida
Born in Jamaica and raised in Orlando Florida, Claudine attended her first college at the age of sixteen and struggled to find her way at an undergraduate institution that did not actively reach out to academically talented first-generation students of color. Regarding the complexity of her experience at the intersection of those identities, Claudine states: “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I felt dazed and confused. I didn’t understand that I needed help or even what kind of help to seek out.”
The lack of advising resources at her first institution set Claudine on a circuitous and arduous path towards achieving her educational goals, a path she navigated alone over many years, with multiple starts and stops before earning her undergraduate degree at another institution. Many would have given up after such an experience but Claudine’s sense of hope, her devotion to learning, and her determination to contribute to the lives of people in her community and beyond fueled her journey as she eventually completed a master’s degree in applied sociology and a Ph.D. in Education: Higher Education and Policy Studies. Her ambition to create academic and advising support systems for students, her work as an academic advisor, faculty member, and scholar, and her desire to be a change agent at the institutional level stem from both the heartbreak and triumph of the sixteen-year-old youth stepping onto the college lawn, hopes and dreams tucked into her pockets and the powerful woman who is the Claudine of today, the mother of two, whose continual curiosity, wit, and love for others allowed her to navigate an educational support system that was falling to pieces all around her.
Claudine now holds her dreams in her hands. No longer dreams deferred, they are the building blocks by which she is helping to remold the educational landscape into a space that can adequately support first-generation college students and students and faculty of color.
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