UCS searches for a job description

By Barry Levey

What could be a healthy dialogue about the changes needed at Yale's Undergraduate Career Services (UCS) is more often a diatribe. Certainly it is easy for seniors to cultivate a hatred for UCS; any organization serving as a reminder of the post-graduate abyss seems doomed from the start. But many seniors' concerns point legitimate deficiencies in the services UCS offers. Perhaps the sharpest criticism of the office has come from students interested in publishing, journalism, theater, public relations, or advertising—all fields where UCS currently offers little direction.

Now is an especially auspicious time for a close examination of the Yale division most seniors love to hate. With the imminent departure of Director and Associate Dean Susan Hauser, who plans to retire at the end of the school year, and the subsequent announcement of a new UCS review committee, the student body and the University are in a fortuitous position to evaluate just where UCS has been—and where it has to go.

In meetings with Hauser and Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, I asked both to reflect on Hauser's tenure as UCS director. Emerging from these interviews were both a satisfaction with the many positive changes Hauser has achieved and a puzzling disagreement about the basic mission of her office. In the constant debate over undergraduate responsibility, Hauser is still not convinced that students are bearing their full share of the career-search burden. As she prepares for a graceful exit, she may be sure that UCS excels at what it does; but the question that remains for Hauser, Brodhead, and the heads of the new committee is whether UCS is doing everything it should.

That's what we're here for

JULIA TIERNAN/YH UCS Director Susan Hauser will step down after this year.

Dean Hauser is a few minutes late for our 9 a.m. appointment, but she walks in with an affable harriedness that makes me excuse her tardiness as the probable result of a pet dog's accident or a spilled glass of orange juice. She also walks in with the confidence of one who is about to debunk the myth that UCS is a disaster area more likely to find Yalies a spot in a soup line than an office on Wall Street. As she looks back on nearly two decades as director of the program—culminating in her September 1996 appearance in U.S. News and World Report's article on Yale, the "Best College" in the country that year—her confidence seems more than earned.

"When Career Services was first implemented in 1973," she explained, "financial aid, on-campus jobs, and employment help had all been grouped together" in one office, a setup that categorized "work" as something about which only the poor needed to worry. Most students in the late 60's were fearing the Vietnam War draft and were motivated to pursue their immediate futures in graduate school. With the end of the war, however, more students started looking seriously into post-graduate work options. "The war changed everything," Hauser said. "Then Career Services joined the Dean's Office under Dean Horace Taft. In 1976, with Edward Noise as director, Career Services moved to the Provost's Office on Park Street and provided services to the grad school. In 1979 we moved here to Hillhouse. I became director in 1983."

Hauser's immediate job was to develop several programs that were then in their infancy. "The Junior Year Abroad (JYA) program, the fellowships programs, and pre-med counseling were all programs that had been growing in the late '70s which I took over," she said. Supervising their development "wasn't one big bag, it was gradual." It wasn't long, however, before the department suffered its greatest blow: in the late '80s, funding and staffing were cut by a full third in what Hauser calls "the great budget debacle." Things looked bleak for Career Services when it re-integrated with the Dean's Office in 1992. Then, with Brodhead's appointment as Dean in 1993, Career Services would begin, in Hauser's description, its "great upward trend."

"He's been a wonderful supporter of this office," Hauser enthused. The importance of Brodhead placed on rebuilding the office, both financially and physically, led to several significant changes in recent years, as Hauser explained, "especially in the technology available. Who heard of home pages 10 years ago?" The last several years have also brought new hires, making more counselors available. "You can come in and meet with your career counselor every week if you'd like," Hauser said. "That's what we're here for." A larger staff has also enabled the UCS libraries to stay open on evenings and weekends.

But Hauser is especially excited about the Office of International Education. "This is the second year we've run the orientation for international students," she said. "It started when [history professor] John Merriman chaired a Committee on International Education, which recommended the creation of an office including JYA, consortia and exchanges, and some responsibilities for our international students."

Hauser has difficulty keeping herself from smiling at these recent accomplishments. Her satisfaction seems well-placed; services the new office has offered so far include "financial aid to allow international students return home once in four years," as well as other emergency and research funds enabling international travel. "Financial aid for international students doubled this year," Hauser added.

Brodhead is similarly pleased with all that he and Hauser have accomplished. "We worked pretty hard to restore [the staffing cuts of the late '80s]," he said. While he takes a great deal of pride in the transformation ("I have made this rebuilding a big priority"), he is quick to give her the majority of acclaim. "She's seen that office through very hard times. She's always had ambitions for that place. She deserves a full deal of credit."

'It's a matter of wanting it'

JULIA TIERNAN/YH UCS boasts an imposing facade, but what goes on inside is up for debate.

Yet it is not only the credit that rests firmly on Hauser's shoulders. As our talk turns to the question of student criticism of her office, it becomes clear that she has a philosophy at odds with that of many students—one from which even Brodhead distances himself. The greatest distinction between Hauser and these students lies in their analysis of what Hauser calls the "spectrum" of responsibility. "What should Career Services do for Yale Students?" she asked. Her answer: less than Yale students might think.

"Whatever you do, students will never think it's enough," Hauser confessed. She was referring especially to students who want more varied employers involved with the on-campus interview program. Hauser sees it as a program of little importance, but students clamor for this relatively easy approach to meeting employers. UCS has recently conceded to student demand with a new "resume referral" service designed to interest more publishing companies and advertising firms in the program. But Hauser sees services such as these as more of a mistake than an improvement.

"The whole thrust is wrong," she complained. A job search "takes a great deal of effort and work and that's the reality," and any dependency on Career Services to bring employers to Yale is misguided. "How do you believe people get jobs? There's nothing to make us believe that people [in this population] get jobs by answering ads." Students seem to want Career Services to bring them more offers; Hauser wants students to use Career Services only as a resource. "You need to be making a strategic plan for yourself with our help," she said. "Every single student who wants a job should be doing their own search."

This philosophy is hard for Yalies to accept. Students complain that it translates into a lack of outreach on behalf of UCS, leading to a lack of information on available services. Furthermore, they point to programs at other Ivies that boast more student-friendly approaches. Harvard, for example, places a career counselor in every residential house, funding a much wider array of counseling options.

Hauser dismisses such criticism. "That's what they say about Yale at those schools," she said, although she admits that "Harvard has a much larger program than we do." When I asked her if the discrepancy is a matter of funding, she said, "No. It's a matter of wanting it."

So if Yalies wanted career advisors in every college, would we have them? "It's a question of what should Yale provide," Hauser agreed. "But you've still left the other side of that question. You need to want your services. Your writing tutor is in your college; how often do you go?"

Short of requiring students to meet with a career advisor, Hauser believes that her office is doing everything it possibly can to encourage student involvement. "We offer an e-mail list to all juniors. We send information electronically and by hard copy every week to the Master's Office of every college. More than that, I don't know how to do," she said.

'We need much more active contacts'

A meeting with Brodhead reveals a similar frustration with the lack of student motivation—but Brodhead is not convinced that this is the students' fault. His formation of a committee to review Career Services "is a rough pass at the question of what the organization is," he said. "There are things that we don't do at all. Should we? Is this [current] way the best way? It would be interesting to know that."

Brodhead sees a need to provide students with better guidance through "this world of the undefined future," especially in "the generic category 'jobs'." In response to students whose interests extend beyond investment banking and consulting, he admits that "we need much more active contacts with the world outside," bringing in what he calls "more creative" employers. I asked him if such employers are hard to find. "Not really," he replied. He explained that Yale has lacked "more contacts inside" to guide students toward such options.

"Yale's not here to give you a job," Brodhead said, "but at the same time it's not here to chuck you out" with no idea where you're going. Its goal should be to help one "put oneself forward" for employment and other opportunities. But Brodhead admitted, "I sometimes meet employers who are surprised how unprepared Yale students are for interviews. After employers hire them, they discover that they're great. But there is a disconnect between Yale and the world that we underestimate on the University side."

'How do you do business?'

Rectifying this disconnect will be the job of the new review committee, which is also charged with finding Hauser's replacement. Gary Heller, chair of the chemical engineering department and Master of Jonathan Edwards College, chairs the committee. Haller's directive from Brodhead confirms the concern that UCS may not be going far enough. He offered "How does [a career services program] do business?" as one of the main questions facing the committee in terms of both evaluating the program and finding a new director.

"That was one of the things [Brodhead] itemized to the committee in the charts," Haller continued, "the question of trying to get to students earlier. There is no mission statement yet, but we want to look at how we can make our clients, you, our students, more satisfied with the program."

Asked to predict where Career Services is going, Brodhead also noted "the mobilization of alumni" and a strengthening of "our advice about international opportunities, both commercial and non-commercial." Similarly, he hopes Hauser's replacement will be "someone with experience in business hiring, both for international companies and the non-profit sector."

But the question "that won't go away," as Haller put it, is of a more philosophical bent. Having also chaired the last major review of UCS—the same review that resulted in Hauser being named director—Haller knows that "you can always do better," but never to the point of student satisfaction. A first step, however, is determining "how one should structure it, and what communities should it serve." Most of the committee's first semester will be spent answering these questions. By winter recess, Brodhead and Haller hope the committee will take the answer and move toward finding a replacement for Hauser—a replacement who will head what may well be a very different UCS.

'Numbers like that'

"There is a question of what should you provide," Hauser admitted at the conclusion of our interview. She seemed glad, however, that such questions would wait until her departure to be answered. As for answering them, Hauser said, "I'll help as little or as much as possible, whatever the committee wants. I announced my retirement early to help provide as smooth a transition as possible."

She seemed slightly defensive as I asked her for some final figures. The success of her policy would seem easily tested by numbers: are students using the office more now that it's grown than they did during the "great budget debacle?" Wearily, she crosses to her computer, which boasts desktop wallpaper of two baby photos. "What we're offering has increased," she reiterates as a sort of non-sequitur. "But has the number of students participating increased? I don't really know."

She finds the numbers. In the 1993-1994 school year, 646 students participated in the on-campus interview program ("And here I told you not to focus on that program," she laughs.) After a moment's reflection, she says, "I guess that would be about the same number as last year."

If Hauser's improvements have been so significant, shouldn't the number of students using UCS increase every year? She answers after a moment with another non-sequitur, as the baby photographs reappear on her computer:

"But when you say nobody knows about the office, it's hard to believe when there are numbers like that."

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