Constructing Your Career Plays

A Career Advisor’s Approach to Life Designing With College Student-Athletes

Authors

  • Evan W. Faidley University of California, Berkeley

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18060/26055

Keywords:

career advising, career construction interview, life design, student-athletes, higher education

Abstract

The evolving landscape of job opportunities has led to increased concerns around life-career success of college student-athletes while and after they balance their academic and sport performance. At Kent State University (Division I) located in Kent, Ohio, Tracy Montgomery serves as the student-athlete career advisor liaison between Career Exploration & Development and the Department of Athletics. With more than 10 years of secondary education teaching experience and seven years of career advising/education, Tracy has identified and continues to apply Mark Savickas’s (2012, 2013) Career Construction Interview (CCI) as her most valuable tool in creating conversations around career development. In a sit-down interview with Tracy, she breaks down the life design technique (Savickas, 2015) so career practitioners and other intercollegiate athletic personnel may adopt the approach to support student-athletes to (a) identify what their intentions are toward life-career transitions; (b) realize why they perform their actions and closely hold their beliefs toward making life-career decisions ; and (c) move forward with how they can empower themselves to move in and out of “going pro.”

Author Biography

Evan W. Faidley, University of California, Berkeley

Evan W. Faidley, PhD, is the graduate student advisor in the French and Romance Languages & Literature programs at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include career development, college student development, and professional preparation in student affairs and higher education administration.

References

Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources.

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (2018, March). NCAA recruiting facts. https://collegiatewaterpolo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NCAARecruiting-Fact-Sheet-WEB.pdf

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (2022). Student-athlete career development. Retrieved January 18, 2022 from https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2016/2/9/student-athlete-career-development.aspx

Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes’ career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6, 22–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2012.687053

Savickas, M. L. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling & Development, 90(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-6676.2012.00002.x

Savickas, M. L. (2013). Career construction theory and practice. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent, R. (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (2nd ed., pp. 144–180). John Wiley & Sons.

Savickas, M. L. (2015). Life-design counseling manual. Author.

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Published

2022-08-29

Issue

Section

Special Issue on College Athletics