Revolutionizing College & Career Readiness at OLSH

By Deena Swank ‘92

Recent research has shown that exposing students to career and college exploration opportunities can provide powerful motivation for academic achievement. When students begin thinking about their long-term goals, they can see the meaningfulness of the steps necessary to reach those goals. With this in mind, beginning in the fall of 2018, the OLSH Counseling Center will introduce the students to Naviance, a web-based college and career readiness program.

Naviance is used by many local high schools to streamline the college search and application processes and provide students with tools for career exploration. At OLSH, it will be used to enhance existing programming, such as the college speakers, college visit field trips, Career Day, Teacher-Advisor Sessions, and individual consultations with students and their parents.

Each OLSH student will have a Naviance account, affording them access to a database of colleges and universities that can be searched via filters, helping students to narrow down their college search process. Students will be able to research schools based on their desired size, cost, majors, location, and other criteria; students can then save specific schools in a “My Favorites” folder for easy access when it comes time to apply.

The counselors can use the college interest information to identify students who would benefit from their recently implementedcollege visit field trips. This year, the counselors took students to the campuses of La Roche College and Gannon University in an effort to get students on a college campus and thinking about what they want their college experience to be like. “For many of them, this was their first time on a college campus,” said Counselor Regina Woynar ‘95. “The only way a student knows if a college is right for them is to go and visit. Once they’re on campus, they can decide if they can see themselves going to school there or not.”

Naviance will also help to streamline the college application process. Counselors and teachers will have the ability to submit transcripts and letters of recommendation electronically, and the school will be able to track which schools a student has applied to and the results of those applications.

Career exploration is another component of Naviance. Students will have access to a variety of career exploration tools, including career assessments, a resume builder, videos of interviews with leaders in different fields, and a career database. Students will be able to search the database, using their career assessments as a guide. The database includes information on the education needed for each career, the average wage, job responsibilities, and more.

Counselors and advisors will have the ability to give students assignments related to career or college readiness that can be completed during Teacher Advisor sessions. This will allow a greater level of personalization during the sessions, while giving the students tangible, measurable tasks to complete.

Naviance will also function as a tool for data collection and management. Both the school and the students will be able to track college acceptances, the qualifications that earned students acceptance into certain colleges, fields of study pursued by alumni, and more.

Counselors expect the introduction of Naviance to “revolutionize” the college and career readiness programming at OLSH. “We are excited to bring this incredible program to OLSH,” said Counselor Jerad Smith. “Students and parents will have a wealth of college and career readiness resources available right at their fingertips and will be able to use these tools to personalize their college search experience and career selection process. We believe this will ease a lot of the stress and anxiety that come along with the college search and application process for parents and students.”