Kerry Spitze and Steve Russell, both of Bowling Green State University, share how their career services team and the entire campus (from the top down) are implementing life design and design thinking.

Life design, like Career Everywhere, is all about helping students think about their careers and life after college as early and purposefully as possible. To implement life design campus-wide, Bowling Green is taking a top-down approach with support from the university president and collaboration between different departments.

For example, BGSU has created two key centers to support the life design implementation and provide coaching and support to students throughout their college journey: The Radbill Center for College and Life Design and the Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections. Both centers use design thinking principles to help students prototype their career ideas and gain practical experience through internships and other opportunities.

In addition to helping more students plan their careers in a holistic, personalized way, the implementation of life design has also had a positive impact on student retention and enrollment at Bowling Green.

“Every time a new student comes to our campus, they're going to take a tour just like they would of any other institution. And if they went anywhere else, they would stop at some point on their tour, and someone would say, ‘There's our career center. That's where you go to find internships and jobs.’ And then they would move on. So if we have that, we don't differentiate ourselves at all to that student,” Russell said.

“If we can develop something deeper that really showcases how we're different, it serves our enrollment goals. And those enrollment goals are the lifeblood of an institution.”

Resources from the episode:

• Kerry’s LinkedIn profile
• Steve’s LinkedIn profile
• Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections
• Radbill Center for College and Life Design

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