The person with the answer to a student’s career question could be sitting in a boardroom in Richmond, Virginia, working on a film set in Los Angeles or leading a team halfway around the world.
At Old Dominion University, connecting with that person is now at every student’s fingertips.
Ask A Monarch Alum, a partnership between the Office of Alumni Relations and the Center for Career and Leadership Development (CCLD), is a platform that connects students with the University’s network of nearly 200,000 alumni who have firsthand experience in the careers and industries they are exploring.
The approach is simple: Using preset prompts, students submit questions through an online form, and the platform matches them with alumni whose education, career or experience offers a relevant perspective. The alumni on the other end, who have opted in to participate, share their responses with the student directly.
The value of that connection goes beyond answering a single career question. It gives students access to something that can be difficult to build on their own: professional social capital.
For Jenn Grimm, (Ph.D. ’19), executive director of the CCLD, that access is one of the platform’s greatest benefits and helps level the playing field for many students.
“Some students enter ODU with a vast network of professionals, while others enter college with little or no professional connections in their field of interest,” she said. “Now, every single student has access to our alumni network and it starts with a simple question asked through an easily accessible form.”
Krista Harrell (B.S. ’01, M.S.Ed. ’03, Ph.D. ’12), associate vice president for the Office of Alumni Relations, has already seen how valuable those connections can be.
She recently worked with a student studying cybersecurity and connected him with an Alumni Association council member who owns a cybersecurity business and was named to ODU’s Alumni Association 40 Under 40 list. The connection gave the student access to someone whose professional experience and personal background closely aligned with his interests and aspirations.
“And I thought, this is exactly what Ask A Monarch Alum is doing,” she said. “It’s taking me out of the scenario, to some degree, of having to make those connections one by one and doing it on a larger scale.”
And the benefits of the platform don’t stop there. Connections with professionals can help students decide if a career is one they truly want to pursue — before they invest years preparing for it.
“So often, students enter college with a vague idea of the career path they wish to pursue, and they really benefit from experiences like mentorship and conducting informational interviews with professionals in the field,” Dr. Grimm said.
A student exploring a field might learn more about the education and training required or the day-to-day work environment — information that could help them decide if the career is the right fit. For students already on the right track, conversations with alumni can be more targeted, from which credentials to pursue to which experiences could make them more competitive and how to stand out in an interview.
For Dr. Harrell, the platform also represents a new way for students to become part of the ODU alumni network long before they graduate.
“It’s about reminding students that they don’t just have a huge community when they graduate, they are part of it from the time they get here on campus,” she said.
Dr. Harrell hopes those early connections will strengthen students’ sense of belonging at Old Dominion University and eventually shape the kind of alumni they become.
“I want alumni to feel that they have a community they are helping to build, that they have a sense of belonging at the University, that they have pride in ODU and what’s happening next here,” she said.
Ultimately, Ask A Monarch Alum turns the strength of the Monarch community into a resource for student success. Nearly 200,000 alumni represent thousands of careers, industries and experiences, and now students have a direct way to learn from them as they chart their own paths from ODU to what comes next.