HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — Hope College officials have announced the Boerigter Center for Calling and Career and Van Wylen Library have received the 2021 group Innovation Award from the American College Personnel Association’s Commission for Career Services/
The award “honors a team that has initiated and developed an innovative program, service delivery, approach or assessment in career services,” according to Hope’s announcement, emailed to media. Elements for consideration include creativity, student influence, and how well the program meets stated goals as a measure of success.
The Boerigter Center and Van Wylen Library are being honored along with the institutional and individual recipients of other awards during the ACPA’s annual convention, held virtually from Monday, March 1, through Wednesday, March 17.
Starting in May, 2020, members of the Boerigter Center and Van Wylen Library teams collaborated with partners from the Department of Economics and Business and the Office of Philanthropy and Engagement to deliver an extracurricular training program on Tableau, a popular data analytics and visualization tool used in multiple disciplines and industries.
A total of 48 students have since completed the program.
“I am particularly proud of the collaboration between our offices,” said Shonn Colbrunn, the Boerigter Center for Calling and Career’s executive director. “We identified a hot skill in the job market, connected with a generous donor and then leaned on the digital instruction expertise of Van Wylen Library faculty to bring the program to life.”
The Innovation Award is the second external honor for the Boerigter Center in a year’s time. The Colleges of Distinction named the center a Program of Distinction last spring.
“This project is a good example of the innovative thinking coming from the Boerigter Center,” Colbrunn said. “Hope’s well-rounded, liberal arts education gives our students a foundation for success throughout their careers. Adding a skill-based credential is a way to make them stand out to land their first job.”
Hope’s Boerigter Center for Calling and Career is a college-wide initiative aimed at encouraging students to adopt lifelong practices of career development using discernment, preparation and pursuit.
All Hope students, starting in their first semester, work with Boerigter Center to understand their strengths in ways that aid in thoughtful determination of clear next steps aimed at future goals. This expands on Hope’s former Career Development Center integrating staff from the college’s academic advising, alumni and family engagement programs.
The Boerigter Center for Career and Calling opened in the fall of 2018, after a major gift from SoundOff Signal in honor of founder and chairman George Boerigter, a 1961 Hope College graduate, and his wife, Sibilla. Based in Hudsonville, SoundOff Signal provides high-tech safety lighting solutions across the globe.
The Van Wylen Library has 10 full-time librarians, 12 full- and part-time support staff, and nearly 65 student assistants. Hope librarians teach an array of library and information literacy instruction sessions in both general education and discipline-specific classes, and have also created interactive tutorials designed to teach students a variety of information literacy skills. The targeted skills training program was supported by the digital arts librarian, Tori Longfield.
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