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Rich Feller

Staying Positive and Creating Hope for Clients

 

Career Cruising is proud to sponsor Rich Feller’s keynote Staying Positive and Creating Hope for Clients”at 8:30 am Monday, January 20th, 2014 at Cannexus14 Career Development Conference in Ottawa.

Change becomes stressful when we lose a sense of constancy in life. Dick Bolles offered me this wisdom as NCDA planned for and celebrated its centennial and conference “Celebrating 100 Years of Career Development: Creating Hope, Social Justice and Legacy” in Boston in July. While exploring NCDA’s legacy with Mark Savickas, Mark Pope and Paul Hartung, I learned to appreciate the remarkable constancy of career development issues during changing times. In 1913 the transformation of the occupational structure (agrarian to industrial), homelessness, immigration, youth unemployment, women’s limited choices, and education reform issues launched the need for the National Vocational Guidance Association (now NCDA). Its inclusive vision to provide learning, work and well-being resources remain constant today. Honoring the dignity of the most vulnerable by helping them through vocational guidance, advocacy and access strategies was a promise made and well kept. In the US and Canada remarkably similar needs and a call to advocacy remain constant. Most every worker faces job restructuring due to technology’s impact. Automation (artificial intelligence and predictive analytics) and outsourcing (and resourcing) has re-shaped notions of job security, credentials, and job longevity. Adaptation, lifelong learning and career management are new words for long held success attributes. Elevated demands on fewer middle skill jobs, and increasingly bifurcated mobility and wealth opportunity structures are a form of quite radical change. But limited access to quality learning, networks, and privileged information are constant correlates to falling behind.

As during NCDA’s birth, unemployment created considerable social and personal upheaval. Today 200 million people are unemployed according to the International Labor Organization. Among them are 50 million young people under the age of 25. The “wage scare” created by youth unemployment has created a generational scare that ripples throughout families, consumer behavior, and lifetimes. Andy Sum (Northwestern University) reports that every single age group under 54 years of age was less likely to be working in 2010 than in 2000. Yet the importance of work and meaning to one’s identity and ability to contribute to community remains constant.

In countries created by immigrants, immigration remains critical to a career counsellors’ and specialists’ work. In March 2013 Gallup reports that over 150 million adults would like to move to the United States or Canada permanently. Ten million or more of these adults would come from China, Nigeria, and India.

Since 1913 the education system has repeatedly been asked to reform, yet the educational pipeline and employer expectations “mismatch” remains. The website www.stemcareer.com is filled with pleas to promote STEM careers for women. Constant tension between the “college for all” movement, career and technical education’s rebirth, and Harvard’s “Pathways to Prosperity” reaffirms the constant call for more career guidance. (March 2013 Pathway Summit calls for multiple career pathways, an expanded role for employers, a new social contract with youth, and a re-invention of career guidance). The College Board report “The Promise of High Quality CTE” and the Phi Delta Kappen report “Toward a Common Model of CTE” both speak to the need for work based learning which, without sound career guidance, will not produce more able and ready employees.

Often economic cycles took care of high levels of unemployment and low skilled employees. Today, structural issues and technology have created a world wage structure and a growing divide between “knowledge nomads”(Feller and Whichard, 2005) and what Carl Van Horn calls the “working scared”. Demographic changes with an aging workforce create demand for certain skills as other skills disappear at a faster rate. Retirement and pensions are being re-invented, and encore careers are being reimagined (see Life Reimagined: The New Story of Aging at www.lifereimagined.com ).

Fortunately, as NCDA begins its second century and CERIC prepares for a new year and another great Cannexus conference, change and opportunity are welcomed. Honored to serve as an NCDA President, I’m confident of career development’s future knowing that we are grounded in a rich legacy, a commitment to social justice and hopeful about the opportunities before all career professionals. We gain as organizations and personally when we reflect on the constancy and change affecting our roles. Such wisdom allows us to celebrate career development’s past as it enters its second century with a spirit of life reimagined. On behalf of my NCDA colleagues, I offer my heartfelt gratitude the encouragement and support we have received from our Canadian career development colleagues and friends during NCDA’s 100th anniversary year of celebration. May all career professionals pass our good fortune forward to serve others during times of constancy and change.

Rich Feller

 

Career Cruising’s Thought Leadership

In 2013 Career Cruising sponsored Thoughtstream idea generation processes among national leadesr in career development and career and technical education at Harvard University’s Creating Pathways to Prosperity Conference in March, NCDA’s 100th Anniversary Conference in July, and ACTE’s CareerTech Vision 2013 Conference in Las Vegas in December. Career Cruising also sponsored A Discussion with the Experts: Addressing the Challenges of Career Educators in North America, featuring Rich Feller, Bill Symonds, Norm Bysbers, and Pam Gabbard.

 

ABOUT RICH FELLER

Rich Feller is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, trainer and consultant. He has over 30 years of experience in teaching at the elementary, junior high, high school and university levels; he is currently a Professor and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University where he teaches graduate courses in career development, counselling, and performance and change.

He has presented projects in Canada, China, Japan, Sudan, Thailand, Australia and in 49 states in the US. Rich is the author (with the help of many) of over 100 publications including The Counselor's Guide to Career Assessment Instruments, Knowledge Nomads and the Nervously Employed: Workplace Change and Courageous Career Choices, and Career Transitions in Turbulent Times. He is co-author of the Harrington O’Shea Career Decision Making System, and cdminternet, stemcareers.com, a video series called Tour of Your Tomorrow and Making the Most of Your Abilities. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work both in the US and internationally and was President of the National Career Development Association in 2012-13.

His area of research includes: career transitions, strengths-based programs, STEM-centre career development, workforce development and coaching. A senior consultant to the AARP’s (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) Life-Reimagined program and Chief Scientist to youscience.com he is working on a second book related to “knowledge nomads”.

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