Conference


Every other year, CRMA holds a two-day conference attended by career professionals from across the United States. It gives participants the opportunity to network, share information, and attend workshops and presentations.

All career professionals, whether a CRMA member or not, are invited to attend the conference. Career counselors, career center directors, employment counselors, recruiting managers, as well as career librarians will benefit from the professional development opportunities at this conference.

The 13th Biennial CRMA Conference is tentatively scheduled for June 2011. Visit this page for updates in summer 2010.


2009 Conference News

The Career Resource Managers Association announces its biennial conference for 2009.

The 12th Biennial CRMA Conference will be held on Thursday, June 4 and Friday, June 5, 2009 at Suffolk University in downtown Boston, MA in collaboration with the Career Counselors’ Consortium. The conference theme for this year is Rethinking, Retooling, Recharging. Enjoy two keynote speakers (see below) and ten concurrent sessions perfect for any career resource manager, career center director, career counselor, or career/internship specialist.

Registration is under $200.00 and includes continental breakfast and lunch on both days. On-campus accommodations provided by Suffolk University at $75.00 per night. A limited number of rooms are available at the Midtown Hotel for $159.00 per night.

Registration is closed.

The 12th Biennial CRMA Conference “Rethinking, Retooling, Recharging,” in collaboration with the Career Counselors Consortium, Inc., was a great success. We had over 80 professionals attend the conference at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. For your information, the program is listed below.

DAY ONE: Thursday, June 4, 2009

8:00-9:00 am Breakfast

9:00-9:15 am Opening Remarks

9:15-10:15 am Keynote Speaker (see below for details)

Taking Your Own Medicine: Applying Your Great Career Advice to Your Own Career
Presented by Elizabeth Freedman, MBA (Elizabeth Freedman & Company)

10:30-11:45 am Concurrent Sessions

Rethinking, Retooling, and Revolutionizing: A Fourth Consideration for Career Professionals
Presented by Kendall Dudley, Kit Hayes, Susan Loffredo & Amy Mazur ( Voices for Workplace Change)

Integrating the role of social justice advocacy into our work with clients/students.

Keeping Current: A Job Market Trend Monthly Newsletter and Wiki Page
Presented by Doug Eisenhart & Cheryl Kohen (Simmons College)

How to develop a newsletter and wiki website to provide job market trend information to students.

LUNCH

1:00-2:15 pm Concurrent Sessions

Going Green: A New Website Initiative
Presented by Christine Cervelli & Alexia Jones (New Jersey Institute of Technology)

Learn how NJIT created and developed a comprehensive web resource for prospective and current students and alumni related to "green careers".

Professional Development for the Senior Year
Presented by Heather Maietta (Nichols College)

This session will discuss the Nichols College Senior Year Professional Development course designed to provide students with a smooth college-to-career transition.

2:45-4:00 pm Concurrent Sessions

What If? Imagining Radical Alternatives to Current Work
Presented by Kendall Dudley (Lifeworks Career & Life Design)

This program helps counselors examine some of their own assumptions about work and the wider culture within which it resides.

Procedures for Piecemeal Processing
Presented by Susan Epstein (Florida State University)

This session will demonstrate and teach how you can break down resource processing tasks into manageable chunks and create documents that can be used by many people to accomplish these tasks.

5:00-6:30 pm Reception

DAY TWO: Friday, June 5, 2009

8:00-9:00 am Breakfast

9:00-9:15 am Opening Remarks

9:15-10:15 am Keynote Speaker (see below for details)

Assessing the Expectations Gap
Presented by Fred Nothnagel, MBA (WIND Networking and R.L. Stevens & Associates)

10:30-11:45 am Concurrent Sessions

Communicating Effectively Online with Clients
Susan Epstein (Florida State University)

Providing career information and services using online tools such as email, blogs, Skype, or Second Life can be very appealing in today’s world of budget and personnel cutbacks. But, how do we determine which tool is appropriate for which information or service? Participants in this session will review the concepts of synchronous and asynchronous communication and individual and group instruction, then share best practices for using online tools with our clients.

Understanding Transition in the Career Counseling Process
Beverly Ryle (Center for Career and Business Development)

At its core, career counseling is about guiding clients through a transition process, not just helping them to change jobs. What makes this challenging for both counselors and clients is that being in transition is not easy. Transition is a messy place. When we counselors have a deeper understanding of transition, we are able to provide our clients with tools for bringing a sense of order to this indefinite period of time in their lives and we significantly improve their chances of achieving their goals. When we embrace the transition model in our own lives, what we offer our clients gains authenticity and power. This seminar is meant to be experienced on both a personal and professional level.

LUNCH

1:00-2:15 pm Concurrent Sessions

Appreciative Inquiry: A Strength-Based Approach to Career Development
Amy Mazur and Martha Plotkin (Jewish Vocational Services)

Using an Appreciative Inquiry tool in a career development setting can be a powerful way to help students uncover seeds of excellence and satisfaction from which to grow their careers. In this interactive workshop, we’ll briefly review the theory behind this approach, and we’ll do a sample exercise to help each other focus on experiences in our lives that represent our strengths when we’re operating at our very best.

Launching and Managing a Successful Alumni Mentoring Program
Jaime Freedman and Dale McLennan (Endicott College)

In collaboration with Institutional Advancement, the Career Center at
Endicott College created a unique mentoring program that matches
undergraduate students one-on-one with alumni mentors and fosters the
relationship for a year (or longer). We will share lessons learned in the
logistics of starting and managing the program, challenges, and benefits to
the students, alumni and to the college.


Keynote Speakers:

Taking Your Own Medicine: Applying Your Great Career Advice to Your Own Career - by Elizabeth Freedman, MBA, Elizabeth Freedman & Company, Natick, MA

You’re an expert when it comes to helping your students manage their own careers – whether it’s connecting them with the right resources, the best information, and the cutting-edge ideas that can help them make the most of their future careers. But when was the last time you practiced what you preached? As busy professionals, it’s easy to focus on supporting the career goals of others, and forget to take our own great career advice. It’s time to start taking our own medicine, and applying our expertise and insights to ourselves.

  • Stop ‘networking’ and start building long-term relationships that yield long-term professional results.
  • You’ve got to advertise if you want them to buy: Focus on reputation-building and creating an area of expertise that brings you greater visibility.
  • Figure out whether it is time to put up, shut up, or get out: Determine how to make your next move that brings you greater rewards.
  • If you want a promotion, act promotable: How to deliver excellence everyday on the job.
  • Don’t ignore the little things unless you want little results: How to give yourself (and your career) the clue nobody else will give you.

Elizabeth Freedman, MBA, is an award-winning speaker and business columnist, and is the author of “Work 101: Learning the Ropes of the Workplace without Hanging Yourself,” (Random House, April 2007) and “The MBA Student’s Job-Seeking Bible.”

A 2005 finalist for College Speaker of the Year, awarded by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities, Elizabeth runs a Boston-based communications and career development firm that helps professionals look sharp, sound smart, and succeed on the job. Clients include The Gillette Company/Procter & Gamble, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and ThomsonReuters.

Elizabeth has been quoted in The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report and featured in many other national and regional publications. She is a contributor to Collegeboard.com and TopMBA.com, where she writes about work and life choices for students and new professionals. Elizabeth is a former consultant for Accenture, the global consulting firm, MBA marketing lecturer at Dominican University, and Peace Corps volunteer. She is a graduate of Thunderbird School of Global Management and Barnard College, Columbia University.

Assessing the Expectations Gap
by Fred Nothnagel, MBA, Executive Director of WIND and Senior Career Marketing Consultant, R.L. Stevens & Associates, Waltham, MA

NACE's Job Outlook 2008 survey found that new graduates highly value employers’ attributes of honest and fair dealings with employees, ethical business practices, and employment stability. Survey after survey confirms also that young graduates also have engaged in “job jumping” to a great degree. Yet the realities of the 21st century employment market often conflict directly with those values and habits. In his presentation, Mr. Nothnagel will explore the issues and challenges facing career professionals and offer insights and “current best practices” for helping upcoming and recent graduates understand and cope with current employment market trends.

Fred Nothnagel, MBA, is a Senior Career Marketing Consultant at R. L. Stevens and Associates in Waltham, Massachusetts and has helped more than 800 professionals achieve positive career transitions. As Executive Director of WIND, a regional networking organization for professionals in career transition, he has expanded the organization to 6 locations, has facilitated and delivered presentations to more than 600 networking meetings and has designed and delivered numerous workshops and seminars. He has been an invited speaker at Boston College, Northeastern University, the Boston chapters of the Northeast Human Resources Association (NEHRA) and the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), and at several career fairs. He has also been retained by the U.S. Air Force at Hanscom AFB to conduct training seminars for military and civilian personnel retiring from their service. He holds a B.A. in both Physics and Psychology from Brown University and an MBA in Information Systems from Babson College in Waltham, MA.


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