Thayne Doak

Excellence in Career Services
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 08/13/2025

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

This course "pulls back the curtain" for schools to help them better understand the principles and purposes of the ACCSC Standards of Accreditation. ACCSC101, along with the accompanying course ACCSC102, lays out the standards in line with the way schools are typically structured to better help you comprehend the important relationship between each standard and each aspect of running a compliant, accredited school. This course addresses the standards on the administrative side of your school, such as standards that relate to operations, admissions, and financial aid.
This course focuses on the ACCSC Standards of Accreditation which directly tie to the academic areas and program requirements for an accredited school. The course includes information on program development and design, educational policies and procedures, faculty, student services, and educational delivery methods.
Since the inception of career education, it seems employers have consistently claimed that students lack so-called soft skills. Although there's no universal agreement on what to call them, the term represents a set of skills (including things such as teamwork and communication skills) regarded as essential for long-term success in the workforce. ACCSC refers to these types of skills as essential workforce skills. This course will help institutions adopt a framework for high-quality career education programs, holistically integrate essential workforce skills into their programs, enhance students' development and demonstration of them, and prepare to achieve Essential Workforce Skills (EWS) Programmatic Certification.
This course offers strategies to provide employment and job search skills training that enables students to seek jobs in the field for which they are trained. You'll learn how to offer comprehensive career services regardless of whether your career services department is staffed full- or part-time. The course provides strategies for an institution to set up a Career Services Department, enhance and run it, and measure results. It describes how a successful career services department can ensure that your students have the skills and self-confidence to succeed in the workplace. You'll learn techniques to increase placement rates and reach out to the community to meet and maintain relationships with hiring decision-makers.
In this course, you will be given tools to help your students find the job that's right for them, present themselves impressively on paper, and interview with ease. This course is designed so you can successfully support your students in four phases of their job search: doing a targeted job search, writing a powerful resume and cover letter, presenting professionally, and developing effective interview skills.
School hiring events are staples for many institutions, whether ground-based or virtual. They are a large undertaking. However, when done correctly, these events should yield many positive results for students, employers, and the school. This course examines each part of the process involved in a school hiring event: from the planning and ideation phase, to budgeting, staffing, logistics, marketing, student preparation, and a complete process for post-event surveying and follow-up. Beyond practical tips, ideas, and strategies, this course will provide a resource of documents that will help support a robust and dynamic school hiring event.
Establishing, developing, and maintaining employer relationships is a large aspect of a career-services practitioner’s responsibility. This involved process requires insight into your institution, your department, and your industry, as well as an understanding of key strategies that can assist in the building and nurturing of employer relationships. From acquiring industry knowledge to marketing your services and identifying opportunities for long-term employer engagement, this course can assist you in providing a roadmap intended to move you from a potential cold-call relationship to understanding an employer’s perspective on return on investment and gaining effective and long-lasting employer partnerships.
Derived from the feedback of over 100 institutions, empirical research, and case studies, course participants are presented with specific strategies and best practices that promote graduate employment. This course is for all education professionals seeking to understand the institutional practices that maximize graduate employment outcomes. Because employment outcomes are as much a function of institutional behaviors as they are of student behaviors, this course is based in systems thinking, which challenges participants to examine the interdependent relationship among institutional infrastructure, student career-readiness, and graduate employment rates.
Accurate representation of graduate outcomes is critical to upholding institutional integrity. All involved in employment reporting must continuously identify ways to strengthen their system for tracking, collecting, and verifying employment data. When documentation is both a quality and a compliance matter, staff must understand the verification program as a whole, the role they play in continuously improving it, and how to use professional principles and best practices in documentation. This course is designed to encourage participants to critically analyze their own employment reporting practices while sharing ideas and best practices that can help lead to the highest level of data integrity.
Building a program to ensure a smooth "hand off" from Admissions to Faculty is a critical component of student retention. Applicants often develop a strong bond with their admissions representative that ends (from the institution's standpoint) once they begin classes. This online course provides practical ideas on designing an orientation program, first-week-of-class and other retention activities that connect the student with faculty, the college and each other that will help you retain and graduate more students.
Owners and directors of educational institutions are always looking for the magical ingredients to improve student retention. There are at least six easy-to-implement retention strategies that can make a difference in whether a student graduates or drops out. These include efficient admissions procedures, great orientation programs, effective mentoring, student friendly classroom involvement, fabulous graduations, and successful placement. Upon completion of this course, participants will have specific easy-to-implement retention strategies to put in place for every area of their institution.
This course is a collection of ideas and best practices drawn from the implementation of enrollment growth strategies at over 300 educational institutions nationwide. The course is based on a highly successful in-service training program offered by Dr. Joe Pace, Managing Partner of The Pacific Institute and includes video delivery of Pace's presentations. Filled with practical tips and suggestions, the course also discusses the application of current research results on human behavior and organizational culture to enhance student enrollment and retention. This is a unique course that will dramatically change your perspective on institutional effectiveness.