Speaker: Joe Lovejoy + Sarah Schmitt, Indiana University Walter Center
Briefly describe your program, the outcomes or impact, and what others can take away from it.
Joe Lovejoy + Sarah Schmitt: Hello NACE community. I'm Joe Lovejoy and I'm Sarah Schmitt. On behalf of our entire team, thank you for recognizing the Walter Center with the 2026 Career Services Excellence Award. We're honored by and grateful for this award. We are on a mission to make career preparation an integrated component of every student's undergraduate journey through the Pillars Undergraduate Experience. We know that faculty are students' most influential and consistent mentors, so our focus is on equipping and supporting faculty as partners in our students' development as future professionals. Two of our key efforts are the Career Connections Fellowship and our new experiential learning course redesign initiative. Faculty integrate career competencies and experiential learning into their courses, helping to bridge the gap between classroom and career for our students. The impact of these initiatives has been a strong sustained culture of faculty engagement supported through community and recognition efforts, including our student nominated Career Advocate Award. We've seen that when faculty are supported, connected, and recognized, career readiness can become a scalable embedded component of the student experience. Thank you again for this recognition.
