Harnessing the Untapped Power of Career Services Leaders (feat. Dylan Houle)

Career Everywhere

In this episode of the Career Everywhere podcast, host Meredith Metsker welcomes Dylan Houle, Executive Director of the Career Center at Santa Clara University, to discuss the misalignment between the importance of career outcomes for students and the positioning of career services in higher ed.

In short: If career outcomes are a major reason most students choose to go to college, why are career centers so often underfunded, understaffed, and positioned as mid-level offices on campus.

A former teacher, Dylan’s propensity for lifelong learning led him to career services and to start his own podcast called Career Services Leadership, where he talks to senior leaders in career services about their approach to leadership and staff development. Now he’s in the early stages of research for a dissertation centered on career services leadership.

In this episode, Dylan shares how he plans to investigate the forms of capital that career services leaders possess that may not be widely seen or valued by their institutions—as well as the forms of capital that are valued but career leaders have limited opportunities to accumulate. Dylan’s goal is to identify how career services leaders can leverage their capital to achieve greater organizational impact.

Key themes from the episode include:

• The need to elevate the role of career services
• Developing clear career pathways for professionals in the field
• Better integrating career services throughout the curriculum and the broader campus ecosystem.

Resources from the episode:

• Dylan’s LinkedIn profile
• Dylan’s email: [email protected]
• Examples of Dylan’s monthly director’s email: May 2025, April 2025, March 2025
• Career Services Leadership podcast

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