Diane Jantze

I attribute my success to grit. I get a little bit of that from scouting, because you get a lot of ethical and moral character. You have to be flexible with what changes year to year within budgetary years. In my current role, it can shift, but in my previous roles when I worked in grant-funded parts of workforce development, sometimes my role would shift every year based upon where the grant was. We would be building an airplane in mid-air to develop work simulations for different populations, doing job trainings for dislocated workers. These were very dynamic and changing responsibilities that were dependent upon every fiscal year, so you had to be very flexible. I think that's part of my superpower - I always thought, well, I'll take the new role, because coming from restaurant management, I figured if I'm cross-trained in a lot of these areas, I used to see that as a lot of job security. In education, it's more of a function of seniority, but when I had lower seniority, I was like, well, just show me something new and I'll learn it, because I didn't want to be stagnant.

I would say do some informational interviews and be open-minded to the opportunities, because honestly, I wish they told me that in college. We don't always land with where our degree, with what degree we pursued. I have a degree in dietetics and I was going to be a dietitian, and it led me into more of a business restaurant management path, but ultimately right to teaching. The second nugget is really enjoy, like, do some research with the company, because you're gonna spend more time where you work than potentially you are at home, and in the end, if you're happy with your career and what you're doing, then it's no longer a job. Then it's fun.

Challenges in our industry, certainly in education, are budgetary. We're always trying to get enrollment to be sustainable, and we're gonna have some fiscal challenges in the years ahead. Since I'm under the umbrella of Career Services in that department, sometimes we aren't viewed as almost a secondary service, not a primary service that students really need. If I had the magic wand, it would be to be more embedded into what we call guided pathways models, so that students are really getting advised and have career guidance really interwoven. That's the vision with a lot of these community colleges, but the reality is sometimes staffing levels have been challenging. I'm optimistic because we just had a new director of our Career Services hired this week, and that will help bring together our four campuses and make more succinct services so that we can elevate students to really find us and get better support. Right now, it's really campus-based, and it's the relationships with the faculty and the relationships with administration, but you're really dependent upon a lot of people to get our worth. You're always trying to showcase what you do and put student success stories out there so that it really demonstrates our value to the students and to administration. With all the worry of budgetary restrictions up above, you don't know what that means for what the long-range administration's plans are for staffing sustainable levels.

Being genuine, and I think truthful and uplifting, because we are in essence career coaches, and we are trying to motivate people when maybe they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. You want to have respect and honesty, but sometimes you have to speak a truth that's a hard reality, and I think it's fair that you earn respect by being genuine. I have a real high work ethic with the reliability, and I mean, I have a very big attention to detail, especially from my former role where I had to manage million dollar restaurant budgets, so you had to count every dollar. Really high attention to detail.