BEAM, Stanford Career Education, reflects new focus on connections and meaningful work

Farouk Dey, dean of career education, says Stanford Career Education’s identity as BEAM sums up the vision to empower students to transform their education and ambitions into meaningful work. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

With the continuing evolution of career education on campus, it’s time to add a new acronym to the Stanford vocabulary: BEAM, which stands for Bridging Education, Ambition and Meaningful Work, and sums up the vision of Stanford Career Education.

Stanford Career Education is the new identity of the former Career Development Center and BEAM is the new moniker under which the new entity will be known on campus.

The name change reflects the continuing evolution of career services at Stanford, said Farouk Dey, dean of career education and an associate vice provost of Student Affairs.

“Our vision is to empower Stanford students to transform their education and ambitions into meaningful work,” Dey said.

Dey, who arrived at Stanford in 2013 with a mandate to reinvent career services, said the change underscores a few critical principles in an emerging paradigm.

“Our focus is on meaningful work, rather than just resumes and jobs,” Dey wrote in a Sept. 3 email announcing the name change to the Stanford community. “Connections and relationships are the heart and soul of our model. We are educators, rather than transactional job-placement staff. Our work is everywhere throughout the campus community and involves all of you, so we dropped the word ‘center’ from our name.”

Two years ago, under Dey’s leadership, Stanford launched a new “connections” model of career services that offered specialized career development support to students and connected them to internship and employment opportunities, mentoring and networking programs, and experiential learning opportunities, such as off-campus “career treks.”

Under the connections model, career educators reach out to students where they live and study on campus, rather than waiting for them to come to a center for career counseling.

Career educators at BEAM are very active in social media and can be followed on Twitter.

Dey has said the connections model is designed to empower the entire Stanford community – alumni, parents, faculty, advisers and staff – to contribute to students’ career and professional development.

BEAM’s career educators connect with students – undergraduates as well as graduate students – in appointments and “meetups” to help them explore career paths, identify and apply for opportunities, and cultivate personalized networks that shape their professional journeys.

Students are encouraged to take advantage of customized career fairs, join industry treks in the Bay Area and around the United States, and network with members of the 3,000 alumni in the Stanford Alumni Mentoring (SAM) program.

This year, BEAM launched Handshake, an online platform that connects students with a diverse range of employers, events and opportunities.

Visit BEAM’s website at beam.stanford.edu to learn more and to watch its new video, Change Is Happening, which illustrates how one student worked with career educators at BEAM to create a successful new event, the Stanford Senior Mixer, and make meaningful connections.