“Minding the Gaps”: Career Navigators as an Illustration for Supporting Student Growth and Learning

This study synthesizes lessons learned about the promising role of career navigators at community colleges to aid students in the transitions through disjunctures in their careers. Career navigators are student support personnel who follow students from recruitment, through their studies or training programs, to job placement. Findings come from a 4-year evaluation of a seven-college consortium called Credentials to Careers funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) to create programs to retrain displaced workers for STEM careers. Findings both identify generalizable principles guiding the work of career navigators and demonstrating ways that these roles vary depending on the ecologically unique aspects of each program.