From Field to Future
Preparing Student-Athletes for the Next Play
Craig Meyer
Every year around the NCAA basketball tournaments and the college football bowl season, there’s an NCAA commercial that runs on television that’s inescapable for any college sports fan. As the 30-second spot comes to an end, a voiceover notes that there are hundreds of thousands of NCAA student-athletes in a given year and that “most of us go pro in something other than sports.”
It’s a wholesome and necessary reminder that while many of these student-athletes being watched by millions of people come to college with dreams of making it to the professional ranks, there’s an overwhelming statistical probability that their years in college will mark the end of their competitive athletic careers before they move on to more conventional, perhaps less thrilling professions beyond a field or court—as legendary Steelers coach Chuck Noll once termed it, their “life’s work.”
At the University of Pittsburgh, that mission is much more than heartwarming rhetoric to punctuate a public service announcement.
A part of the Cathy and John Pelusi Family Life Skills Program in the University’s Department of Athletics, the career development journey is an initiative that works with student-athletes over the course of their time at Pitt to prepare them for the professional world that awaits them after college.
It’s quite effective, too, with a 100% job placement rate in the most recent academic year.
“We have those programs where it’s the whole team and all the student-athletes, but where we really shine is [that] our programs are so individualized. We have the man- and womanpower to meet with each one of the student-athletes and ask what they want to do,” says Raquel Montalvo Perez, a career consultant for student-athletes. “I work with all sports. I work with all student-athletes [who] are getting on my calendar, and I’m able to personalize their path and goals so that it’s not just a random job [they’re] landing after graduation or a random opportunity. It has actually been thought out by so many people in the life skills area. We are very comprehensive.”
Though it has evolved and expanded its reach over time, the program has existed in some form for about two decades.
In the mid-2000s, then Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, believing there to be a need for more student-athlete support, helped to establish a career consultant position to work with student-athletes, a hybrid role that brought together the athletics department and the University’s career center. From there, it grew from one individual to a staff of nine that now makes up the life skills program.
The career development journey offers a course that 90% of first-year student-athletes take and for which they receive an elective credit. In it, they learn about what the career development journey and the life skills program offer while receiving initial career consultations and financial literacy instruction, among other services. After getting a taste of what the life skills program can provide to them, student-athletes receive a specific advisor, one who regularly follows up and meets with them every term or once a year, depending on their needs. If nothing else, advisors are there to remind student-athletes that they’re around to help and be a resource.
While the program has its goals and methods, it’s also extremely flexible. It has to be. Not every student-athlete comes into college with the same understanding of what they want, and because of that, those helping them with the next steps in their life can’t follow the same specific path.
“It’s a spectrum,” says Kelsi Schaer, Pitt’s former assistant athletic director, student life. “One of our internal mantras is ‘Meet you where you are, figure out where you want to go and build a plan to get there.’ We try to individualize that career plan and support. One student-athlete shows up and they’re like, ‘I’m going to med school. Here’s my four-year plan. Can you help me identify shadowing opportunities, community service projects, and how to develop my personal statements? How do I start thinking about that now?’ Whereas others show up and they say, ‘I have no idea what I want to major in. Here’s maybe what I’m thinking about doing. What major should I do in order to achieve an outcome I hope to see?’ It’s a really dynamic position or approach because it really is catered to each individual student-athlete.”
With the career development journey, each staff member has a certain number of student-athletes by sport with whom they work. To best accommodate the student-athletes they advise, they’ll meet them at the team’s training facility, something that’s particularly helpful for football players who practice and train in a facility just across the Monongahela River from campus. In that way, the career development journey literally meets an athlete where they are.
Beyond that on-the-nose embodiment of the initiative’s ethos, the career development journey personalizes its approach depending on where a student-athlete is when they enter the program, what professions they want to pursue and how much time they have to work toward those goals. In many cases, life skills staff members are working with an 18-year-old first year who just got to campus and is making sense of this new world in which they’ve immersed themselves. In other instances, it’s a transfer student with only one year of eligibility remaining.
After an exploratory phase, a student-athlete gets more hands-on interactions with their advisor, a time in which the advisor gets a better sense of the person and budding professional with whom they’re working. By the time job and internship applications begin, advisors can help them seek out potential opportunities and get in touch with connections at those companies, organizations and agencies. If the student-athlete can negotiate their salary, they get assistance with that, along with advice on benefits being offered.
And that helping hand remains extended after graduation. Alums can seek out the services of the career development journey after their playing careers at Pitt. Montalvo Perez, for example, says that she has recently worked with a former Panthers baseball player who graduated last year and is seeking job opportunities.
For Montalvo Perez, a former student-athlete herself (she played tennis at Eastern Kentucky University), her job provides her with the chance to work with people whose often chaotic lives she deeply understands.
“If you don’t understand the time commitment that students have, it’s just difficult,” she says. Student-athletes just don’t have that luxury of having a normal schedule. Understanding that I’ve gone through it and how student-athletes come out better as people after going through this experience, but also having that support [that] a ‘regular student’ would have with their career, I think that’s 90% of it.”
Those at Pitt, well aware of similar offerings at major colleges across the country, see the program as unique, particularly when it comes to its success in one of its primary objectives: helping student-athletes to seamlessly transition into the next phase of their lives.
After a slight dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies were downsizing and job openings weren’t particularly plentiful, the career development journey has had a 100% job placement rate. That figure is determined by the percentage of student-athletes no longer seeking a job within six months of graduating with their first degree.
The initiative has taken on an added importance in recent years, with student-athletes now able to earn money from their name, image and likeness. It’s no longer about student-athletes building toward a career but rather, depending on their interests, building a personal brand on social media and using those platforms to network.
For those with the career development journey, the shifting landscape of college athletics doesn’t change what drives them every day in their work.
“It’s seeing student-athletes take a step in their development, whether it’s being excited that they got an interview for a job or got their first full-time job offer or they got into grad school or they’re going professional,” Schaer says. “The long-term goal is [that] whatever that first step post-sport or post-Pitt looks like, they’re excited, and they feel like our life skills team helped them in some capacity. At the same time, it’s even the tiny steps, like helping a student-athlete open a bank account, and now they feel more confident they know how to manage their money just a tiny bit. It’s just one step in their development that they recognize and they appreciate [that] makes every day here worth it.”