Episode # 72
Exploring Careers in IT
May 20, 2025
About This Episode
On this week’s episode, we are joined by Kellie Anderson, Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, to explore the fundamentals of cooperative education at UC, where IT and cybersecurity students learn to integrate academics with real-world experience.
Guests
Kelli Anderson
Kelli Anderson helps individuals at all career levels navigate their current and future professional paths, providing them with the tools and strategies they need to succeed. She supports IT and Cybersecurity students as an Assistant Professor and Faculty Co-op Advisor at the University of Cincinnati.
Transcript
Kara 0:00
Today’s episode is sponsored by Learning Blade. Middle school is the ideal time for career exploration. With Learning Blade, you can easily integrate STEM and career awareness concepts into your classroom. Find out if this resource is free in your stateat learning blade.com. Thanks, Learning Blade.
Hey. Is this thing on? Are we recording? Can I get a tech person?
Caryn 0:29
Oh, for the love of Ed Tech.
Kara 0:35
Joining me today is Kelli Anderson, Assistant Professor and Faculty Co Op advisor for the IT unit at the University of Cincinnati. So hey Kelli,
Kelli 0:44
Hey Kara, thanks for having me.
Kara 0:46
Yeah, thanks for joining us. And I’m curious kind of how your journey into education landed you where you are. So can you talk a little bit about that first?
Kelli 0:58
Yeah, it’s quite windy.
Kara 1:00
So I will love a winding
Kelli 1:03
I will try to give you the shortened version, but essentially, I went to Xavier University. I got my master’s in education, thinking that I was going to be a high school social studies teacher. And that was about, I don’t know it was like 25 or so at that time. So had this whole plan, right? We have a plan in place, and we think that it will go the way that we think it will go. Well, I came out of school and happened to be right during the recession, and unlike right now, where teachers are needed at the time, there were not a lot of middle school or high school social studies teaching positions available, and so I did some so I had my master’s in education. I’m ready to go, and there are no jobs. So I did some long term sub things for a while, and I had to make a decision by going to kind of continue this route of uncertainty. And will a position come up? Will it not?
Or do I make a decision to pivot a little bit? And that’s what I did, and I moved into the ed tech side of education.
At the time, I, you know, called it like the business side of education. Now it has more of like a name Ed Tech, right? But, yeah. But it’s really interesting, because when you’re in college, whether it’s getting your bachelor’s or your master’s, you are always told about the teaching route, like you you’re teaching going into a classroom, you’re not told, well, at least I wasn’t that there’s this whole realm of possibility beyond the classroom for educators, right?
Kara 3:03
Yeah, for sure.
Kelli 3:04
So I was opened up to that world, and within it really did get into more of the business side of that, with marketing and technology, some product development and and even some sales. And so I was with a company that was in the higher education and in K 12 business within enrollment management, so helping schools, yeah, so it was Hobson’s at the time. They had a product called Naviance, and that was in the K 12 side, and then they helped on the higher education side with, like, enrollment management, admissions marketing stuff. So I was on that side. I was asked to go to a company called niche.com and helped build, do you know, niche,
Kara 4:01
yes,
Kelli 4:02
yeah. And
Kara 4:03
yes,
Kelli 4:05
helped build their they didn’t have a formalized sales team or customer success team at the time, so I built that from the ground up.
And yeah. So went in that direction, and then from there, I’d always wanted to be like, I’m a builder. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but wasn’t really sure how that would work and what I would do. And I had, had just had my first son, and we had moved all the way out to to Phoenix, Arizona, and I thought, Well, now’s the time to do it. And so for the last seven, eight years, I’ve really been working for myself on the career coaching side of things and really helping people at all different levels navigate their careers and job search and resumes and all of that. So an opportunity opened up at the University of Cincinnati two years ago, and they needed someone to come in and teach as an adjunct, almost like a full time adjunct,
Kara 5:17
Okay,
Kelli 5:18
two different divisions, and so I did that for a year, and then this opportunity to come on as an Assistant Professor and Faculty Co Op advisor with our IT unit came up and like a permanent role. And I said, this is awesome. I love it. There’s so much in terms of just helping students know what it’s like out there in the real world, and give you know, giving them practice to to get to a place where they can can land eventually on their own at a at a company, and thrive. So that’s where we are at this point.
Kara 6:06
That’s so cool talking about the Co Op, the co op at UC, for those who may not know much about what it is or what that model is, can you just explain that a little bit and how it benefits students?
Kelli 6:22
Yes.
Kara 6:23
Okay,
Kelli 6:23
So we use Co Op, that’s short for cooperative education, and the University of Cincinnati is really what they call the father of cooperative education. For many decades, we’ve been the leader in this space. And what it means is that students are able to work with a company for a semester and then take classes for a semester and go back and work for a company for a semester and then go back to classes for a semester. So it’s an off and on scenario, and the whole goal is that, I mean, really, when we talk about experiential learning and experiential education, it is helping these students intertwine their academics with what they will encounter when they enter the workforce. And we’ve just found it is, it is the best way to learn. And I’m sure that you’ve seen that in your K 12 years, when you put students in scenarios to problem solve and figure it out and understand what it’s like to be outside of the classroom. Really cool, innovative things happen, and that’s what we tend to find here. So we have three mandatory Co Op Programs at the University of Cincinnati. So one is with our DAP, our college, which is our design and in an architecture school college. And then we also have our College of Engineering. They have mandatory Co Op program, and then our School of IT. And so I love the school of IT. What that means is that our students so our IT and cybersecurity students are required to co op for five semesters throughout college. Oh, wow. Okay, five, cool, yes, and before that, so they cannot Co Op until they take all of their required first year classes, like IT classes, and then they also have to take introduction to Cooperative Education, which is a course that explains, you know, what is Co Op, exactly kind of what I’ve I’ve I’ve described to you, get their resume ready, get their, you know, LinkedIn profile, we do a lot in terms of interviewing skills and professional development, executive functioning, all of that, so that we know that that they will be able to get, you know, their first Co Op as as sophomores, hopefully. Wow.
Kara 9:26
So okay, do they stay with like, wherever they’re placed in the beginning? Is that where they stay for the five semester? Or does it depend? Or
Kelli 9:39
It depends. So we have some students. They will find a company, and they will stay with them throughout and end up moving on to a full time job with them. Okay, other students where they will work for a semester, and the company likes to rotate students in and out. So they have more of a policy where, okay, you, you get a co op student in, and then we want another Co Op student to give them the same, same experience. So, okay, it, it just depends on the student and the company. Okay, yeah, that’s interesting. It’s a very cool model. And when people who have gone through it, they will tell you, it’s it’s very forward thinking. There are not a lot of of schools, of colleges that are doing this, and if they are, it’s more of them just starting the process out, or doing it as internships, rather than these, like mandatory Co Op rotations that we require.
Kara 10:52
That’s so cool. And I also didn’t know, like, UC has been, is it like something crazy, like 100 years, or something that,
Kelli 10:59
yeah,
Kara 10:59
it’s been going on. Because I was like, yeah, oh my gosh. Like to think back that far, yes, like, that is it was so revolutionary, yeah, right, yeah. I was like, That’s bizarre, yeah, really cool.
Kelli 11:14
And then I should note too, that, like, my title is Assistant Professor and Faculty Co Op advisor. So what that meansis that I teach, I teach these professional development, Introduction to co op classes, to our students, but then I’m also a co op advisor. So I have a cohort of about 300 it and cybersecurity students that I am advising and guiding throughout this process, so they get an academic advisor, like any any college or university that you’ll go to, you know, students will get an academic advisor, but then our students also Get access to a co op advisor as well, which is pretty unique,
Kara 12:04
yeah, which is really nice. That reminds me of, like, I don’t know, like, when you’re student teaching and you have your,
Kelli 12:13
yes,
Kara 12:14
we’re, I forget what our person was called, but it was like, she would meet with you and, like, talk about, like, how things are going, and troubleshoot with you, and that kind of stuff. So
Kelli 12:27
Exactly
Kara 12:28
Okay, which is valuable, especially if you have a good one,
Kelli 12:32
It is very valuable.
Kara 12:36
Oh, gosh, okay, so, um, okay, yeah, yeah. I guess this makes sense too, because and you, I guess you already answered this really, but how early in college in how early in their college journey, do students typically start the co ops? But it’s really after their like freshman required classes. Are they those? Can they start freshman year, potentially, if they’ve done like coursework in high school that’s like college prep, or is that really unheard of?
Kelli 13:12
So they have to take that intro to co op class, and typically they’ll take that either fall or spring semester. So that’s like a no, you have to take that before you do anything. Okay? And typically, for most students, the earliest that they would start a co op would be the summer semester after like of their freshman year, most are starting.Most are starting their fall or spring semester of their sophomore year.
Kara 13:47
Okay, yeah, okay, all right, what types of companies or industries are the UC IT students working with during their Co Op placements, and how do these opportunities help shape their long term career paths?
Kelli 14:04
So what’s really cool about what we do at UC is we have within and I hesitate to say too much, because I don’t want to confuse you with the School of IT, and then, you know, so I’m trying to streamline this so that it all makes sense, but I fall under. We have a specific college that all of this falls under. So even though I serve students that are in the School of IT, I don’t sit in the School of IT.
Kara 14:41
Gotcha.
Kelli 14:42
I sit in the College of Cooperative Education and Professional Studies. Okay,
Kara 14:48
okay,
Kelli 14:49
okay, so within that college, we also have a partnership development team, and their sole job is to build relationships with employers and companies, and they’ve been doing this for a long time. So we have these these partners that we have helped build their Co Op programs over the years, and we have new partners that are coming in that we’re helping to build these programs, and a lot of them are really big corporations within Cincinnati or outside of Cincinnati. Fifth Third Bank, Great American Insurance, Kroger, is a big partner of ours. Andthen we also have small businesses, right that maybe, maybe they don’t have a dedicated team for for Co Op placements, or a dedicated, you know, team for entry level professionals, but we are helping them understand what it means to have a co op employee with you and and and how to mentor and guide, because that’s part of the the process as well. It’s not just that they’re working, but they’re also receiving that professional development. They’re doing reflections, they’re meeting with their supervisors and all of that. So, so we have a host of companies, big and small, that we’re working with and that we have been working with for for quite a while, and we’re finding an IT and cyber security specifically, that a lot of times it’s these smaller companies that need that tech help and and we have more and more students. We do have the students that are working with the bigger companies with established programs, but we have more and more students going to some of these smaller businesses, or even startups where they’re really making a massive impact on their technology goals.
Kara 17:04
Wow, and how cool. So I’m also assuming there are criteria that the companies have to almost like meet to ensure that the students are getting like, X, Y and Z?
Kelli 17:20
Yes, while they’re there, so there are requirements, but it’s not a heavy lift. And I think that’s the beauty of this program, because when you think about professionals and companies and all the responsibilities that they have and to take on a young student and to have to train them, and it’s a big it’s a big lift. It can,
Kara 17:46
yeah,
Kelli 17:47
a heavy lift, right? And so the beauty of what we offer is that most of the work is on the student. So the student is required during the co op to fill out like student reports and reflections, but then there is a point within the semester where they have to meet with their supervisor. Well, they’re likely meeting with their supervisor anyway, so they’re just weaving their Co Op conversation into these already established meetings, instead of having to schedule separate meetings just to talk about Co Op. Okay? And then the other thing is, employers or companies are given the opportunity at the end of a semester to evaluate student performance, but it’s not required, and so we send it to them. We ask them to complete it, but the student doesn’t get docked, right? Their grade doesn’t get docked if the employer doesn’t fill it out. So
Kara 18:59
Gotcha, okay,
Kelli 19:00
It’s really not that big of a of a lift on there. Yeah, you have the training. You have the training piece. When a new student comes in, you have to train them on your own technology and all of that. But it would be the same as if you’re hiring and onboarding a new employee. Employee, yeah, okay, that’s really cool.
Kara 19:21
Teachers, you can now earn contact hours toward grad credit for listening to the podcast.
Caryn 19:27
Visit for the love of Ed tech.org, for more information.
Kara 19:30
So okay, what from your perspective, what skills or experiences from high school best prepare students for success in co ops?
Kelli 19:42
I will say, across IT, across every, every space really, right now what I am seeing the executive functioning skills, the professional development skills and. Uh, students need a lot of work, so they come to us, and there’s not a lot they are. Let me start by saying this. They are wonderful people. They are wonderful students. They are so eager to learn. They are so excited to get out there and Co Op and meet companies and network. All of that is there. It’s the organizational skills, it’s the time management piece, it’s the accountability part. It is the ability to handle multiple tasks at one time. We don’t place students in jobs. So students don’t come to us and we say, okay, Joe, we are matching you or placing you with Great American Insurance. The students are required to find their placements.
Kara 21:00
Oh, that’s interesting. Okay,
Kelli 21:03
now we give them all the tools they need, right? They each have a co op advisor. We have multiple resources around campus. In the school of IT, within my college, we have a partnership development team that I mentioned that is facilitating job opportunities and building networking opportunities, all of that. So we give we give students the tools and the resources they don’t always choose to use them. And I don’t think that’s anything new. If you have k 12 teachers that are listening to this, it’s probably things they’re shaking their head at,yes, we see this, right? But there’s nothing magic, that once they graduate high school, they come to college, and suddenly those skills appear.And so it’s less I think about how to do the job, or in my case, IT like the technical skills, because those are the things that students are most excited to gain. And so they’ll do that, right? They’ll take their classes, they’ll do upskilling opportunities, all of that. But if there’s any way to facilitate more of that professional development and those executive functioning skills, that is what we’re seeing really, really lacking in these students right now.
Kara 22:40
Sounds familiar,
Kelli 22:43
and I would say, I could say that’s across the board.
Kara 22:48
Yeah, on that topic, a little bit is, how can K 12 educators better expose students to the possibilities of IT careers, especially those who may not see themselves in tech roles?
Kelli 23:09
I was just having this conversation with a friend who is a high school teacher, and it’s interesting, because I don’t know that I have the right answer, but it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. In the past five to 10 years, I have seen the K 12 world really start to push students in the direction of choosing a path early on, and I think it’s one, I think exploring, like the exploration piece of exploring career opportunities, is wonderful to do from the start. Imean, you can do that in elementary school, middle school, high school. I’m afraid what’s starting to happen is that we are putting pressure on students to pick a path too early, and a lot of times, that path doesn’t work out, as we know as adults, right? Or it’s windy, like we talked about, takes different directions, and students don’t know how to pivot. So if, if the path doesn’t work right. So if they, if they, from the start, said, I want to be a teacher, and then something happens and they can’t be a teacher, they are lost with how to look at a parallel plan, or to pivot a little bit to figure out what is next. So when it comes to IT, I think the goal is, how do we just explore,
Kara 24:52
yeah,
Kelli 24:52
and and, and we’re able to do that, I think, just by hands on projects and activities and it’s really just exposure. So it’s less about I want to do this job. A lot of my students come in and they’re like, I want to be an XYZ cybersecurity analyst. And I’m like, well, that job isn’t that’s not for like, 10 years. So, yeah, you may have to start your first Co Op. May need to be an IT help desk role before you even your fifth Co Op might be a cyber security role. Yeah, I think we’re pushing students to make these, these choices so early on that that exploration piece sort of goes away, and they’re picking a job title and how to get to that job title, and then again, There’s not much resiliency when that doesn’t work out.
Kara 26:02
Yeah, which makes total sense, because it is, I’m all about the exploration piece, because it’s like in K 12, that’s like the one time really that like for free,
Kelli 26:16
yes,
Kara 26:17
You have the opportunity to have the exposure, yeah, to all the things, but it is more about, like, developing the skills and working at it that way, as opposed to, like, I know I want to be rich, so I’m going to choose this one job that makes X amount of money, supposedly, right? But they don’t. They don’t have that realistic understanding that you don’t just like walk out of college necessarily, and do that
Kelli 26:50
exactly
Kara 26:52
you have to, yeah,
Kelli 26:54
I have a student, and she has this, she has for a while, she’s had this idea like her dream. We talk about dreams a lot, right? It’s always what’s the dream? And go for the dream, shoot for the stars. And she said she’s graduating. She’s getting ready to graduate. And she said my dream has always been to move my plan, and my dream has been to graduate and move to Chicago, and my dream firm that I want to work for is XYZ.
And she didn’t get a job at XYZ firm, but she did get offered a really great role in Cincinnati, and so now she’s trying to figure out, and this is like real life things, right? You could have the same situation, and how would we deal with it? But she’s trying to figure out, I have. I have been seeing this manifesting this path for so long, and now it didn’t work out, and so am I a failure? Even though she has a wonderful job opportunity at a place in Cincinnati that might actually be a better opportunity for her, she’s seeing it almost as a failure instead of right, because she did achieve the dream that’s been in her mind for so long. And those are the those are the types of things I think we have to start to just be aware of that we’re not doing it on purpose, right? We’re trying to help students plan. But are we doing it to a fault?
Kara 28:45
Yeah, yeah. Oh, because, yeah. I want her to be proud of herself.
Kelli 28:49
That’s what I said. I said, sit back and look at if this were in Chicago, would you, would you take this job? She’s like, 100% I was like, Well, okay, maybe you’re meant to be in Cincinnati for a year or two, or whatever, and then you move to Chicago. It doesn’t have to look the way you’ve always envisioned it looking, because life just doesn’t work like that.
Kara 29:16
No, not at all, not at all. And it could be she may not even know it yet, but the job in Cincinnati could be preparing her,
Kelli 29:26
right?
Kara 29:30
And you just, and that’s the thing. You just never know until you’re like, reflecting
Kelli 29:35
exactly
Kara 29:37
you know. You can’t, you can’t know ahead I it’s like,
Kelli 29:43
yeah. It’s like, I trust the process, yes, yeah, which is hard to do. It is, but yeah,
Kara 29:50
especially if you want to control the situation and you wanted a certain like, and don’t get me wrong, I want that too. Yeah. I.
Kelli 30:01
Yeah, yeah. I’ve been around long enough to know that’s just not how it works.
Kara 30:08
Yeah, and I say all the time, like, you just go with it.
Kelli 30:13
You go with it exactly. I know that’s what I need to I should write that. I should I should do two things. I should write that on the board every time I walk in my classroom, just go with it. Go with it. And I should put that as my Zoom background when I’m talking to my Co Op students and advising them, just go with it.
Kara 30:36
Yep, because you just, you don’t, you just make a choice. And, yeah, you’ll see if it works out. And if it doesn’t, you make a different choice. And you do, there you are. So you do, yeah, all right, so Okay, um, have you seen any student examples where early exposure, like high school coding clubs, career tech programs or internships really helped students excel in in the in the co op?
Kelli 31:10
Yes, absolutely. So we have a program with Cincinnati Public Schools. It’s called early IT and so we have students that will start learning coding and some some tech skills in high school, and then they they get admission into the school of it at UC, and those are typically your students. I mean, it’s kind of funny, right? We’re just talking about not doing some of these things, but they can be done really well. It’s just we don’t want to force students to make a choice. There are, yeah, there are some students that know their path and are very confident in that. There are other students that aren’t quite sure and are think are pushed to make a choice and stick with that choice that they’re just not comfortable with and afraid at that point to pivot. But in cases where you do have those students that you know have always been really interested in STEM and going through projects and all sorts of stuff since elementary school, and they’re in high school and they’re part of the coding club or early IT with Cincinnati Public Schools, those are great opportunities for students to get a head start and see what It’s like to maybe be a part of curriculum and some programming at a higher level.
So our early IT students. They’re taking college classes in high school, but they could decide at any point after they finish up a class, that’s not the route I want to take and I want to do something different, right and and I think that the point of all of this, that’s the exploration that we’re talking about. And things like coding clubs are doing the same thing. It’s, it’s, I see those as true exploration mechanisms that allow a student to to figure it out before it becomes, oh, I’m paying, paying a lot of money, you know, I’m paying tuition to go and do this thing that I’m just not sure about, or, yeah, whatever it may be. So, so yes, and students come in, and when I’m looking at their resumes, because I mentioned in my professional development Co Op class, Intro to Co Op, students come in and they have all these things they did on their resume from high school, right as they should, because, yeah, don’t have anything else. And you have the students that have all of this technology experience, and they’ve done these projects and and they’re pretty impressive. So to have that before even entering college can be really helpful. I think it’s a confidence builder for students to come in and know that they already have some of the experience and expertise, sort of expertise, that they’ll need in some of their their classes. So I don’t think things like that can hurt, because, again, I think they are just more exploration driven.
Kara 34:41
Yeah? And it goes back to to the exposure, yeah, not only the exploration, but the exposure to the like, this is a thing, yes, yes, yeah. Because I think about Yeah, I still think about that with my own self, right? You know, we.
Kelli 35:00
Didn’t have much exposure, did we? Yeah, it was,
No, we didn’t have much. But we have some really, like, we have some programming where students come in and, like, we have within the School of it, students who are getting a bachelor’s degree in it. We have tracks and there’s like, a game development track. And so have students who have been gaming, you know, all, all their life, and they’ll come in and now they’re on that side of actually creating the video games, which is really neat to see, if you’re an educator, if you’re you know, listening to this and and within the education realm, which my guess is, you are really
reflect on what you can do to help students gain that exposure to all of the the career possibilities that are out there without pushing them in one specific direction, and really utilize the the time that they’re in, you know, the K 12 sphere, to to allow them to dream, but not get stuck on one particular dream that then they see as failure. Later, they see themselves as a failure later on, if they don’t reach it.
And that’s, I think, the most important takeaway from my perspective, because by the time these students get to me, we want them to be really excited to get out there into the workforce. We don’t want them to feel like, you know, they they’re being pigeon holed into one specific space or area, just because that’s what they’ve always thought or always said that they were going to do. So just reflect on that and give give yourself and students opportunities to explore and experiment and be exposed to all of the different things that are out there.
Kara 37:18
I think that’s a great way to leave it. So yes, thank you.
Caryn 37:22
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope you found our discussion interesting and insightful. Don’t forget to check out the show notes on our website, where you’ll find more information about today’s guest resources we mentioned, and information on earning contact hours for listening.
Kara 37:37
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your network and check us out at for the love of edtech.org, this podcast is produced by SOITA, the Southwestern Ohio Instructional Technology Association, in partnership with ThinkTV and CET, the local PBS stations in Dayton and Cincinnati. Until next time, keep exploring new ways to empower your students through tech, and we’ll catch you in the next episode.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai