Spotlight on Danielle McCalla

The following is a conversation with Career Placement Officer Danielle McCalla. Danielle is passionate about community college student’s and strives to promote professional and personal development.

Prior to joining the team at CCRI, she worked in higher education in student-centric roles for four years at Brown University as an Operations Administrative Assistant and later worked at Bristol Community College as an Enrollment Services Representative. 

Read more to learn about Danielle's role at the college and how her work contributes to the development of CCRI's Strategic Plan 2022-25.

Tell us about what you do at CCRI, and how long you've been with the college.   

I work as a Career Placement Officer on the career services team. I have been a staff member with the department for a little under a year and previously worked as an intern in 2019. I am a CCRI alumna and am happy to be on the career services team because I want to help all CCRI students to have a competitive advantage in the workplace.   

Can you share an example of how your work helps achieve Goal 2?  

Collectively the career services team empowers students and alumni to explore and define their personal career goals and hone in on their career readiness skills. Throughout the year, the department offers a variety of career workshops, conducts 1:1 meetings with students and alumni, utilizes technology to support self-awareness and career development, and partners with faculty for in-class presentations. We also work directly with employers to understand their workforce needs and help students and alumni prepare for and apply to these roles.  

Last week, we were able to put all these aspects together to have a successful Virtual Job Fair. I was thrilled to help students connect with over 70 employers, many of them are employer partners that want to specifically recruit CCRI students and alumni. We hosted the event on Handshake, our new job database, and received great feedback from all participants about the ease and professionalism of the event.  
 
How have you collaborated with others across the college to achieve this success?    

I am thankful to have a career services team that challenges me, provides mentorship, has a great sense of guidance and teamwork! 

It's clear that collaboration is key to supporting students and alumni in the best way. I have worked with staff, faculty and student organizations to strengthen relationships with students and alumni. Our goal is to connect with students at any point in their academic careers to support them in the career paths. I collaborated on the Path Days events to share my experience with students as an example of professional roles after CCRI.  
   
The Strategic Plan will be updated to guide our work from 2022-25. What is something that you are looking forward to over the next three years?   
   
I look forward to coming to campus and building relationships in-person with students, staff, and faculty—I started my role during this remote period so I’m very excited to have a presence on campus. I also love the idea of experiential learning as part of a requirement for graduation students because I value the impact of academics partnered with real-world experience. I also want to continue to build relationships with employer partnerships, faculty and staff.