Angie Meyer
Associate Director, Career Placement Office
“When a student expresses interest in a career, they should always be encouraged to explore it further...”
Though discouraged from going into the career services field by a high school counselor Angie knew that this was what she wanted to one day do. After 17+ years split between the teaching and business worlds, she finally made it here.
Angie started exploring career counseling when she was in high school by setting up an appointment to talk about the field with her guidance counselor. Much to her surprise, her own guidance counselor was discouraging and spent their whole hour together pointing out all the obstacles that stood in her way. That first conversation clearly influenced how she approaches her interactions with students. “When a student expresses interest in a career, they should always be encouraged to explore it further – to network and meet people in the field, so that they can determine for themselves if it is a good fit. As a career counselor, I try to stay positive. I see my role as helping students to make their own choices, not making their choices for them.”
Angie first obtained her undergraduate degree in Education from Indiana University and between her undergraduate and master’s degrees got her first taste of career services while working to place 16-21 year olds in Dubois County in various positions for a state funded program. She left after a short time to pursue teaching, eventually deciding to enroll in IU’s Masters in Counseling program here at IUPUI. It was during her practicum that Angie had the opportunity to work briefly in career services at Butler University. That’s when she knew that she wanted work in a career center at a university. After ten years as the top Accounting and Finance recruiter at an Indianapolis placement agency, an opportunity in the Career Placement Office at Kelley Indianapolis became available through a previous colleague and Angie has been working with students and employers ever since.
As the Associate Director of the CPO since 2005, Angie has focused on expanding and improving the services offered by the Career Placement Office, restructuring her X320 Career Planning course to include more hands on and networking opportunities for her students, and working to bring an expanded pool of great employers to campus. She works closely with employers to assist them in building effective long-term recruiting relationships with Kelley Indianapolis. Two accomplishments she is particularly proud of are incorporating mock interviews with local employers into her required X320 class and starting what will now be an annual event - the incredibly popular Honors Speed Networking – in Fall 2007.
Angie sees IUPUI as a great place for employers to recruit from for a variety of reasons. “Our students are unique in that, while the average age is closer to that of a traditional college student, the vast majority do still work their way through school. Our students are more mature than the traditional college student, have realistic expectations of the business world, and have a far shorter on-the-job learning curve.” This diverse student population is something that Angie believes students often overlook, as students can often network with other professionals everyday – their peers! Going forward, Angie plans to focus on developing peer networking opportunities as well as continuing to improve the number and quality of employers coming to campus, tap into the finance and marketing research job markets in Indianapolis, and work on keeping the current events strong.
