Constructing Your Career Plays

A Career Advisor’s Approach to Life Designing With College Student-Athletes

Abstract

The evolving landscape of job opportunities has led to increased concerns around life-career success of college student-athletes while and after they balance their academic and sport performance. At Kent State University (Division I) located in Kent, Ohio, Tracy Montgomery serves as the student-athlete career advisor liaison between Career Exploration & Development and the Department of Athletics. With more than 10 years of secondary education teaching experience and seven years of career advising/education, Tracy has identified and continues to apply Mark Savickas’s (2012, 2013) Career Construction Interview (CCI) as her most valuable tool in creating conversations around career development. In a sit-down interview with Tracy, she breaks down the life design technique (Savickas, 2015) so career practitioners and other intercollegiate athletic personnel may adopt the approach to support student-athletes to (a) identify what their intentions are toward life-career transitions; (b) realize why they perform their actions and closely hold their beliefs toward making life-career decisions ; and (c) move forward with how they can empower themselves to move in and out of “going pro.”