SUNY Oswego Office of Career Services staff earned three of five statewide awards, as well as a special commendation, at the recent SUNY Career Development Conference. 

Jenny Roxas earned the Individual/Rising Professional Award, given to a professional with less than five years in the field demonstrating innovation and effectiveness in Career Services, and an Excellence in Student Engagement through Implementation of Career Development Programs Award, for her efforts around her particular industry of "Fine and Performing Arts, Media and Entertainment." 

Roxas and Mallory Bower earned the Excellence in Inclusivity Programming or Initiatives Award for new programs or initiatives toward building diversity and inclusion to one or more student/alumni demographics, recognizing the series of diversity programs they planned and implemented throughout the year.

In addition, Christy Huynh and Jackie Wallace earned Presidential Awards for Excellence for providing complete leadership for the conference, which ran June 14 to 16 in Syracuse.

The four award winners are all career coaches under a reconfigured industry-centric structure for the office, which provides dedicated advisers with customized services for specific fields to SUNY Oswego's more than 8,000 students.

"The opportunity to implement this new model really stems from Dr. Jerald Woolfolk giving our department permission and encouragement to innovate and evolve in order to better serve our students," Gary Morris, director of career services at SUNY Oswego, said in reference to the support of Woolfolk, the college's vice president for student affairs and enrollment.

In 2016, Oswego's Career Services Office earned the organization's statewide capstone award for the new model, as the best initiative of any SUNY school's career services operation across any category of awards, Morris added.