Abstract
Career development is a relatively new profession, and as such has sometimes struggled to find its place in the landscape of human services providers. To a certain extent, we have sought to define and delineate our "territory" as a means to cement the profession. At the University of the Sunshine Coast, we're moving in the opposite direction, and it's providing benefits not only for our students, but for our team members. At USC, our career services are colocated with personal counselling services, disability support services and academic advisory services. It's a onestop shop for students seeking support. Some of our team members work across two of these areas. Others have just one specialty. Our team meetings are multidisciplinary. And informal case management conversations are a daily occurrence. The career counsellors participate in PD on issues like mental health, and the personal counsellors participate in PD on career development issues. Sometimes it's the same PD! Our clients are not usually concerned to define the line between life and career. And our structure encourages all of our team to work with students in a way that looks at life issues while exploring career/study issues, and vice versa. We would like to share with you our experience of this integrated model of service delivery both personally and professionally. And we'd like to challenge you to think about how you might blend areer development with other disciplines in your sector and what that might mean for the integrity of the career development profession