“Part of what I wanted to implement from this program into my current day-to-day job was to learn how to really do some data-driven decision making. The program helped me to analyze and interpret data more effectively. I use this to assess student outcomes, track career progression, and more importantly, identify trends in job placements, internship successes, and where students need some skill development. When joining our business school programs, a lot of students that I work with don’t necessarily know what kind of job they want coming out. This program has helped me learn how to better assess their skills and help them to plot a path.” – Jason Gorack, Online Master’s Degree in Research Methods, Measurement & Evaluation (RMME), Graduate Fall 2023

Using Data to Become a More Effective Career Coach

As a Graduate Career Coach, Jason Gorack is passionate about guiding his students as they navigate their future career path. Searching for a Master’s program that would enhance his capacity for data-driven decision-making, Jason discovered the 100% Online Master’s Degree in Research Methods, Measurement & Evaluation (RMME) at the University of Connecticut (UConn). Since graduating from the program, Jason now feels empowered with the knowledge and skills to better analyze and interpret data, identify key trends, and evaluate career services programs. True to his aim, Jason now believes he has the capacity to add even greater value for his clients: students and alumni of UConn School of Business.

Jason loves his work as a Graduate Career Coach for UConn School of Business graduate programs, where he is responsible for corporate outreach and career development. His work coaching graduate students begins with the recruiting process and continues through graduation and beyond. As Jason explains, “When you are deciding what sort of program you’re going to enroll in, a big aspect of that decision is: What is that program actually going to do for me? What’s my return on investment? So, part of what I do in the recruiting process is to teach incoming students what our current students are doing. What kind of investment banks are they working at? What sort of roles in corporate finance? I need to crunch statistics to determine: What is our placement rate? How many students are getting internships? How many of our international students are getting hired here in the United States? So, I’m involved in the recruiting process, but that continues all the way through graduation. Then actually, beyond graduation: I stay in touch with our alumni at that point, and many of them end up hiring some of our students as they graduate. So, I stay in touch with them the whole time. It’s pretty neat.”

Looking for program to benefit current role

Return on investment was very much a part of Jason’s decision process when searching for a Master’s degree program. He was specifically searching for a program that would be directly applicable to his current role. That’s when he discovered UConn’s Online Master’s Degree in Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation (RMME). “I wanted to get a Master’s degree for a long time, but it just never really fit in my life. I had young children, and I worked a lot of hours for a while. Once I was employed at UConn, which started about seven years ago, I was eligible for a tuition waiver, so then I really wanted to get my Master’s degree. Looking online at different types of programs, I wanted something that would benefit me in my current role, which I plan to stay at basically until I retire in about ten years. This program seemed to be the best match. I had looked at the MBA program. Would it be a good idea for me to have an understanding of what the students that I work with go through? Yes, but that’s all it would it do. It wouldn’t give me that insight of how to analyze data and, more importantly, evaluate programs. I use that on a regular basis.” Taking the leap, Jason began the RMME online Master’s program in fall 2021, graduating in fall 2023.

Flexibility to pace himself 

Juggling a full-time career and an active family, the flexibility of the online, asynchronous format was essential for Jason. “The convenience of the online classes really worked for me. Working full-time and having a full house of kids and pets and everything else, that convenience of doing the work at the time I chose was great. Most assignments were due on Sundays. Some of these projects were hard for me, because there was a lot of technology that I’d never worked with before, so it took me time to ramp-up. Being able to work on these projects late at night when my family was not around was really beneficial. That flexibility was one of the key factors that appealed to me.”

According to Jason, the online format also offered another distinct advantage: “I actually liked the video-recorded lectures better than in-person, because I was able to hit pause when I needed to, go back, relisten to it, try to figure out that segment a little bit, and then move on, rather than sitting through a 2-hour or a 3-hour lecture and not completely following everything because they move quickly. So, for me, a 3-hour online lecture was probably more like, honestly, a 5- to 6-hour lecture because I would pause it, understand it, pause it, understand it. That worked out great for me.”

Professors take the time to help you succeed

One of the steepest learning curves for Jason was becoming familiar with technology that was quite foreign to his experience, but he says the professors were extraordinarily supportive in helping him succeed. “The faculty were amazing: Dr. Sarah D. Newton, Dr. Christopher Rhoads, each and every professor – they were all outstanding. This was, as far as I’m concerned, a pretty tech-driven program. Prior to coming to UConn, I’ve always had assistants or others who would do my PowerPoint presentations and my spreadsheets. I had never done a formula on a computer in Excel, never mind RStudio and other statistical software. Never had I done that. So, my learning curve on how to do these large formulas through Excel and other statistical software was very steep. But the professors were amazing in how they would take the extra time to help you succeed, especially my advisor, Dr. Rhoads. He was outstanding. I had him for I think two classes. He’s very well versed in all the statistical software. A lot of the students I worked with in group projects were as well, so they picked it up pretty quickly. That was probably my biggest learning curve, but the faculty were incredible.”

Further elaborating on the support he received, Jason continues, “You know, I thought I would be a bit of a nuisance by asking questions so frequently. I would try to figure things out on my own first. Just to find a dataset and load it into RStudio for the first time probably took me about 45 hours. No joke, I’m not even kidding you. It took me a long time just to figure that out. Then I figured it out and did it one time. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s in, great, it’s there.’ But then the second time, I couldn’t figure out how to do it again. So, I reached out to Dr. Rhoads, and he was like, ‘Boom bam boom! Here’s how you do it.’ Using the method he taught me, the third time was easy. The fourth time, even easier. I couldn’t speak any more highly of each faculty member that I encountered. Any time I had a question, either Dr. Rhoads or Dr. Newton responded very quickly. So, I would just say, the faculty are phenomenal, and they are there to help you succeed.”

Beyond navigating his technology learning curve, Jason is deeply appreciative of the support he received when he encountered a major health challenge: “I have a birth defect on my heart, so I had open heart surgery right around the last two months of the program. The professors and the staff were extremely accommodating. They gave me whatever time I needed, but I only needed a couple weeks to catch up. They were so understanding.”

Never felt alone in the work

Not only did Jason feel supported by the professors, but he also felt supported by his classmates. “The students were also wonderful with quick questions. Each class had an online space where you could post certain questions if you had them. I always had questions, but I would try to figure it out first, and if I couldn’t, I would do the simple post, and then students would get back to me. They would say, ‘Here’s what I have learned; here’s how I did it.’ So having those relationships and asking those questions to both the professors and the students was fantastic.”

Jason says the level of interaction with his peers over the HuskyCT/Blackboard platform made the online experience feel like being together in a classroom. “The discussion boards, which are mandatory, gave you a connection to other students, because we had to read each other’s responses and reply, so it was like having full conversations with them. It also went beyond that because we also did a lot of group work. Every week, we had to work with certain groups. You weren’t left alone feeling like ‘Oh wow, I’m the only one in this program.’ You were very much involved together. Sometimes, there were peer reviews of the work that you did, where a peer would look at your work and provide feedback on it. That was outstanding also. To me, it was very similar to actually being in an in-person class.”

Learning to craft and analyze data

Despite his initial learning curve challenges, a major highlight for Jason was learning how to use RStudio in the context of two of his favorite courses: Quantitative Methods in Research I & II (EPSY 5605 & EPSY 5607). As Jason explains, “I had a lot of favorite courses. Within the core courses, it was really learning RStudio. It was interesting learning how to craft and analyze all this data. My dataset was simple. It was 15 different kinds of fish, and I’m not a fisherman or anything. I had to analyze the difference between their size, how they would grow, their length and their width. Like, who cares about fish really? But it’s about the data itself, and you could predict how this particular fish is going to grow. It was pretty interesting, because being able to apply that to something more relevant was exciting. Specifically, I saw the potential to apply it to career placement data.”

Among his elective courses, Jason had an unexpected favorite: PP 5377 – Qualitative Methods in Public Policy. “I was a little leery because I didn’t know exactly what electives I should take. Dr. Newton and Dr. Rhoads stepped in and came up with a complete course schedule for me. So, starting right from there was amazing. For one of my electives, they suggested I take a public policy course. I can’t remember the professor’s name who taught that course, but he was really into it and really made that class interesting. I would never have thought I’d be interested in a public policy course, but it was all about when the country could use this kind of leader versus that kind of leader, looking at the history of different leaders in different countries, and how and why people vote the way they vote. I thought it was fascinating, and I learned a lot. That course was pretty phenomenal.”

Helping students plot a path

The real value for Jason has been the opportunity to directly apply what he’s learned in ways that better inform his work helping students navigate their professional development goals. “Part of what I wanted to implement from this program into my current day-to-day job was to learn how to really do some data-driven decision making. The program helped me to analyze and interpret data more effectively. I use this to assess student outcomes, track career progression, and more importantly, identify trends in job placements, internship successes, and areas where students need some skill development. When joining our business school programs, a lot of students that I work with don’t necessarily know what kind of job they want coming out. This program has helped me learn how to better assess their skills and help them to plot a path, such as what additional classes or other workshops they may need to take. I was able to use surveys from past graduates to determine which industries were hiring most of our business students and use that data to guide current students toward some of the most promising career paths that they would like. All of that has been really beneficial.”

Jason continues, “I have also learned how to better analyze the data in terms of what students really want out of this degree, so I’m able to personalize some career counseling for each of these students. I keep an inventory of each student and what their interests are, and then we look back after two years at ‘here’s what you’ve done so far to achieve your ultimate goal at the end of your graduation date.’ That really helps to identify some career paths going forward based on their skills and their interests.”

Evaluating career services programs

Jason goes on to enumerate the many other ways he is implementing what he has learned in the RMME online Master’s program: “I’m also applying what I learned in the evaluation of career services programs, whether it’s a simple resume workshop or a networking workshop. I often have high level corporations, such as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, or smaller investment banks, that come here to talk to our students. So, I’ve learned how to implement pre- and post-assessment surveys to gauge the success of these programs. Prior to the RMME program, I did do surveys, but they were pitiful in comparison. The rate of completion of surveys now, compared to prior to the program, is night and day. And beyond that, the back end didn’t collect the data as well as it should before. So, the return of the data is a lot better than what it was prior to taking the program. This helps us identifiy how to make our alumni-based and career-related programs better.”

Recounting one more area that has benefited, Jason adds, “One other area would be the reporting and presentation of data. I’ve been able to prepare and provide more presentations for the business school leadership, showing the success rates of students who participated in career counseling, internship programs, and other services. So, I think learning how to do that properly, getting the proper samples sizes and all of that, has been beneficial. It’s primarily the ability to accumulate data, analyze that data, and use that to track the success of our students. I feel that’s been very important.”

Utilizing data to be more effective

To those considering enrolling in the RMME program, Jason advises, “The title of the program could lead people to think that this program would only be for those interested in research. I’m not in a research industry, but this program sincerely helped me when it comes to analyzing data, making sense of data, and how to collect and clean useful data so you can analyze it. I think this program benefits anybody who wants to work with either program evaluation or anything that’s data-centered.”

Ultimately, Jason has accomplished exactly what he was aiming for: the enhanced capacity to benefit the students and alumni he serves at UConn. Jason reflects, “I feel like what I’ve learned is helping my clients, which are the students and the alumni, probably more than it’s going to specifically help me in my career. I think I could expand and advance my career in the research space or program evaluation if I so chose. The problem with that is that I love my job. I love working with the students and it’s very rewarding and fulfilling to me at this stage of my life. So, I’m just trying to make the career services program and what I do on a day-to-day basis better by utilizing data to make me a more effective career coach.”