How Athens State Is Opening Doors to Career Coaching and AI for Adult Learners
Like most universities, Athens State has always had a Career Services office with an open-door policy. The challenge, however, is that career development is often not top of mind for students until graduation is approaching quickly. By then, many students are rushing to prepare résumés, search for jobs, and build professional networks. “Our goal is to help students engage in career planning earlier so they are better positioned for success when they enter the workforce,” noted Derrek Smith, Senior Director of Student Success and Career Development.
Our goal is to help students engage in career planning earlier so they are better positioned for success when they enter the workforce.
Most Athens State students are adult learners, community college transfer students, first-generation students, or Pell-eligible. Many are balancing work, family responsibilities, and education while more than 90% take classes online. “Our students are actively investing in their futures. They are squeezing coursework into evenings and weekends,” noted Smith. “They are driven by career mobility.”
The question Athens State had to answer was simple and challenging at the same time: how do you deliver real career development to students who need it, on their terms, at their hours, and without the infrastructure to do it the traditional way? This is when Athens State connected with the CareerVillage team about Coach.
How Athens State Built “Athens Aspire” Around Coach
When Athens State received a grant from the Strada Education Foundation focused on career-connected education, the team created Athens Aspire, a career development program with Coach at its center. The design began with a simple question: Who are our students?
"All of our students share a common trait," Smith said. "They are highly motivated by what comes next in their careers."
While many Athens State students already have jobs, those positions are not always aligned with the careers they ultimately aspire to pursue. Others need their degree to advance into leadership and management roles.
"They need to know how to interview, how to translate work experience into a professional identity that gets them hired, and how to communicate the value of their skills to employers," Smith noted. "Perhaps most importantly, they need to be able to do it on their own time, which some may do at 9 in the evening."
Athens State partnered with CareerVillage to deploy Coach across two tracks: a public-facing widget embedded on their Career Services webpage, and a licensed platform rolled out across seven academic programs: Nursing, Computer Science, IT, Graphic Design, Instructional Design, HR Management, and Cybersecurity/Accounting. The widget gave every student access to Coach regardless of program, and Coach widget exercises have been embedded within key foundational classes for all students. The licensed platform let faculty go deeper, embedding Coach directly into major coursework and assignments.
Rather than rolling Coach out to all faculty at once, Athens State identified faculty champions within each program. Early on, Coach was offered as extra credit. As faculty saw how students engaged with it, they began embedding it as a requirement. "If you believe in a tool enough to bring it on to support students," said Smith, "you have to integrate it. Make it a requirement. Otherwise, it just sits there."
The goal was always to extend what career services staff could offer. Coach handles foundational work like basic career questions, mock interviews, and low-stakes exploration, which frees up human advisors for messier exploration, emotional support, and higher impact interventions. As Smith envisioned it, Coach is a resource students engage with before they ever reach an advisor, so that when they do, the conversation can go further.
The questions students learned to ask
When Athens State began analyzing how students were using Coach, the results were surprising. The most common questions weren't about interview prep or networking. They were about professional email etiquette, what to wear to an interview, how to conduct themselves in a meeting.
"Perhaps students feel more willing to ask a bot than a person," said Smith. "That is not uncommon, as we have seen students become more willing to engage when they know the communication is coming from one of our AI-powered tools."
While many Athens State students have work experience, that experience is not always directly related to the careers they aspire to pursue. As a result, students often struggle to translate their experiences into the transferable skills that employers are seeking.
"A common challenge is helping students recognize and articulate the value of the skills they have already developed," Smith noted. "Many students possess the skillset, but they need guidance in connecting those experiences to the needs of employers."
Students also responded strongly to Coach's feedback on practical preparation and practice. Mock interviews and elevator pitches were among the most commonly used activities. Students tended to find AI feedback less daunting because it was honest without being personal.
Many students’ “minds [were] blown when they realized they could use [AI] to practice mock interviewing," said Smith. "They never thought about it." The structure matters, too. Coach brought a career coaching framework, a consistent approach, and a credibility that open-ended tools don't offer.
It should be done in a credible system like Coach. And once they see the feedback, students immediately see where there is room for growth.
Looking ahead
The impact of Athens Aspire has also reached beyond the Career Development Center. The partnership directly supports a university-wide initiative known as Career Advantage which provides wraparound support that includes career coaching, academic advising, and faculty mentorship. What started as a career services initiative has become part of a framework for rethinking student support across the institution.
The team is also focused on building out more systematic ways to understand what students are experiencing with Coach, moving beyond early signals toward the kind of ongoing feedback that can keep improving how the program is implemented.
For CareerVillage, the Athens Aspire partnership represents exactly the kind of collaboration we believe in where technology is thoughtfully integrated into an institution's existing fabric, shaped by the real needs of real students, and built to last beyond the initial pilot. We're proud to be part of this work.
4 Takeaways for Institutions Serving Adult Learners
For higher education and workforce organizations that serve working adults, the Athens Aspire experience offers a few lessons to take note of.
Meet students where they actually are, not where you expect them to be. Athens State's students weren't coming to an office. They needed career support available asynchronously, on demand, and without friction. Any tool that requires a special trip won't reach the students who need it most.
The career questions students won't ask a human are often the most important ones. Creating a low-stakes space for basic, practical questions can unlock improved engagement. Coach gave Athens State students permission to ask.
Embedding Coach in the curriculum makes the difference. Making Coach available is not the same as making it used. When Coach was woven into coursework as a real assignment, students engaged meaningfully with it. We have seen this consistently across other partnerships, as well.
A trusted, secure on-ramp to AI is its own career outcome. For students who've been told AI is dangerous or confusing, a structured, safe, FERPA-compliant tool isn't just a career coaching resource. It's a first introduction to a technology that’s critical to learn and leverage.
Join the conversation
We are continuing to study how AI career coaching can be built into programs in ways that move real outcomes. If you are a workforce leader, educator, or funder thinking about the same questions, we would love to connect.
