The mission of the Liberal Arts Career NetWORK is to maximize knowledge, technology, and resources in a collaborative way to provide a competitive advantage to our liberal arts students and graduates in a global and ever-changing marketplace.
LACN has been in existence since 2000, and was incorporated into a 501c3 in 2004. LACN currently has 40 member schools, an executive board made up of representatives from member schools, and one paid operations manager. LACN hosts an annual Summit at the end of each academic year and offers members the following benefits:
Benchmarking and Sharing Best Practices
The Benchmarking Committee of LACN administers at least 4 surveys of the membership each year. Data are collected on topics such as professional salaries, operations, first destinations and internships, giving member schools the ability to compare their own data and situation with other colleges and universities that share a common purpose and educational philosophy. Members also query other members and share best practices through a variety of channels and methods, including the Google group described below.
LACN Google Groups
LACN hosts and moderates five Google groups for our member schools. These groups are intended to engage more of our staff in helpful discussions, information sharing and best practices.
- LACNDirectors: intended audience is for Directors of Career Services
- LACNAdvisors: intended audience is staff whose main role is advising students
- LACNEmployers: intended audience is staff whose main role is in employer relations
- LACNMetrics: intended audience is staff whose main role is in assessment, evaluation and benchmarking
- AskLACN: intended to be used for “hot topics” that arise and appear to need input beyond one campus role
To join one of these groups, please contact Krista Siringo, LACN Operations Manager.
Consortium Vendor Pricing
LACN has a history of being able to use our numbers as leverage when negotiating prices for such products as CareerSearch or Vault. As a consortium, our organization maximizes knowledge, technology and resources in a collaborative way to provide a competitive advantage to our liberal arts students and alumni in a global and ever-changing marketplace. We invite vendors to submit information on their product with this single form. By doing so, products will be under consideration by 40 schools, with 70,000+ high achieving students.