January 2006

A Call to Serve

GW Joins Pilot Project to Encourage Government Service

BY THOMAS KOHOUT AND JULIA JACOBELLI

The Partnership for Public Service recently selected The George Washington University and five other institutions to spearhead a pilot program aimed at boosting awareness of career opportunities in government service and stemming a potentially debilitating loss of talent in public sector positions.

Over the next five years, nearly half of the federal work force will be eligible for retirement. The alarming figure is the impetus for the nonprofit organization to join with the Office of Personnel Management to initiate the Call to Serve campaign, reaching out to college campuses to make government employment an attractive choice.

“The Call to Serve effort is an attempt to collectively help the government reconnect with colleges and universities,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service.

According to Stier, the federal workforce is an old demographic, largely because the civil service operates on the career model, with employees staying for their whole working lives. Just as important, recent federal downsizing initiatives have prompted many mid-level employees to leave. The result is an unbalanced workforce with many senior and junior staff members, but not much in between.
Stier believes the barrier to attracting talented people is a lack of information about the opportunities. He stresses that many connect politics or international affairs to government service, when in fact almost every profession is represented — from engineering to editing.

“They don’t know about the options and the opportunities that are there,” Stier said. “And even if they know something, they don’t know how to go about executing on an interest.”

But the question of how to inform students of the government employment opportunities available is a difficult one. To explore the best way to recruit student talent, six schools — GW, Clark Atlanta University, Louisiana State University, Ohio State University, Stanford University, and The University of New Mexico, — were selected to participate in the pilot program.

“I anticipate that the Call to Serve program will increase awareness of career opportunities among students and clue them in to the application process,” said Marva Gumbs, executive director of the Career Center and a member of GW’s Call to Serve steering committee. “We have done surveys in the past that indicate GW students are definitely very interested in working in the public sector, but are confused by the application process and the timeline for interviews and the hire decision.”

In a baseline survey to gauge student interest, GW students outpaced their national counterparts by large margins in terms of knowledge about public sector job opportunities (66.7 percent are at least somewhat knowledgeable versus 40 percent nationally) and overall interest in the federal government (77.8 percent are at least somewhat interested versus 58.1 percent nationally).

“We realized little had been done to understand what is the most effective way to share information about government opportunities,” said Stier. “The pilot schools’ recruitment initiative is essentially a research project. We’re trying to test different interventions on these campuses to see what is most effective at getting the right information to students; what will persuade them these are opportunities they ought to pursue.”

The partnership selected these six campuses, each with a unique focus and different mechanisms for reaching students, to represent the broad and diverse set of universities with the hope that they develop the measurement tools to determine what works and what doesn’t. The results from this pilot program will be transferred to a coalition of some 562 universities and 60 federal agencies to raise the profile of federal government service on college campuses.

“At GW, one of the interesting and unique features is that the campus is trying to work with its alumni to try to engage the student population,” said Stier. GW formally launched its University-wide effort on Oct. 25 with a President’s Medal presentation to Charles Carmada (MA ’80), NASA mission specialist for the Discovery shuttle who discussed “How to Become an Astronaut.”

According to Peter Konwerski, assistant vice president for student and academic support services and coordinator of GW’s Call to Serve campaign, the University also will focus on helping students navigate the process of getting applications, presenting their credentials in the right format, completing their resumes, and conducting interviews.

“The partnership is trying to find out how to streamline the process and make it easier for students to apply,” said Konwerski. “The big stereotype about the government is that it’s hard to break into because you have so much bureaucracy. That’s one of the things we’re trying to change. How do we break down that bureaucracy and make it easier for students?”

“Ultimately, we have a long way to go,” said Stier. “My expectation is that someone giving this a serious look, who is interested in making a difference, is going to find that there are great opportunities available.”

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu