EiM University and Careers Counsellors Take Leadership Globally

Shared professional development and leadership in the EiM family of schools

EiM is a global leader when it comes to resourcing and providing in-house professional development for university and career counselling. This happens in peer-to-peer sharing, collaboration, and resourcing.

We are a group of schools, each, to a certain extent, with its own needs based on everything from demographics to curriculum. However, we share UCC standards and make sure that all counsellors have access to the same resources, opportunities, and each other. This is carried out in the following ways:

Resources – all of our schools share the same application success and resource platform, MAIA Learning. Leveraging the power of our group, even our smallest schools can access the same scope of resources as our largest schools. This is exceptionally rare in international education. For example, through MAIA, a small school with a short history of graduating students can access application success data from our 14 years of application experience, during which we have sent tens of thousands of applications out into the world. In the EiM D3 process, our central data and educational technology teams are building a dashboard that will let our UCC teams strategically develop practices using correlations across any academic, extracurricular, or counselling data sets that our schools use. Few, if any schools, in the world can access this type of resource.

Opportunities – our counsellors come together internally in collaboration and learning throughout an academic year, both formally and informally. EiM hosts an annual internal professional learning conference that we call the UCC Summit. This has been happening in our group for 10 years. In May 2023, we were able to resume in-person learning during a hybrid summit hosted at Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong. During the Summit, counsellors shared best practices, presented to all colleagues on their areas of expertise, received learning sessions from Cambridge University, the University of Bath, and the University of Utah, and disseminated their takeaways from the other learning they did throughout the year, much of which you will learn about below.

Each year, a small team of counsellors will lead the Summit programming. Last year, that was headed up by Rorie Macdonald of Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong. Rorie commented on the experience, “Being able to draw on the EiM counselling network's broad array of backgrounds, talents, and connections ensured that the event was incredibly thought-provoking and impactful. Events like this allow us both to stay abreast of the latest developments in the counselling field and to return to our respective campuses with insights we are able to put into practice.”

Additionally, as do all of our teachers in their subject or interest-specific cross-school groups, our counsellors join 6 ‘Collaboration Times’ per year. These occur on Monday afternoons, with all counsellors dialing into calls to work on projects, share best practices, and strengthen their collegial bonds.

Our counsellors also participate in a “UCC Exchange Programme" that aims to match the specialised knowledge of individual counsellors to the needs or interests of other schools in our group. Last academic year witnessed 8 exchanges between our schools.

Shared professional development and leadership in the local professional community

It is important to us that our counsellors are learning and leading in their local communities, whether that be at the city, country, or regional levels.

Examples of this include our team at Dulwich College Suzhou, who initiated and leads annually a conference for the “Jiangsu Counseling Network". This grassroots organisation brings together university and social-emotional counsellors with universities and education providers to make sure our students receive the best possible services, resources, and outcomes from an interconnected network of professionals. 

At national and local levels, our counsellors attend conferences that ensure their knowledge, skills and influence are calibrated to country, demographic, or regional needs. For China, a critical organisation is China ICAC (https://www.chinaicac.org/#/home)

Two of our counsellors attended China ICAC last academic year: Cai Hong of Dehong Shanghai and Ruru Huang of Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong, are also volunteers for the organisation.

In regional contexts, our teams access broader groups of professionals and raise the profile of our schools with counselling colleagues and universities. Counsellors from Dulwich College (Singapore) and Dulwich College Seoul attended GUCC, a regional conference, and hosted the Lion City Fair, Singapore’s premier international university fair.

Shared professional development and leadership in the global professional community

The professional standards of, and primary source of learning for, counsellors in and out of EiM are delivered by global professional organisations including the Council of International Schools (CIS) and the International Association for College Admissions Counselling (International ACAC).

Recently, two of our UCC leaders have taken on prominent roles in leading these organizations. Paul Sweet, of Dulwich College Seoul, works on the Forum Planning Committee for CIS. Luke Devlin, of Dulwich College Shanghai Pudong and Dulwich College Suzhou, was recently appointed as the Vice President for Communications of the International ACAC.

Luke adds, “Throughout my career, I've gained tremendous value through direct learning, sharing, and the power of the professional community. I'm honoured to have the opportunity to serve and lead this professional committee as I continue to learn and grow alongside my peers. I'm grateful to the Dulwich Counsellors over the years who've led by example across the network in their service to leading professional organisations such as NACAC and International ACAC.”

We are proud that EiM counsellors contribute at all levels of these organisations. Jo Mattingly-Nunn, of DCSG, has served on the International ACAC Advocacy & Outreach Committee for two terms. Her service has helped her engage with universities worldwide and, along with the leadership of Paul and Luke, show that EiM counsellors are amongst the most knowledgeable and well-connected in the world.

"Working on the Advocacy and Outreach Committee allows me to make connections with counsellors at other schools and university representatives worldwide, which are an invaluable source of knowledge. It has given me opportunities like helping to organise regional institutes, where counsellors across a continent meet and learn together, present at conferences on the topic of sustainability in schools and higher education (#liveworldwise!) and allow us to support our members working with Ukrainian refugees, girls forced out of school in Afghanistan, and HALI students fleeing violence in Cameroon.”

Direct relationship building and learning with universities 

A unique feature of the Education in Motion family of schools is that we devote great time and resources to university engagement. Since spring 2023, our UCC and Outreach colleagues have led delegations on visits to universities worldwide.

In March 2023, Global Director of Education, David Fitzgerald, Group Director of International Outreach and Alumni Engagement, Lucien Giordano, Head of College Dulwich College Seoul, Gudmundur Jonsson, Paul Sweet and Director of Counselling Dulwich College Suzhou, Hyuk Son, met with universities across Seoul, including Korea’s leading institutions, Yonsei and Seoul National University, as well as the Korean branch campus of the Fashion Institute of Technology, the world leader in undergraduate fashion programmes. 

In July 2023, 12 EiM colleagues joined the International ACAC summer conference in Miami. Our group hosted a reception for universities and was joined by 15 institutions, including St. Andrew’s and Cambridge from the UK, UC Davis and the University of Pittsburgh from the USA, and Hong Kong Baptist University from HK SAR. 

After four days of intense professional learning at the conference, six of our counsellors joined various tours of American universities.  

Flora Meng, of Dulwich College Beijing, joined a tour of universities in and around Chicago. Flora helped bring awareness of our group to incredible institutions such as the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while acquiring a great deal of insight about what it takes to succeed in these application processes.

Flora explains, “The tour was specifically tailored to a small group of counsellors. I was provided with a unique opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge and have open, in-depth conversations directly with admissions officers as well as current students. This was so valuable because I could then relate to my own students at Dulwich. On top of that, I was able to feel the “vibe” of each institution visited and see in person what Chicago, as a vibrant historical and cultural city, has to offer to our students.”

With over 35 counsellors and a central team working on acquiring and then sharing out the skills, expertise, and relationships related above, and with universities around the world having so many opportunities to learn first-hand from our colleagues, it is no wonder that EiM is seen as a global leader in UCC throughout the international school landscape.

As Lucien Giordano, who served for 3 years as an International ACAC Vice President and is the Founding Chair of IC3’s Sustainable Development Committee, states, “our schools seek to hire and support professional counsellors who want to be leaders in their field. Counsellors with this mentality can support students with the most up-to-date knowledge and ensure that our schools are valued by the world’s most internationally minded and important universities. We are proud of all the work our teams have put in to grow as individuals and professionals and to give EiM and our students a great reputation in higher education.”

What underpins the EiM University and Careers Counselling Model is our "Students Come First" value that is instilled in each of our schools. Our UCC counsellors not only draw from shared resources and expertise found across the EiM family of schools, but also actively engage with and contribute to the local and global professional community to align the specific needs of the student with the ever-changing demands of universities and employers. We are immensely proud of our UCC team and the invaluable contribution they bring to the EiM family and the global community.