Tara Milliken is the Director for Institutional Career Services Strategy at OACS—a position she’s held for almost two years. In her role, Tara helps coordinate larger initiatives between the career services units on campus. On a decentralized campus, she sees her role as “bringing together the right people to make decisions and implement changes that will benefit students and employers.”
Tara has been working in career services at UW–Madison for over eleven years. This path isn’t something she would have imagined for her career—and not just because she’s an Ohio State grad!
“As a first-generation college student, I never actually utilized career services, so I’ve always thought it funny that I ended up in this functional area,” she said. But a two-year assistantship at a campus-wide career center during graduate school at Bowling Green State University led her down this road.
“I enjoyed the one-on-one advising and how different each appointment could be, but I also loved the programming and facilitation opportunities,” Tara said. “I knew I’d never be bored, which has proved true.”
Today, a lot of her work is with colleagues instead of students, and she brings a desire to help and support others to her staff-facing role. “My favorite part of my job is any time I get to connect with career services colleagues across campus and hear how OACS can support or elevate the work they’re doing,” said Tara.
This year, Tara is looking forward to launching the Workplace Experience Survey through 12twenty to capture campus-wide data about internships, co-ops, clinicals, student teaching, and other opportunities our undergraduate students are completing.
Oh, and she’s also looking forward to the new Taylor Swift album dropping this fall. “I’m almost always listening to Taylor Swift,” she said.
Tara has two dogs at home—Dash and Olive—that demand a lot of attention outside of work.
“Aside from that, I love playing on a summer sand volleyball team, cheering on Badger volleyball, attempting to play tennis even though I’m not very good, and reading,” she said. Her most recent reads have been One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig.
She also listens to a lot of podcasts. Right now it’s The Retrievals (season 2), The Ezra Klein Show, and What Now with Trevor Noah, but she loves recommendations, so be sure to share next time you see her!
There’s a lot on the horizon in Career Services at UW–Madison, and Tara is excited for all the moments—big and small.
“Lots of my work now involves long-term projects that can last months or even years, but when we accomplish something big as a community, such as implementing 12twenty to collect First Destination Survey data, it’s an incredible feeling,” said Tara. “I feel so fortunate because I continue to learn more about myself, career services, and how I can best do my job each day from colleagues who model great leadership through listening, a willingness to try new things (and be wrong about them!), and an understanding that our work is important, but that we don’t need to take ourselves too seriously.”