Announcing the winners of Handshake's 2024 Career Spark Awards

What are the Career Spark Awards (CSAs)?

Handshake’s second-annual Career Spark Awards (CSAs) use Handshake data to recognize the top career centers in three categories—student engagement, employer engagement, and reporting and analytics—and individual career services professionals with the most time spent learning and utilizing the platform.

What are the components of the CSAs?

1. Career center methodology: Career centers are evaluated in three categories—student engagement, employer engagement and curation, and reporting, analytics, and First Destination Survey (FDS)
   1. Winners: There are 35 winning career centers total—three winners per school type (4-year public, 4-year private, minority-serving institution, community college) in three categories. One school won in multiple categories.
2. CSA Spotlight Award methodology: Career services professionals are evaluated on Handshake-hosted event attendance, platform utilization, and Handshake Academy activity
   1. Winners: There are four individual winners, one from each school type (4-year public, 4-year private, minority-serving institution, community college)
3. Date range of data pull: July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024

Who are the winners of this year’s program?

Career Spark Awards

Arizona State University

Babson College

Binghamton University (2x winner)

Christopher Newport University

Claremont McKenna College

College of Lake County (2x winner)

Colorado Mesa University

Contra Costa College

Dallas College

Davidson College

Grossmont College

Howard Community College

Hult International Business School

Louisiana State University

Macomb Community College (2x winner)

Menlo College

Metropolitan State University

Michigan State University

Milwaukee Area Technical College

Missouri University of Science and Technology

New York City College of Technology

North Carolina A&T State University (2x winner)

Oakland University

Princeton University (2x winner)

San Diego Community College District

St. Cloud State University

Syracuse University (2x winner)

The University of Alabama (2x winner)

The University of Chicago

Trinity University

University of California, Berkeley

University of Indianapolis

University of Texas at Austin (2x winner)

University of Washington

Virginia Commonwealth University (2x winner)

CSA Spotlight

Fiona Brown, Roanoke College

Filemon Lara-Lopez, Mendocino College

Karen Fritchman, College of Charleston

Wendy Israel, University of Washington

Visit our Career Spark Awards website to learn more about the program and how these winning career centers and professionals are powering the future of work.