Connecting Students to What Comes Next

Virginia Peninsula Community College (VPCC) serves a diverse mix of students across Virginia’s Hampton Roads region, including recent high school graduates, working adults, and career changers. After the pandemic disrupted its career services, VPCC turned to Lightcast Career Coach to help re-establish career advising, and is now scaling that support to help more students connect their interests and education pathways to clear opportunities in the labor market.

Hear from Virginia Peninsula Community College

Watch Seth Fisher, Director of Advising at VPCC, share how Career Coach is helping the college expand career guidance and connect students with clearer paths from education to employment. Then, read the full story below to see how VPCC is putting Career Coach into practice across the student experience.

The challenge: Restoring career support after COVID

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia Peninsula Community College lost its career services center, leaving the college without a dedicated resource to help students connect their education to what comes next. College leaders wanted to restore career exploration and guidance in a way that could reach students wherever and whenever they needed support.

VPCC found a first step toward rebuilding that support in Lightcast Career Coach — a platform that gives students 24/7 access to guided career exploration, local labor market information (including live job postings from regional employers) and resume building tools, all in one place. 

Just as important, this information connects seamlessly to information about the programs offered at VPCC, so learners can easily find the educational pathway that aligns with their goal.

The solution: Making career exploration part of the student experience

Rather than limiting Career Coach to a single office, VPCC has worked to make it a campus-wide resource. The college incorporates Career Coach into SDV 100 - College Success Skills and other classes within the college, helping students begin thinking about careers and life after college early in their academic journey.

VPCC also developed a network of about 12 Career Coach “champions” across campus. Staff and faculty in different offices and divisions can introduce students to the platform and help them use its tools as career questions arise.

Career Coach extends into VPCC’s digital student experience as well. The college promotes the tool through a dedicated webpage under the Advising resources section of its website, complete with a walkthrough video and overview of how to use the tool and its key features.

Specific academic program pages (like the Architectural Technology Career Studies Certificate page, for example) also feature a “Career Possibilities” button that links to a dedicated, program-specific career information widget powered by Career Coach data. These widgets help students explore where a particular program could lead while they’re considering their educational options. The widgets also link back to the institution’s full Career Coach site, where students can explore local labor market information and available academic programs.

Together, these touchpoints make Career Coach more than a standalone website. By bringing career information into courses, advising conversations, program pages, and offices across campus, VPCC is making the connection between education and employment more visible throughout the student experience.

The impact: Turning uncertainty into a clear next step

One recent student experience illustrates how Career Coach helps students gain confidence and clarity in their college-to-career journey.

A student came into an advising office unsure of what he wanted to pursue. Advisor and Career Coach champion Isaiah Brown sat down with him and walked him through Career Coach. The student completed the platform’s longer career assessment and discovered that education aligned strongly with his interests—something he had considered before but had never felt confident pursuing.

With that new direction, the student worked with his advisor to change his program from social science to education and enroll in classes supporting his new path. Brown also used Career Coach to show him the jobs connected to that pathway, including near-term opportunities he could pursue after completing the relevant coursework, as well as longer-term career options available after graduation.

The experience gave the student a firmer foundation: he had identified something he was good at and wanted to pursue, and he could see where that path could take him—including opportunities to begin working while continuing toward longer-term career goals.

The experience captures what VPCC hoped Career Coach could provide: a clearer connection between what a student is interested in, what they can study, and where that education can take them.

And that support is reaching students at scale. As of September 2026, VPCC reported that 1,564 students had used Career Coach, with adoption extending across students, staff, and faculty.

As VPCC described it, Career Coach is helping give students a clearer picture of their future while equipping staff with the tools to guide them from enrollment toward career success.