This spring, Colgate Career Services received the 2026 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Excellence Award, recognizing its approach to networking that redefines how students think about professional relationships. Awarded in the small schools category, the honor highlights outstanding achievements in career services best practices across NACE’s national network of more than 17,600 professionals.
The Excellence Award specifically highlighted the impact of Colgate’s Sophomore Connections program, an annual two-day career conference in which students practice facilitated networking with an engaged alumni community. The program’s goal is to redefine networking as a transformative rather than transactional experience.
“If you approach networking as somebody who’s genuinely curious about learning and who truly wants to understand the perspective of that other person, it becomes much more of a natural and authentic interaction,” says Teresa Olsen, Milone Family assistant vice president for career initiatives.
One of the program’s creative features is a series of networking sessions facilitated by Taylor Buonocore Guthrie ’08. During the sessions, Buonocore Guthrie simultaneously broadcasts prompts to students and alumni spread across multiple campus spaces using Zoom. Groups meet in person and are randomly mixed by program coordinators, removing the pressure of finding the perfect contact. This facilitated networking creates a sense of intimacy and consistency, thereby removing the question of who to approach or what to say.
“I envisioned a chance for students to experience alumni as real people, and for alumni to temporarily drop all of their professional titles, which can feel surprisingly freeing. These networking sessions become Colgate people talking to Colgate people,” Buonocore Guthrie says. “One of the questions I prompt alumni with is ‘what’s still a work in progress for you?’ Everyone has an answer to that question. It really humanizes the alumni, and it gives them an opportunity to be human in a way that your ordinary networking session does not.”
The results of this approach are measurable, with 91% of student respondents saying they are extremely or very likely to recommend the program to a peer, and 81% feeling more confident in introducing themselves to a new contact after Sophomore Connections.
For Buonocore Guthrie, the award reflects something larger than one program. “I am thrilled to see Career Services recognized because of that initial risk they took — Colgate has embraced something that not everyone else is doing.”
