It is hard to believe but the Anthropology Career Readiness Network (ACRN) turns five years old this month. I want to use this blogpost to celebrate both ACRN’s accomplishments and the man, Riall W. Nolan, who has been instrumental in ACRN’s success. As he steps back from the day-to-day intensity of this work, I want to recognize some of the important contributions he has made in advancing career readiness and anthropological practice.
I reached out to Riall in spring 2021 after conceiving of the idea of a career readiness initiative. I had known and worked with Riall for about two decades. He is a strategic thinker, demonstrating excellence in judgment and thoughtful in his remarks. He has the ideal combination of practical experience as a senior executive in both government and universities, as well as sterling academic credentials. His passion for helping students find their desired career path is unambiguous, as is his desire to reshape academic views of anthropological practice. He is a warm, funny, and cheerful collaborator; add to that patience and determination in the face of resistance. It was an inspired choice, as he has added enormously at each phase of our career readiness venture.
We started with nothing but a goal to improve career readiness for all anthropology students. To date, we have managed to welcome 1,100 members, a solid partnership involving COPAA of SfAA and the AAA that has helped fund 10 career readiness advisory visits, the development of more than 100 tools for both job seekers and instructors, just under 100 blogposts on careers or career preparation, almost 20 client-based class projects, a 2022 conference with Gillian Tett as keynote, numerous publications, and a Speaker’s Bureau of about 50 practitioners willing to share their experiences in classrooms and departmental and organizational settings.
Riall always has a reason for taking a particular course of action. It was his idea to use workgroups to launch this career readiness effort, each with a special task:
- conduct research
- gather resources together
- recommend desirable features of BA, MA, and PhD programs
- figure out how to maximize impact
- share and promote what we were learning
- leverage associations in supporting career readiness.
While a few of these objectives were modified and a new one added on articulating anthropology’s value to others, Riall designed a framework which has kept the other Co-Chairs (Jennifer Studebaker and I) and volunteers busy for five years.
The basic research he led on practitioners enabled ACRN to identify the gaps in academic training. When practitioners were surveyed to learn what would have been helpful to them in finding a job, they highlighted 1) networks and connections, 2) job search strategy and skills, and 3) translating anthropology to work (i.e., the work environment), among other responses. The second question was equally revealing: What would have been helpful in one’s academic program to prepare for doing a job? Methods predominates in the responses, though other skills were also important including 1) communication 2) project planning and management, 3) management and leadership, 4) professional development, and 5) collaboration and teamwork, among others. You can read more in this journal article.
Such results enabled ACRN volunteers to develop a plethora of tools for students and job seekers. Riall’s impact is evident in one of the most downloaded tools: “What Can You Do with a Degree in Anthropology?” The tool emphasizes anthropologists as problem solvers who “get things done.” Similarly, his influence appears in building one’s own professional network—“Networking to Build Your Professional Community” and “Using Informational Interviews in Career Exploration”—since it is through networking that anthropologists find work. He also outlined eight work-relevant scenarios in “Explaining Anthropology to People in Your Life,” conversations between an anthropologist and others including a recruiter, manager, or colleague. When we posted this tool on LinkedIn last June, it went viral with more than 450 reposts. Clearly this tool resonated with anthropologists.
Another of Riall’s creations is the Career Ready Curriculum, depicted as a wheel with spokes representing knowledge (e.g., history of practice, ethics of practice) and experiences (e.g., exposure to practice and practitioners, career planning and professional skills). This framework guided Riall’s development of the Practice Academy, a series of “off-the-shelf” workshops designed for instructors on the specific features of anthropological practice. ACRN attention will soon return to the work of the Practice Academy.
ACRN has also incorporated the Career Ready Curriculum as part of the Departmental Advisory Initiative (DAI). This service involves a set of long-term interactions, including a three-day campus visit, between ACRN and an anthropology program or department. Its purpose is to develop a customized career readiness plan for the program/department, followed by the implementation of that plan over approximately 12 months. Since 2023, five programs/departments have completed DAI, 13 are in progress, and two are about to get underway. The Career Ready Curriculum shapes both the focus of the discussions and brainstorming, as well as the activities that are ultimately included in the customized plan.
Another area has involved the development of instructor and department resources in the form of “how-to” tools. For example, Riall guided the design of the popular tool “Boosting Anthropology Enrollments,” which offers anthropology departments a variety of strategies for mitigating the risk of mergers with other disciplines or outright closures. Additionally, he produced numerous tools for departmental leadership which focus on topics ranging from “Using Brainstorming for Collaborative Problem Solving” to “Exploring Your Ecosystem to Expand Connections,” to “Creating an Implementation Plan for Action.” These tools can be found in ACRN’s newest book Teaching Tools for Anthropology Careers: Resources for Instructors and Departments (2026).
When I consider Riall’s cumulative impact on ACRN, two thoughts come to mind. First, his leadership has encouraged the development of a community focused on career readiness. Anthropologists and anthropology students across the U.S., as well as in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere are using the phrase “career readiness” in their day-to-day discourse. DAI participants have elevated career readiness in their courses and departmental programming. They have also begun to share their successes, challenges, and lessons as part of the new Career Ready Department Forum.
Second, Riall has been instrumental in encouraging anthropology students and anthropologists to think differently about the discipline’s value and relevance. He has helped raise the profile of practicing anthropologists through his scholarship, advising, workshops, and countless examples from his own work experience.
The entire Network, and anthropology departments/programs and their students, owe a deep debt of gratitude to him. I am grateful for his efforts, counsel, and friendship.
The post How Do We Celebrate the Man at the Heart of ACRN? appeared first on The Anthropology Career Readiness Network.