Student career specialist Monty Clark is available to advise students one on one in ʻIliahi 231. (Photo by Sarah Burchard)

By Sarah Burchard | Staff Writer

A correction was made on Nov. 14, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated Angela Coloretti McGough’s title at KCC. She is the Interim Counselor/Coordinator for the Kapo’oloku Program for Native Hawaiian Student Success not the Interim Student Affairs Coordinator.

Monty Clark, Kapiʻolani Community College’s new student career specialist, stood in front of a classroom wearing a pink aloha shirt and khaki pants sharing a story about the time he helped iconic music producer Rob Fraboni remaster the entire Bob Marley catalog. At 64, Clark has already owned a recording studio in Manhattan, worked in film production and launched an animation company. 

In 1998 the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Clark’s alma mater, invited Clark to sit on a career-related panel discussion. The advice he gave on the panel worked. Students began landing jobs with companies like Sony Image Works and producing work such as “Frozen” and “Avatar,” coming to Clark afterward and thanking him for changing their life. 

“I was able to just give these people a little bit of insight,” Clark said. “And the ones that listened, boom, they took off. … Now those kids, you know, are art directors and Academy Award winners. And that is what does it for me.”

Clark shifted his career to education after seeing the success of the students at The Art Institute. In 2000 he went to work at the institute as a teacher. After building out the school’s animation program he was promoted to head of chair, which eventually led to him opening Art Institutes in other states such as North Carolina and Georgia as the dean of Academic Affairs. After Clark left the Art Institutes in 2012, he followed his wife to Oʻahu where she had a new job opportunity. Clark worked odd jobs, including a two-year stint doing fiscal support for the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, until thanks to a federal grant he was hired as KCC’s dedicated career specialist to help students navigate a path after graduation

Clark’s arrival in July restarted KCC’s Employment Prep Center – a program that began in 2015 and has been on hiatus for four years due to counselors moving into different positions off and on without someone to replace them. He brings the kind of personalized, free mentorship that is hard to find outside of college. So far, he has implemented Handshake, a free platform for job searches, presented several career-related workshops and has opened his door to students who would like to meet one on one. 

“I’m here, “Clark said, “to help with figuring out what you want to do and help you do it.” 

First-year experience counselor Miki Crutchfield remembers KCC having an Employment Prep Center when she came on in 2018. She said the center was a place where students could get help with their resume and job placement and to explore ideas of what they may want to pursue professionally. 

“They hosted workshops, they had career fairs,” Crutchfield said. “I volunteered at a couple of them that were amazing. There was a full-time faculty counselor designated. … It was pretty robust.”

Angela Coloretti McGough, Interim Counselor/Coordinator for the Kapo’oloku Program for Native Hawaiian Student Success, ran the center for two years. She knew Clark before he came to KCC, because of a book he published in 2015 called “I Wish Someone Had Told Me.” Clark wrote the book to help kids navigate college and now teaches a workshop based on its life lessons, including how to find the company or job best for you, how to nail an interview and how to write the kind of resume and cover letter that will get you the interview. 

“[Monty’s] very, very knowledgeable, very student oriented, really excited about getting students jobs and internships,” McGough said. 

Clark also teaches a workshop based on the book “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, adding personal anecdotes and practical advice to teach students how to create a life that works best for them, over and over again. 

“A job is something you do for money,” Clark said. “A career is something you aspire to. Right? Something that you get fulfillment out of besides a paycheck. And that’s what I’d like kids to do, is figure out, really, what they want to do in life and then move towards that.”

Now, Clark is putting together a new series of presentations to give in the library 1-2 days a week. Some topics he will cover include conflict resolution, negotiation, time management and emotional and cultural intelligence. 

Crutchfield, who has formulated an entire class, called Career Exploration, around the idea of self-reflection and identifying who students are as human beings in order to find the right career path, resonates with Clark’s work. 

“Some of the things he has shared about, you know, providing a space for students to kind of bounce ideas off each other,” Crutchfield said, “intentionally providing the kind of exercises to help students break out of their rut of certain ways of thinking. I’m actually planning to use some of those exercises in my class as a result. … It was kind of like, yes, thank you, I’ve already converted.”

On Nov. 15 Clark will co-host a virtual career fair via Handshake in conjunction with University of Hawaiʻi Maui College and Hawaiʻi Community College featuring over 30 companies looking to hire students ready to work. And February 19-21, he will host an in-person career fair in the library at KCC where the emphasis will be on expanding students’ opportunities, so they will look beyond their industry or traditional jobs in their field. In addition to meeting with industry professionals from information technology, business accounting and hospitality sectors, there will be workshops teaching resume building and interviewing skills. Students will also have the opportunity to take a personality test called True Colors, similar to Myers-Briggs, to help them find careers that would be a good fit for their innate skills and sensibilities. The event will be especially helpful for students who are still figuring out what they want to do. 

“It’s experiential learning,” Crutchfield said. “It’s really helping students take what they are learning in the class and help them really kind of envision, ‘How does this feel fit into who I am?’” 

Clark said what he loves most about KCC is how focused the staff is on student success. Crutchfield said she feels it is their kuleana to make sure students have their “foot in the door” of their career before they graduate. She hopes to not only get the Employment Prep Center back but that KCC will back a campus-wide effort to make sure graduates have the experience they need upon entering the workforce. 

She envisions students taking her first-year seminar and then keeping the momentum going with Clark’s workshops and career fairs, job shadowing, working internships and part-time jobs, or volunteering, so they accumulate work experience on their resume while earning their degree. The idea is, by the time students graduate, they already have people eager to hire them. 

That day in the classroom when Clark taught one of his first workshops in July, there were only four people in attendance. As of now, he is only guaranteed to be here through February 2025. KCC will reapply for the federal grant it was awarded to hire him, but there are no promises it will get the funding needed to keep him on. Now is the time for students to take advantage of his services and get set-up for success.  

To schedule a one-on-one meeting with Monty Clark, email him at monty3@hawaii.edu. 

To find job postings in your field, login to Handshake here.

Watch some of Monty Clark’s past workshops here: