The open house was well attended by students and offered employment information, a station for taking LinkedIn profile photos and a raffle.
Woolsey, who served as the career center director at Colby College since 2008, replaced Kathryn Doughty and Monica Wilson, who served as acting co-directors after Skip Sturman resigned in 2010.
His immediate goals for his first full term on campus include increasing student resources and creating more opportunities for students and advisors to interact.
These interactions would link the center to other parts of campus, strengthening connections with the undergraduate deans office, faculty and student organizations. Woolsey said he hopes this will create an "ecosystem" that improves students' life skills and development.
"I want to utilize our space here in the career center to have more opportunities for students to come here and bring Career Services out to campus and classrooms," he said.
As part of the transition, Woolsey plans to rebrand the center by changing its name, since "career" is incongruous with the College's liberal arts focus and "services" does not reflect the center's educational mission, he said. The center's new name will be announced at a later date.
Additionally, the center will adopt Dartboard and LinkedIn as its most important tools. Dartboard will expand to cover student-faculty research opportunities, fellowships and job openings with administrative and academic departments, while LinkedIn will be used to connect the center with a larger number of alumni.
"LinkedIn is another thing that I would like to see us using by fall," Woolsey said. "When you do your research, you realize that there are over 32,000 Dartmouth alumni on LinkedIn. We need to get them engaged in some of the initiatives of the College as a whole."
Woolsey said he hopes students will realize that the center can help them find internships outside corporate finance and consulting. The belief that Career Services caters mainly to students interested in these fields is a "perceptual error," he said. An upcoming series of focus groups and a marketing initiative will address this issue.
Tyler Stoff '15, who attended the open house, said he does not plan to participate in corporate recruiting because his interests lie elsewhere. He has been able to find internships without using Career Services in the past.
"This is largely a result of the glut of financial services firms in the process, and I have no intention of working in that industry," he said. "I'm not opposed to recruiting, but there are so few firms from other industries participating in the process that I feel it is not necessarily worthwhile."
To address these concerns, Kingsley said she hopes to enhance the diversity of offerings by creating a centralized internship database with the Dickey Center, Rockefeller Center and Tucker Foundation. The center will also expand its pre-law advising services and plans to work with the Dartmouth Lawyers Association to develop mentorship opportunities.
Students attending the open house suggested potential improvements for Career Services as it moves through its transition period, but generally praised the center's staff and availability.
Ellen Wu '15, who has attended previous workshops at the center, said she would like to see improved online offerings.
"One negative thing about Career Services is that the existing internship database is a little unorganized," she said. "It's hard to find stuff. I really want Career Services to make a more streamlined database."
Shayn Jiang '15 said she found previous Career Services workshops helpful and plans to participate in more this summer. She added that the office's staff went "above and beyond" their job descriptions in helping her with internship searches.
Reflecting on his new position and his first days at the College, Woolsey said he plans to make Career Services a "best-in-class" office. In doing so, he hopes to reinvigorate and support a broad network of alumni, students, faculty and parents.
"Here at Career Services, we want to dare to be different," he said. "We don't want to be like any other Ivy League school. We want to be Dartmouth."
