CLA has produced many sports and academic champions over the years, but Albert Aubin is a champion of a different sort—one who has been quietly guiding and inspiring his UCLA students and colleagues for nearly 40 years. So it will come as no surprise that Al, the senior associate director for Counseling Services and Campus Relations at the UCLA Career Center received the 2004 Excellence in Service Award for his tireless dedication to the University.
Al’s response to the award was characteristically self-deprecating. “It came as a surprise to me,” he says. “I see staff who have made such great contributions to campus, and I was just humbled by it.” But Career Center director Kathy Sims, who nominated Al, thinks the award was well-deserved, saying, “It would be impossible to enumerate all of the ways — over all of his years of service — that Al continues to contribute above and beyond

the call of duty in support of the University’s mission.”

Role of the Career Center
Al has a dual role in the Career Center. He is responsible for supervising 14 career counselors—“coaching and mentoring,” he is quick to point out—and oversees the collaborative efforts of the center made with academic departments and other units such as the College, UCLA Athletics, Office of Residential Life, and the Academic Advancement Program. He always aims to get the message out to students that they should come early to the center in order to make an informed decision about their career options. “The greatest gift we can give to students is to make them aware of their options, then help them navigate the process,” he explains. “I point out that they don’t have to wait until their senior year and panic.”