It was his senior year at UGA, and Ryan Carty wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

His plans for a career as a TV producer had been dashed after some time in the field made him realize it wasn’t the right path for him.

In a scramble to find a new career, Carty added an ecology minor to his bachelor’s degree requirements and planned to work in wildlife management.

But, it turned out that he was allergic to the animals.

Luckily, Carty’s mentor had forwarded an email soliciting applications for the then-new Georgia College Advising Corp. Launched in 2008 and based in UGA’s Institute of Higher Education, the initiative was recruiting college graduates who would be trained to work alongside professional high school guidance counselors. The program’s goal is to increase the number of high school students who enroll in and graduate from college.

“That was the beginning of my career in higher education, and I’ve loved it ever since,” Carty said.

Now, as director of experiential learning for the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Carty works to make sure other UGA students don’t find themselves in the situation he was in as a senior.

“Part of my job is to encourage students to explore their future career choices,” he said. “Hopefully they’re exploring in the earlier days of college rather than the end like I did.”

To ensure that students are exploring, Carty works with a variety of people from business professionals to Grady College alumni to a career services professional in the UGA Career Center. Carty describes his job as part career services, part experiential learning.

It was his time in the Advising Corp at Meadowcreek High School in Norcross that helped Carty find his passion for encouraging student success.

“When I first realized how much fun working with students was and how much I enjoyed developing students and connecting them to opportunities, I knew this is what I wanted to do for a long time,” he said.

One of Carty’s biggest goals is increasing the employment rate for Grady graduates. For the class of 2014, 92 percent of job-seeking graduates found jobs within six months. To increase that percentage, Carty offers classroom presentations, works with employers to get them to hire from the college, plans an annual career fair, acquires clients for senior capstone class projects and meets with students one-on-one. This year’s Grady Career Day was the largest ever, with more than 72 companies on hand, up from 45 in 2015.

Recently, Carty helped secure two exclusive internships for Grady students to work for NBC Universal at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Carty promised the media giant it would get “top quality students” in return for holding the slots. He and others worked to review the more than 170 applications and narrowed them down to the 14 Grady students who they passed on to NBC.

“Success for our students is all about getting their foot in the door and putting their work out there,” he said.

Carty said he enjoys his job and finds it incredibly fulfilling, especially when he sees students head out into the field he once aspired to join.

“Here, I’m able to combine both my interest in relationships and career development with journalism and mass communication,” he said. “It’s a blessing to be able to help the students who are in the position I was in once.”