Moving On:
A&S Departments Help Students Think About Careers

Mary Pat Wenderoth has seen it happen hundreds of times. Students gravitate to the UW Biology Program with the hope of going to medical school. Most never make it.

“The reality is that there are more students than slots available in medical school,” says Wenderoth, lecturer in the Department of Zoology. “I’ll ask them, ‘What’s your backup plan?’ Usually, they have none.”

This singlemindedness about careers is pervasive among A&S undergraduates, regardless of major. Many head toward graduation without a clear vision of what comes next and with a limited awareness of jobs that might fit their skills and interests. Some have no idea how to write a resume. Or how to network. Or how to convince an employer that the skills gained in college are valuable and transferrable. But faculty and staff throughout the College are working to change this scenario through department-based courses, workshops, and presentations.

An Early Start

Wenderoth tries to reach students long before they are ordering caps and gowns. Since all potential biology, zoology, and botany majors must take the same series of 200-level biology courses, she devotes one laboratory period in these courses to looking at possible careers.

“A few years ago, we realized that this was the perfect time to get students thinking about their future, rather than waiting until they are seniors,” says Wenderoth. “In the lab we help them define their goals and push them to think about careers. Then we get them to identify what they need to do—specific courses, research opportunities, or internships, for example—to reach those goals.”

Although the lab is brief, it has an impact. More students are now talking to department advisers about their courses and pursuing research opportunities. “At the end of the lab the students say, ‘Why didn’t we have this sooner?’” says Wenderoth. “But we’re not sure they would be ready for it sooner. As sophomores, they are ready to hear it and they have enough college under their belt to be a good intern or to work in a research lab.”

For those wanting further exploration of career issues, the Biology Program recently created a one-credit seminar course titled “Hidden Careers for Biology/Zoology Majors.” The goal is to help students look beyond obvious career options.

“Scientists are linear thinkers—it’s all about cause and effect,” explains Wenderoth. “But those attributes are also our Achilles heel. We don’t know how to think outside the box sometimes. And we’re not good at selling ourselves and our skills. Students need to recognize that they are problem-solvers and that problem-solvers can fit anywhere in the world.”

In the course, students work on their resumes and clarify what is most important to them in a job. To guide them, Wenderoth poses specific questions: How much challenge do you want? How much stress? How much money? Do you prefer to work independently or in a team? “We realize that the answers will change over time,” says Wenderoth. “We just want to get them thinking about these things.”

Hearing From the Experts

After helping students identify their skills and goals, the remainder of Wenderoth’s course is devoted to guest speakers talking about their careers. “The goal is exposure—for the students to see as many different careers as possible,” says Wenderoth. “Students also get to see people’s passion for their job. Everybody made their job. Nothing was handed to them.”

Biology major Jihye Jan Kim says that hearing the visitors’ stories makes the prospect of job-hunting less intimidating. “These are the people who might hire you,” she explains. “You start to see that they had to follow the same route as you and they understand where you are coming from. It helps to know that.”

The Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS) also brings in guest speakers to talk about careers. Each year the school presents “International Career Directions,” with a panel of JSIS alumni discussing their diverse jobs. This year the panel included representatives from an international relief organization, the Department of Commerce, Microsoft, The Nature Conservancy, The Brookings Institution, and a PR firm. Ad hoc presentations are offered throughout the year, as alumni working abroad pass through Seattle and offer to speak.

“The alumni tend to say the same things I tell students,” says Betsy Bridwell, director of JSIS’s Office of Career Services, “but it helps students to hear it from someone who has the same degree. It makes more of an impact. And it helps students see the breadth of things one can do with an international studies degree.”

In selecting panelists, Bridwell looks for a range of careers and varied levels of experience. “I try to get one or two alumni who are fairly recently out of school, so students can see the path that’s involved in international careers, not just the dream job at the end. They need to realize that they aren’t going to get that dream job right away. International jobs, by and large, are not entry level.”

This is not a message students like to hear. They also pale at the thought of the work involved in finding a good job. “I tell them they cannot simply wait for job announcements to appear,” says Bridwell. “They need to do their research and learn about organizations they might be interested in. I find there is some resistance to the work they need to do if they truly want to be doing something international.”

Opening Doors Through Internships

Bridwell finds that the most motivated students pore over the resources in JSIS’s Career Services Office and seek out internships to build their skills and expertise. They are the ones, she says, that get the really good jobs.

“They do their homework,” explains Bridwell. “They do internships and on those internships they take initiative, asking for more responsibility. They really talk to the people there, asking them how they got started. It’s not just getting an internship; it’s knowing how to take full advantage of it.”

Melissa Wensel, adviser in the Department of English, agrees. “Internships can be such an important part of career exploration,” she says. “Not only do students get job experience they can put on their resume, but they also develop a network of contacts. And I have certainly seen internships lead directly into a first job.”

Sometimes the most valuable internships are those that are the least enjoyable. A student may discover that a career that sounds appealing on paper is not a good fit. “It’s a really good testing ground,” says Wensel. “It can prevent students from going through a difficult job search only to land a job they end up not liking. Or students may try something in an area they didn’t have in mind and find it is something they really enjoy.”

Just reviewing the internship listings can be an education for some students—especially those who wonder how they can use their degree in the real world.

“It’s true that humanities majors may have more difficulty envisioning what to do with their degree, since the humanities don’t lead directly to a particular career or job,” says Wensel. “Most English majors think of graduate school or teaching. But in fact there are many options open to them, as the internship listings demonstrate.”

An Impressive List of Skills

Students participate in a job interview role-play during the Major Skills workshop.

The English Department builds on the idea of broad career options through its Major Skills Workshop. The three-hour workshop helps English majors identify skills they have gained that are transferable to a work environment. Participants develop a written list of their skills, which they can reference in interviews and on resumes. Other departments offer similar workshops for their majors.

“They come out of the workshop feeling so much better,” says Wensel. “They are surprised when they can put a name to their skills. It’s not that they didn’t have the skills before the workshop, but they weren’t conscious of them.”

Blythe Summers, an English major who took the workshop in February, left the session feeling “a lot more qualified.” She says, “I discussed my position as graphics/layout editor for Bricolage Literary and Arts Journal (an annual publication produced by English Department undergraduates), and people helped me generate a number of skills including leadership, diplomacy, teamwork, database management, and organization. I gained other skills from my English classes, including writing skills and the ability to analyze.”

Preparing a Portfolio

While English majors are frequently asked, “What can you do with that major?,” geography majors face more challenging questions. “People—starting with their parents—ask them, ‘A geography major? What is that?,’” says Rick Roth, adviser in the Department of Geography. “It’s a field that is not well understood. So our majors have to develop a story about themselves to begin with. We build on that.”

Several years ago, as a pilot project, the department hired a career adviser (with funding from the UW Office of Undergraduate Education and the Association of American Geographers) to develop a website about geography careers. This year the department added a two-credit course, “Intellectual and Professional Development for Geographers.”

	Geography majors discuss student porfolios with department chair JW Harrington (center) and adviser Rick Roth.

Like the Biology Program’s career course, the geography class includes presentations by professionals working in a variety of fields, such as transportation, city planning, and environmental work. But it has an added element: the development of a portfolio. Students prepare individual portfolios that bring together projects they have done—including written reports, maps, overlays—to demonstrate their capabilities.

“We wanted some sense of what students have learned in the major, and we didn’t want that reduced to an exit test,” says J.W. Harrington, chair of Geography, who co-teaches the course with Roth. “The portfolios demonstrate skills they have gained, such as identifying appropriate data or understanding how regional economies work.” The assessment, adds Roth, ties in with the Geography Learning Objectives and Outcomes Project (G-LOOP), a department-wide effort to identify “discipline-specific learning objectives and outcomes for individual courses.”

Careers as a Journey, Not a Destination

Although Harrington and Roth encourage geography students to think broadly about career possibilities, they also encourage them to think long term. A student’s first job may not be his or her dream job, but it may open doors.

“I tell students that they need to pay potential employers the respect of learning about their operations and needs,” says Roth. “To do that, there’s no substitute for getting into a field a little bit, even if the job is just a foot in the door. We have several alumni who started out in a clerical role at a city permit counter, gained knowledge and skills, and are now city planners.”

Betsy Bridwell gives similar advice. “I tell students, ‘Don’t be discouraged. You need to start somewhere and build your skills.’”

Melissa Wensel takes that message a step further. While she encourages students to plan for post-graduation employment, she also advises them to relax a little. Not everything can be planned in advance.

“Part of what I do as an adviser is spend time comforting students, letting them know it’s okay not to know what they are going to do,” says Wensel. “I tell them that people not only change jobs many times in their life but also change careers. It’s enough to just think about getting started.”

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So What Have You Learned in Your Major?
Through the Major Skills Workshop, students identify and describe the skills they have learned through their major and discuss how to present these skills to potential employers.

[Summer 2001 - Table of Contents]