The Career Influencers Program helped me to think in new ways about the core courses in the Education Studies major. Students come to this major from a wide range of backgrounds. Although they find the discipline to be a uniquely powerful way to understand the world, the major suffers from external assumptions that it is preparation for a prescribed career teaching in a school. Because the major prepares graduates to apply ideas about learning and community development in places as varied as community organizing, social services, diversity training, healthcare, trauma therapy, arts programs, and more, the internship and research courses open up more career options than students previously imagined. As students question their career aspirations, the resources at Arcadia’s OCE become increasingly valuable. The [Career Influencers] training helped me to integrate Handshake into students’ exploration of possible internships, to require the e3 Career Action Plan in my course in ways relevant to their design of an eventual Capstone Project, and to design and incorporate a Career Interview Refraction assignment. Shared ideas with other faculty led me to facilitate the students in together creating a LinkedIn group for past, current and future majors and minors.
