Career Services: Critical Work - What are the student experiences we must not leave to chance?
Susan Brennan, Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director of Career Education, Wellesley College
Jen Pollard, Director of Operations & Analytics, Career Education, Wellesley College
Key Takeaways:
Defining Critical Work: Research from Gallup identified six college experiences that lead to a prepared and thriving graduate. All six center around two categories: experiential learning and mentoring. This moment has given leaders and opportunity to expand on that critical work. “In many ways, with a new lens, we're able to look at these questions and think about how can the virtual reality that we're in now allow us to make these opportunities even more accessible to our students.”
Moving the Critical Experiences Online: As higher education becomes virtual, simply putting things online is not enough to meet students’ needs. It requires innovation and creative thinking to create new, dynamic opportunities for students. It also requires the support of the community to provide these innovative opportunities.
Bridging the Divide: These critical experiences have often been siloed in higher education. By providing students with a guided pathway that helps them make the most of their experiential learning and mentorship opportunities, institutions can ensure those crucial variables are not left to chance. “It's allowing us to launch into this technology-based but really human approach to how we prepare our students for or the life of work that they have ahead of them.”
“This led us to this new thought that it is not mentorship in isolation from internships or experiential learning. The two have to collide in this moment.”
Wellesley’s model weaves together experiential learning, mentorship, and guided pathways to ensure students find their passion and understand the value of these experiences. This helps bridge the gap and make these experiences more valuable and more equitable.
To see how PeopleGrove helps institutions like Wellesley provide equitable access to those opportunities, visit our website.
