Nexus: From Curriculum to a Career
January 12, 2010
Posted: January 12, 2010
With college graduates facing increasing and intense competition for both jobs and graduate school entrance, Mount Holyoke has launched a new program designed to give students a crucial edge as they make the transition from their liberal arts studies to meaningful and successful careers.
Titled Nexus: Curriculum to Career, the program guides students in developing and following intentional pathways to connect their academic work with valuable professional experience--before graduation--through internships, research projects, and summer employment.
"In this challenging global marketplace, students and parents are thinking a lot about the relevance of a liberal arts education in preparing students for satisfying careers," said Jane B. Brown, Mount Holyoke's vice president for enrollment and college relations. "As an academic minor with embedded out-of-class experience, Nexus addresses that relationship. It helps students connect the dots in a way they haven't before between college and the professional lives they envision for themselves."
It is the academic alignment and pre- and post-internship components that distinguish Nexus from the typical college internship experience, Brown emphasized.
"Finding and proposing an internship experience is part of the learning process. Students will prepare résumés and do all of the other things you would need to do to find a job or research position after graduation, and when they return to school, the post-experience course provides the venue to reflect upon their experience as it relates to their academic interests and passions," she explained.
"The initial course work prepares students for internships or research projects, and we help them synthesize what they've learned when they return," added Marie Troppe, director of the Nexus program. “Their remaining studies will help them articulate what they've learned on the job. When implemented in an academically rigorous way, as we are doing it here, such experiential learning can be transformative.”
Some 40 students were selected to take part in a pilot course last spring, and now many students are incorporating elements of Nexus in their course planning for the spring semester, Troppe noted.
Students participating in Nexus begin by choosing one of seven tracks--Art and Society; Education and Society; Sustainable Development; Journalism, Media, and Public Discourse; Law and Public Policy; Global Business; and Nonprofit Organizations--then follow a suggested course of study for each. Since Nexus is categorized as a minor, participating students will be required to earn 16 academic credits from that list of courses. The experiential component that occurs midway through the program can be a summer internship, paid employment, or a research project. When they resume their studies, students will be prepared to give a public presentation at the annual LEAP (Learning from Application) Symposium.
Dean of the College Penny Gill said the program is most appropriate for sophomores and juniors given its sequencing requirements. Interested students should choose the Nexus track that most closely reflects their long-term career goals and then discuss plans with their academic advisor, she added.
While students are responsible for identifying their experiential component, Troppe said she's available to assist students through this process, and she expects to refer students to the many existing resources on campus--the Career Development Center (CDC), the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives, the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts, and the Center for the Environment--for additional assistance in finding internships and other out-of-classroom opportunities.
In addition to having Troppe and their usual faculty advisors to turn to for support, students can seek guidance from the faculty track chair assigned to their Nexus. Robin Blaetz leads the Art and Society Nexus; Lenore Carlisle, Education and Society; Christopher Benfey, Journalism, Media, and Public Discourse; Penny Gill, Law and Public Policy; and Matt McKeever, Sustainable Development. Michael Robinson leads both Global Business and Nonprofit Organizations.
"Nexus will make a significant contribution to many students’ curriculum and to their own intellectual and personal development," Gill said. "Students should be imaginative and take some risks!"
"A liberal arts education, which we value so highly here at Mount Holyoke, is the best preparation for lifelong learning and sustained career success," said CDC director Steve Koppi. "Nexus will prepare our students to be even more competitive in their pursuit of rewarding careers after graduation."
Related Links:
Nexus: From Curriculum to Career
McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives
Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts
Permanent link to this story: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5681888
