Two Hundred Students Try Careers on for Size in January CEPs

This year about 200 students are exploring careers through the Career Exploration Project (CEP) program run by the Career Development Center (CDC) during January Term. These mini-internships offer students the chance to "try on" careers for three weeks.

<<< Sumana Bhoothalingam '99, Rebecca Ritchey '97, and Zondie Zinke '97 (left to right) are completing career exploration projects at the Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper in Northampton. They have all the necessities for journalistic success: determination, reporter's notebooks, intelligence, Web access, and the all-important thermos of coffee.

This year students can be found, for example, in the arcade paintings department of Sotheby's in New York, involved with the January sale of old master and nineteenth-century paintings. In Chicago, an MHC student is observing the daily activities of the radiology department in the Children's Hospital. Jennifer Carrye McCabe '99 chose a warmer climate, heading down to Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas to intern at the Caribbean Marine Research Center. While there, she is shadowing and assisting a center researcher, learning much of what marine biologists do from day to day. Across the country in California, Liz Weisner '99 is at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre experiencing a combined internship. As part of the stage management team, Weisner will help prepare a production for its move to Seattle; and, as part of the theatre's education department, she'll prepare information for a teacher in-service training session on Macbeth.

Run by CDC associate director Cate Masiello Shaw, CEPs are either developed by students or by the CDC. Nearly half of all participating students design their own January Term placement, with coaching from a series of CDC workshops held during the fall.

Some placements lead to summer or full-time job offers, but their main purpose is exposing students to new fields. All CEPs give students real-world experience and are sponsored by a professional at the hosting organization or company. Over half of the CEPs involve alumnae. Often these internships help direct students' study, steering them to a particular major or minor, for example. Other CEP placements lead to further internships during the summer in a similar position.

The CEP program has grown over the years, from sixty-eight participants in 1990 to three times that number this January. As the program has grown, its diversity of placements has accordingly widened to offer students CEPs in a variety of fields from engineering to the arts.