Phil Jones speaks to students about
career development at one of many CDC workshops.
While most seventeen-year-old boys spend their free time on the playing fields or at the movies, as a teenager Phil Jones was already practicing what would become his life's work--counseling students about their futures. As a high school student, Jones's knowledge of the complex process of applying to "university" in his native England was so advanced, that a teacher asked him to assist his peers with the process.
This year marks Jones's twentieth anniversary in career development, a career characterized by a passion for embracing challenge. At the end of July, he will embark on a new adventure, stepping down as MHC's director of Career Development Center and heading for Yale. There, he will be director of undergraduate career services for 5,000 students and assistant dean of Yale College.
When Jones arrived at MHC in 1994, the CDC had just been formed the previous summer, after career resources and the internship office merged. The task before him--to revamp the facility and integrate the CDC into the fabric of the undergraduate experience at MHC--was not an easy one. Yet, that's exactly what he has done. Jones leaves a CDC that has become a model for offices with similar functions at other top liberal arts colleges. "Phil has been a wonderful director of the CDC," said President Joanne V. Creighton. "He has built the center into one of the finest in the country, and his legacy to Mount Holyoke is significant."
The director was instrumental in redesigning the CDC's physical and programmatic components. He oversaw the renovation of the building, completed three years ago, that transformed the center into a state-of-the-art facility. Eighty to 90 percent of MHC students use the center today. Since Jones's arrival, January-term internships have increased by 250 percent; summer internships are up by one-third; and workshops are up by 50 percent. In addition to career counseling, the office now encompasses internships, domestic and international fellowships, and student employment. Recent survey data, including a COFHE study and an annual survey of student satisfaction at the Five Colleges, reveal Mount Holyoke students are highly satisfied with the center's effectiveness.
Jones also initiated tremendous gains on the technology front, enabling students to have up-to-date job and internship information twenty-four hours a day and freeing the staff from "digging through binders," so more time can be devoted to counseling. The CDC Web site has won five awards, and more than 30,00 internships listings are available to MHC students through the Liberal Arts Career Network, a collaborative database operated by more than twenty-five liberal arts colleges. E-mail distribution lists are now maintained, and up-to-the-minute information on careers is sent to students who have indicated an interest in a particular field.
Most important, says Jones, is that qualitative as well as quantitative leaps have been made by his office. Only internships that relate to students' academic programs are approved. Among the 160 workshops each year offered by members of the CDC staff are some that are atypical for college career development offices. They include everything from behavioral interviewing, salary negotiation, and understanding benefits packages to how to parlay a study-abroad experience into a career asset.
"The job at Yale spoke to my strengths," Jones says simply. He will arrive to find an office in much the same state as the one he found at MHC five years ago and will serve an administration that is striving to place a greater emphasis on career development. "I am confident I can do a good job at Yale because of what I did here. MHC was a great learning experience and an enjoyable one." Although Jones is leaving the College, the CDC remains healthy, innovative, and on firm footing to enter the next century.
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