Higher education
supervisor to a management position decided on a strat- egy after working with career services that included “tak- ing some additional courses to make it to the next level,” he said.
Individualized help
At California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, career services director Cindy Lewis said that nine months after graduation, more than 90 percent of students are fully employed or in graduate school. And no, they don’t count the part-time jobs at Starbucks that students had before leaving school. “It helps that we are located in southern California, where there are so many businesses,” she said. University career services staff have 18,000 busi- ness contacts. “[We] respond immediately whenever an employer contacts us,” she said. “We also email job descriptions to our students.” That’s in addition to all the usual things you can expect from a university career services department, from individualized counseling to résumé help and mock interviews.
One CLU career services program, “For a Cause,” provided unpaid internships by matching more than 20 students directly with nonprofits. “This makes getting an internship a sure thing, especially for people who may have discrimination against them,” Lewis said. “For example, they may have [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] or autism and have difficulty making good eye contact.” That’s helpful because today’s employers expect one or two internships. “If a student doesn’t have an internship on his or her résumé, the student is at a disadvantage,” Lewis said. “Not only does it build skills, but there’s a chance someone will want to hire you full time. Research says that about 40 percent of internships lead to jobs.” Lewis said the program has received support from a donor (who wished to remain anonymous) who was “so excited about this that he provided payment for these unpaid internships for 10 of our students who were first- generation and needed to be able to earn money while they were working.”
Webcams, mentoring Favre said Gustavus Adolphus’ career services office, located within the Center for Service Leadership, “starts early … often working with students before they get to campus, taking assessments, talking about their interests, what they’re thinking about taking as far as academics.” To enhance internships, which Lewis calls “the new first job,” students answer questions about their experi- ences via webcams. Students email their online video answers to career services, their internship director and
42 The Lutheran •
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their career mentor (if they have one) for feedback. “In the past we had them write in journals,” Favre said. “But this gives them practice in presenting themselves well.” The college’s yearlong alumni mentoring program was the brainchild of Kathi Tunheim, business professor and the Board of Trustees Endowed Chair in Management and Leadership. She piloted the Gustavus Mentoring Program in 2010 as a student project for one of her management classes. That year a handful of business students were paired with alumni in their career fields of interest. The program has now grown to more than 130 students and expanded beyond business majors. Today students peruse a catalog of biographies of potential alumni men- tors and select their top three. Program leaders try to match them with one of the three whenever possible. “This is such a great experience,” said Benjamin Reyn- olds, a senior business management major and a member of Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church, Prior Lake, Minn. He signed up for the program in 2012 hoping to get his foot in the door of the business world. Reynolds meets with his mentor every one or two
weeks. Although they can talk by phone, “we realized how much more beneficial it would be for us to meet in person,” he said. “We’ve worked on a lot of things: my résumé, presentation skills, how to interact with profes- sionals in a business setting, building a network of the people I know in the business world. … “He had me pick three people I’d worked with in the past and have conversations with each of them about jobs, their career path and referrals to other people I could talk with.”
This year Reynolds began serving as one of the pro-
gram’s student leaders. He helps plan events that “encour- age a community feeling in a group with so many separate pairings” and smooth out “any bumps on the student side of things,” he said. For her part, Tunheim is pleased with Gustavus Adol-
phus’ integrated approach to careers and vocation. “Mar- tin Luther got it right,” she said. “The idea of vocation fits beautifully with mentoring. Our mentors reconnect with the college and connect to a young person they want to help. Our students are learning about their major, future work, and also their vocation and all the other roles they play in life.”
When alumni talk about how vocation isn’t just a job, “you can see a light bulb go on for students,” she said, adding, “They see through the lives of their mentors that vocation ... also means being a servant leader in your church, home and volunteer organizations.”
Hunter is a section editor of The Lutheran.
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