MHC Forward Working Group Updates, March 2025

Career Readiness and Exploration Working Group

The Career Readiness and Exploration Working Group is cosponsored by Provost and Dean of Faculty Lisa Sullivan and Vice President for Enrollment Management Robin Randall, and co-chaired by Amy Martin, professor of English on the Emma B. Kennedy Foundation and director of the Weissman Center for Leadership, and Jaime Grillo, executive director of the Career Development Center. The group is developing a set of recommendations for a comprehensive, best-in-class career readiness program. They are focusing on:

1. increasing the number of students who have a job offer or graduate school acceptance at time of graduation,
2. ensuring that 100% of students have a substantial experiential learning experience, and 3) ensuring that 100% of students engage with an alum before graduation.

The Career Readiness and Exploration Working Group is divided into four subgroups:

Career Readiness and the Curriculum: This subgroup is exploring how career readiness and exploration is woven into the academic curriculum, and how to create a synthesis between the academic core and career preparation. The group’s goal is to capture existing curricular opportunities (e.g., the Nexus concentration), encourage faculty to articulate the value of these programs to students and provide curricular scaffolding for student reflection.

Lynk and the Expansion of Experiential Learning: With an emphasis on experiential learning, this subgroup is focused on identifying all the ways students are preparing for a variety of career outcomes. The subgroup is reviewing student employment as well as Mount Holyoke’s Lynk initiative in order to build on its success and ensure that all or most students complete a Lynk internship or research opportunity.

Graduate and Professional School Preparation: This subgroup is charged with increasing our rate of graduate school acceptance and enhancing our systems of preparing students for and supporting them through the graduate and professional school application process. The group is focusing on a timeline that maps out preparation and enhanced advising to prepare students for a variety of graduate and professional school programs. Also included are fellowships, health professions and law school preparation.

Workplace Preparation and Alum Engagement: This subgroup’s charge focuses on increasing alum engagement with students in ways that prepare them for the workplace and a variety of career paths. To this end, the subgroup has explored affinity- and identity-based career groups, mentoring opportunities, programming involving alums across the college, and other alum engagement opportunities.