An immersive Sophomore Institute for 2025

More than 130 Mount Holyoke College sophomores returned to campus before the start of spring semester 2025 to participate in a fully revamped and reimagined Sophomore Institute, which took place Jan. 23–25.

In previous years, the event had been a half-day conference. But the 2025 Sophomore Institute was “a three-day immersive experience for the Mount Holyoke College class of 2027 to explore, prepare and connect,” said Jaime Grillo, executive director of the Career Development Center.

The Sophomore Institute’s expanded offerings aligned with the College’s MHC Forward strategic plan and its goal of preparing students for successful careers and lives of purposeful leadership in a global community. The event featured workshops and breakout sessions on topics such as networking and professional communications, résumé and cover letter preparation and opportunities for on-campus research in science, technology, engineering and math or to study abroad.

Twenty-four Mount Holyoke alums participated in Sophomore Institute panels, networked with students and presented daily keynote speeches. Those alums included Addison Beaux ’99, Ashanta Evans Blackwell ’95, Kira Banks ’00, Akilah Noel Charlemagne ’00, Mary Ann Deignan ’84, Sally Durdan ’81, Kalyani Kannan ’17, Tara Roberts ’91, Shannon Swan ’98 and Thanh Tran ’02.

Panels included “Lifelong Learning and Professional Development,” “Using Your Career for Social Good,” “Pursuing Graduate or Professional School” and “Ask a Recruiter.”

Kannan, the associate director of the Center for Women and Gender Equity at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, gave a keynote address on Thursday, Jan. 23, titled “Your Career and Your Identities.”

“I was an international relations major [at Mount Holyoke],” they said to the assembled sophomores. “I started questioning whether that major was the right major for me, but I didn’t say anything because I thought that major was the thing that other people expected me to stick with.”

But eventually they realized their on-campus jobs were experiences that they really liked, so they pivoted from looking for jobs in international relations to crafting a career in student affairs.

During the speech, Kannan told students there were four main questions they should ask themselves: “What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? What are you good at? How do you get good at the things you’re not good at?”

The importance of self-scrutiny was also a theme of the Jan. 25 keynote address, “Storytelling and Reflecting on Your Experience Thus Far,” delivered by Ahu Terzi ’96. Terzi is the executive vice president of brand partnerships at NewBeauty and the owner and operator of The Hound Books in Roscoe, New York.

“I’ve been hiring entry-level [staff] at all of the magazines that I’ve worked at for almost 30 years, and recently, I started realizing that when I want to have a conversation about the candidate in front of me, they’re really unable to have that conversation with me,” she said during her speech. “They’re unable to talk about what their struggles might have been.

“I want to know more about the candidates, and they’re not able to tell me more about themselves. I do think there is a need to stop and think about all of the struggles that you might have gone through and how they will affect you when you start searching for a role outside of college.”

The Sophomore Institute also featured informational interviews conducted virtually by more than 190 alums. Each student at the event was given the opportunity to take part in two of those 30-minute sessions with alums in their area of passion, industry of choice, or identity.

Alums from a wide array of fields, including medicine, historic preservation, public policy, data science, education, engineering, finance, law, technology, art, library science and media talked about career paths and preparing for futures in their industries and offered the sophomores advice about how to start their journeys in the professional world.