FAIRFIELD, Conn.— Countless college students have yet to decide what career they'll pursue after graduation, an uncertainty that lead many to question whether they're even focusing on the right academic major. Sacred Heart University's Office of Career Development is helping to counter that doubt with an innovative career-assessment seminar titled “Major in Success.”
“Often students of this age are struggling between the conflict of what they think they want to be, what they think others want them to be, and who they really are,” said Trish Klauser, the department's senior director of career counseling and a national licensed counselor. “That's why self-assessment is a significant first step in making a decision about choosing a major and a career path. The purpose of this program is to help students clarify their interests, their strengths, their values and their personality.”
Klauser, who was instrumental in building Major in Success, said that a survey of other universities revealed that most similarly minded programs are merely one-day workshops that appeared to have little impact on alleviating students' confusion. The few longer-term programs in existence had much better results. So Sacred Heart built the four-week-long Major in Success seminar that launched in the fall of 2001. Last year 250 students participated.
Students start the voluntary seminar by attending either a one-on-one or group meeting with a counselor. Then they complete self-assessment tasks such as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, goal-setting drills, online exploration of jobs, résumé-writing workshops and meetings with alumni in assorted fields.
Through the program's activities, a student learns how personality makes him or her better suited for certain jobs, how majors relate to various careers, how to find accurate information for different occupations, and how to build a personal action plan.
“The program was extremely helpful,” said Sacred Heart junior Lauren Black, who participated in Major in Success in 2004. “It gave me direction on how to begin thinking seriously about a future career, since I felt completely lost before.”
Since the program's inception, participating students have graduated into jobs in prestigious companies such as Ernst & Young, GE, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Yale New Haven Hospital.
“It's very common for an 18- or 19-year-old to be vacillating about what they want to do for a career, and it's comforting for them to know that that's normal,” Klauser said. “Nationally, 60 percent of kids who enter college knowing what they want to do change their mind. Knowing that Sacred Heart has this program has become very attractive to prospective students.”
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