Posted by Julia Leef
The Career Development Center will host the Graduate and Professional School Expo from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 9, in the Case Center. This event will host 60 representatives from 40 different schools including Clarkson, Syracuse, Bard, Columbia and Boston Law, representing a wide array of fields, such as education, healthcare, business and journalism. Though events of this kind have been held in the past, it has been a decade since an event of this format has occurred.
Shannon Rodriguez, the associate director for Pre-professional and Graduate Studies and organizer of the event, composed a list of more than 450 schools and programs based on the recommendations of professional associations, surveys and faculty suggestions.
Rodriguez had help from Karla Smagorinsky '13, who works in the Career Development Center and helped identify and organize contact information and conduct individualized outreach to bring in the representatives for the event.
Prior to this year, the College had held "Grad School Week," which took the idea of the expo and spread it across seven days. However, this decentralization of school representatives led to low event attendance. As a remedy to this issue, the expo was resurrected.
"Rather than spreading out these events over the course of the year, we thought we might be able to make a larger impact if we tried to get a bunch of people here on the same day," Rodriguez said. This plan was twofold, intending to stimulate attendance from both students and school representatives.
Rodriguez said she hopes to increase the number of graduate schools attending this event in subsequent years.
"20% of our students go on to grad school immediately upon graduation," Rodriguez said, "and about 50% go within 5 years."
The Career Development Center recommends that students research the schools and programs they are interested in ahead of time and prepare questions to ask the representatives, such as what the admissions requirements are for the graduate school, what types of financial aid are available, what is unique about the program, and where are graduates of the program are employed.
Students should also prepare to answer questions asked by the representatives, such as why they want to attend graduate school, when they plan to attend and what they would like to do with their degrees. The Career Development Center also recommends that students dress casually but appropriately.
A table map and a list of schools attending will be available. Student volunteers will be available at the event dressed in green Skidmore polo shirts and name tags. Students may be asked to complete a survey during the fair to aid the Career Development Center's planning of next year's event. Students who fill out the surveys will be entered into a raffle.
Further events:
In the three hours following the main event, there will be several events in various locations on campus with members of Skidmore departments and visiting graduate schools and program representatives.
- A meeting with graduate programs in accounting and business will take place from 5 p.m. to 5:50 p.m. in Palamountain 201, sponsored by the Career Development Center, the SkidMarket, and the Business department.
- The Career Development Center, the Psychology department, and the Education Studies department will sponsor "Education and Psychology: Careers as a Professional teacher, counselor, or administrator" at the same time in Ladd Hall 206.
- A panel titled "Letters from Law School" will take place from 5 p.m. to 5:50 p.m. in Dana 240 with the Career Development Center and the Pre-Law Society.
- From 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. the Career Development Center, the Opportunity Program, the Pre-Med Club and the Health Professions Advisory Committee will sponsor "Chiropractic as a Career: Perspectives from Gilbert Rodriguez '07" in Dana 240.
- "Inside Public Health and the Medical Professions" will take place from 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. in Dana 241 sponsored by the Career Development Center, the Pre-Health Club and the Health Professions Advisory Committee.
- The Career Development Center and the Social Work department will sponsor "Calling all Future MSWs" for psychology and social worker majors from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Tisch 204.