Digital Technology and Culture

A blog for students and friends of Washington State University Vancouver's Digital Technology and Culture Program

Get Ready for the Career Fair

Next Thursday is the Career Fair. It takes place in the Firstenburg Student Commons from 4-6 p.m.

For the last two weeks I have been meeting with graduating seniors to discuss their career plans in preparation of Career Fair. But the rest of you should also take advantage of the event. At the very least you should drop by the FSC to get a sense of the job market and what you need to do to prepare. Many of you may want to find a part-time job or internship.
--

I want to pause here and talk about my views toward helping students get jobs.

I know this is not a tradition in the Humanities or many other areas of the Liberal Arts. There are reasons for it: Focusing on job preparation is seen by some as limiting the faculty's mission to educate students and imbue them with a love of learning. It is seen by others as pandering to business (although it should be noted that the Peace Corps and many non profits are attending the WSUV "career" fair). It comes on top of our primary job, which for some is classroom teaching and knowledge building. I understand and appreciate these views. But as I see it, because the mission of undergraduate education has changed in the last couple of decades, so have faculty roles. What I mean by the changing mission of undergraduate education is that it has expanded from "educating individuals" (as folks from my generation viewed it), to assisting students with improving their lot in life by helping them to get better jobs (as folks today are being told that it will do).

The key word here for me is "expanded." I see my mission as contributing to the well-being of students by exposing them to ideas and concepts that bring them into a larger world of knowledge *and also* by helping them feed themselves and their families so that they can survive (and pursue the lofty areas of knowledge that life offers. . . )

Put into more current language: To me, it is a "social justice" concern.

We ask students to come to the university to learn, to follow a particular path of learning, to get a degree. For these privileges they pay money, many times going into deep debt to study with us. The very least we can do is to make sure that when they do leave, they can enter the world able to think critically *and* prepared to contribute in a meaningful way to the society that supports our educational system. Helping students to prepare for their careers, then, is the same as helping students prepare daily in our classes for learning.

The DTC Program is not a vocational training program teaching basic skills needed for jobs in technology; rather, it is an academic program, sanctioned by the university system, that teaches "critical thinking, creativity and computing skills . . . that prepares students for the media-rich, technologically complex 21st century" ("DTC Mission"). This mission is always at the core of what we do and are. Helping students prepare for careers is not antithetical to that mission––it is part of it.

This does not mean we have to check the spelling on students' resumes or promise references for those who did not show commitment to learning. It does mean that we guide students the best we can in their pursuit of a better life.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 15:58 | link | comments |

Comments: