As a continuation of the Alumni Career Connections series event, which occurs every Thursday evening from Feb. 3 to May 5, the panel for Economics and Management was held virtually on Feb. 17. The list of panelists who participated includes Emma Bailey ‘21, Vy Hoang ‘21, Grant Potts ‘18, John Stephens ‘06, and Mike Sherman ‘88.
Ashley Beeson ‘19, an alum and DePauw’s assistant director of employer relations, shared the purposes of the panels. “The goal of this series is to help students learn about many career paths and ways to leverage their liberal arts education across industries. We want to let students hear from some alumni from their majors and learn about the variety of career paths they took after DePauw, both traditional and unexpected,” Beeson said.
She also added that the panels were designed to showcase that many careers take a lot of twists and turns, and students don’t have to have everything figured out by the time they graduate. When Beeson spoke about the key to these panels’ effectiveness, she said: “My biggest suggestion is to show up! Being a student is hard and you never have enough time and it's so easy to keep moving “preparing for post grad" to the bottom of your to-do list. We really are here to help you no matter where you are in the process.”
Beeson also expects continuous success in the upcoming panels, as she received lots of positive feedback from alumni in the past. “After the Computer Science panel, Brad Kulick ‘98, senior privacy engineer at Google, said he ‘appreciated hearing your journeys and advice and I would have found it especially useful as a junior or senior getting ready to enter the 'real world,’’" Beeson said.
Sharing about the experience at the Economics and Management panel, first-year Nam Ho said, “As someone who is interested in Economics and thinking about majoring in the subject, having the chance to listen to the alumni experience during their time at DePauw really widened my perspective about the opportunities that the major offers.” He also added that the piece of advice that resonated with him was that it's better to dedicate yourself to just one or two on-campus organizations and make huge impacts rather than being involved in 10 clubs and not having any significant contribution.
Alumni Career Connections will continue to shed light on potential career paths for more than 20 majors in 12 upcoming panels; students can check out the schedule on Campus Labs’ website for more information.