More Than a First Job: How Career Services Helps Students Find Their Way Forward
When Cambelle ’26, a dance major, began questioning whether performing should remain her full-time career, she did not have a backup plan. She only knew that the path she had imagined for years no longer felt quite right.
With encouragement from Career Services, she began exploring. She became more active on LinkedIn, connected with a Dean alum working in technology sales and started to recognize how much she had to offer beyond the stage.
She was a strong communicator. She was disciplined and organized. Between classes, rehearsals and leading a campus club, she had learned to manage competing priorities and perform under pressure. Those abilities translated across industries, even if she had never thought of them as career skills before.
By graduation, she had secured a full-time position in technology sales.
For Dean’s Career Services team, that is what career preparation is really about: helping students understand themselves, see the value in what they have already accomplished and recognize possibilities they may not yet know exist.
Starting With the Student
Career development at Dean is not limited to finding an internship or searching for a job during senior year. It begins with a much bigger set of questions.
What energizes you? What kind of work feels meaningful? What do you want your life to look like? Do you prefer working independently or with people?
“It’s more about who you are and what you want your future to look like,” explained Courtney Shimer, Director of Career Services. “You don’t have to have all the specifics. You just have to have a general idea, and then we work backward from that.”
Those conversations can be surprising for students who believe choosing a major means committing to one narrowly defined career. The team helps them understand that careers are rarely linear and that any degree can lead to many different possibilities.
Jennifer Russell, Assistant Vice President of Advising and Career Services, brings a human resources perspective informed by experience across several industries. Shimer began in education and arts administration before discovering her passion for mentoring early-career professionals while managing staff and interns at Boston Ballet School.
Their own paths reinforce an idea they now share with students: careers evolve, and skills developed in one experience can create opportunities in an entirely different field.
“We are more than internship or job placement,” Russell said. “Our goal is to help our students become skill-ready and confident to enter their next job, volunteer opportunity or whatever their passion is after Dean.”
Career Preparation from Day One
That philosophy is reflected in the Dean Career Advantage, or DCA, Dean’s four-year approach to career preparation.
Beginning in their first year, students explore career possibilities through their coursework, DCA-specific classes, co-curricular experiences, mentoring and advising. They develop career plans, explore potential pathways, create résumés and professional profiles, practice networking and interviewing, and prepare for internships.
Experiences in athletics, performing arts, student organizations, campus employment and community involvement also help students build skills they can carry into the workplace.
The result is a career mindset developed gradually over four years, rather than a rushed job search that begins shortly before graduation. This preparation also leads to meaningful experience: 100% of Dean’s bachelor’s degree students complete at least one internship before graduating.
An internship is not simply another requirement to check off. It gives students an opportunity to test their interests, build professional relationships and discover what they do, or do not, want from their future careers.
Finding Skills and Building Confidence
Students often arrive at Career Services believing they have little relevant experience. They may have worked at an ice cream shop, a deli or a grocery store but assume those jobs do not belong in a professional conversation.
The Career Services team helps them look again.
An ice cream shop employee has likely practiced customer service, teamwork, critical thinking and conflict resolution. A student balancing coursework, rehearsals and campus involvement has developed discipline, time management and adaptability. The team helps students identify those skills and learn how to explain their value to an employer.
Instead of seeing an empty résumé, students begin to recognize that they already have a foundation on which to build.
Career Services then helps students add to that foundation through internships, employment, volunteer experiences, alumni connections and conversations with professionals. The goal is not simply to prepare students to secure one opportunity. It is to help them understand how to create opportunities for themselves.
That process also gives students space to explore without fear of making the wrong choice. Sometimes an experience confirms a student’s plans. Other times, an internship, class or conversation reveals that a long-imagined career is not the right fit.
“Discovering what you don’t like is just as valuable as discovering what you love,” Shimer said.
The team celebrates those discoveries because each one brings a student closer to understanding the work and life that may suit them best.
Russell describes Career Services as a “relationship business.” Getting to know a student means understanding where they come from, what they enjoy and where they are in their individual process. Some students find direction after one or two conversations. For others, that discovery unfolds over several years.
“The beauty of being at a small institution is that we can really get to know our students on an individual basis,” Shimer said. “They’re not just a number. They’re humans. They all have different paths, and they’re all going different places.”
Tying Together the Dean Experience
Career preparation does not happen in one office. Career Services works closely with faculty, Success and Career Advisors, alumni, employers and colleagues throughout Dean.
Advisors help students navigate their academic choices. Faculty connect classroom learning with professional applications. Alumni serve as mentors and help students expand their networks. Employers provide insight into the skills they seek in new professionals.
Even the Career Closet reflects that shared commitment. Through donated professional clothing, students can find attire for interviews and career-related opportunities, along with the confidence that comes from feeling prepared.
Career Services brings those people, experiences and resources together around each student.
“Our office helps tie a bow on the entire experience,” Shimer said. “We help students take what they are learning in the classroom and apply it in the workplace in a way that moves their professional development forward.”
Preparing for What Comes Next
Dean’s approach extends beyond placing a graduate into one job. Career Services helps students develop the ability to manage their careers long after their first position.
The relationship does not end at Commencement. Alumni can return for guidance when considering a career change, updating a résumé or preparing for a new opportunity.
“We’re not just going to place you this one time,” Shimer explained. “We’re going to equip you for long-term success.”
That distinction captures what makes career preparation at Dean special. Students are known, challenged and encouraged as individuals. They learn that every experience can teach them something and that a career is not one decision made at age 18.
It is a process of discovering who they are, what they can contribute and where they want to go next.
Behind the Dean Experience introduces the people and teams whose care, expertise and commitment help Dean students feel supported, discover opportunities and move confidently toward their goals.