Planning for Careers with Impact

Courtney Santos Author

07/28/2025 Added

1 Plays

Description

Envision your purpose! Explore how to align your passions with opportunities in public service, nonprofits, social impact, academia, and more. Learn how to identify meaningful career paths, connect with professionals, and leverage fellowships to advance your goals. This webinar offers practical tips for building a fulfilling career that makes a difference.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:06:23.200]Courtney Santos: Okay. Hello, everyone welcome to fellowships. Friday. I'm Courtney Santos. It's so nice to see you all today and to be
[00:06:33.290]Courtney Santos: enjoying our discussion today of fellowships as well as careers with impact. I'm super excited to share with you some tips today that will help you with your career development, no matter where you are in your process, whether you're getting ready for graduate school now, or maybe thinking a little further out in the future, or maybe even already in graduate school.
[00:06:57.720]Courtney Santos: So I'm the director of undergraduate research and fellowships. It is nice to have you here. If you are here for Ucare. We are giving event participation credit using your zoom attendance. So thanks for being here, you'll see that update in canvas over the next week or 2. So thanks for coming out, and if this is your 1st time, welcome, I'm glad you're here. All right, let's jump into today's event. Topic.
[00:07:25.460]Courtney Santos: Oops. Okay, so want to kick things off by saying that this is part of our Fellowships. Friday event Series. If you want to see the other events in the series, we do have a couple more coming up.
[00:07:38.695]Courtney Santos: We are offering next week a companion workshop to this one that is focused on preparing Cvs and resumes, which is great, for if you're applying for a fellowship sometime in the next few months, or maybe for graduate school, we also have
[00:07:55.720]Courtney Santos: a pretty detailed website where you can check out all your fellowships options right here.
[00:08:01.397]Courtney Santos: And if you've recently missed a Fellowships Friday event.
[00:08:05.370]Courtney Santos: you can check out our recordings, page as well.
[00:08:09.700]Courtney Santos: All right. So like over the last couple of weeks we've been doing essays and things like that. Now, when I say fellowships, I want to make sure we're starting with the same sort of definition of what that would be right. And so I think it's helpful to know that fellowships are often thought of as synonymous with scholarships. Right? So we might think of them
[00:08:32.820]Courtney Santos: as being something where you're getting some funding to do something important. And that is definitely true, right? But they are designed really to do so much more to bring students together to create community right? And so that could be all of the students in a particular graduate program, maybe receiving funding as well as leadership development programming.
[00:08:56.297]Courtney Santos: And so we see, like the Knight Hennessy Scholarship or the Rhodes Scholarship, those are built on a single campus, and so they're bringing students together in person. Others might be more distributed around the Us or around a host country. And so here we see
[00:09:10.460]Courtney Santos: the Marshall scholars all coming together for a field trip. They do that a few times a year, right? But the students are actually located at different campuses all over the Uk. But whatever the case, they're really trying to give these students enriching opportunities and that can include leadership, development programming and retreats like these kinds of events, but it's also going to be a lot more. It's usually going to involve, maybe some mentoring alumni networking connections, and so on.
[00:09:39.830]Courtney Santos: And so the goal of these fellowship agencies, whether they might be the Us. Government, foreign governments, maybe nonprofit organizations, is to really give students resources that can help to create agents of positive social change, right? And so every agency might have a different definition of what kind of change they want to see in the world right? But they are looking for students who share their values and who have high ambition.
[00:10:06.470]Courtney Santos: and so that really underscores the importance of understanding their own leadership, potential your own career vision so that you can align with the mission of fellowship agencies. Right? And so, for one thing, they are expecting some pretty focused ambition from students. A lot of fellowships are designed to fund graduate study, or at least upper division study. So I think about like the Goldwater scholarship for undergraduates. But it is very focused on research.
[00:10:34.290]Courtney Santos: right? And so they want to see students who have high ambition in the area of research activity. Right?
[00:10:39.994]Courtney Santos: Here, we've got an example of Schwartzman scholars. This is a graduate scholarship in China, and they say we're looking for young leaders who really have the drive and ambition to get something done on an issue of significance. Right? And so they expect you to have clarity about issues or problems challenges in the world where you could make a difference right?
[00:11:03.780]Courtney Santos: When we look at kind of what approaches. You know, I think of leadership as a different style for everybody, right? Everyone has their own unique model. But there's certainly some common patterns that we see. Fellowships often expect students to take a head-on approach to a challenge. Right? They see something happening. They take initiative. They decide to act right? So we see a lot of fellowship agencies focused on this idea that students actually design and drive
[00:11:34.130]Courtney Santos: positive change. Right? Knight Hennessey scholar says, we seek visionary thinkers who are curious, open-minded, analytical, eager for cross-cultural perspective, and genuinely excited to boldly and creatively address our world's important challenges. So they expect you to see the challenge coming, and to also be able to decide how you would want to act. Given that opportunity.
[00:12:03.280]Courtney Santos: They also are going to ask you to write essays right? And so a lot of the essay prompts will touch in some way on future goals. Right? We see that they may ask for a statement of purpose. We recently did a recording of a workshop that was all about this, but really to be able to describe future plans. But a lot of them are going to ask you also for some kind of career goal.
[00:12:28.970]Courtney Santos: right? And so, you know, we might think of Fulbright as a sometimes a gap or a professional development year for a lot of students. But there's
[00:12:39.250]Courtney Santos: not necessarily expecting it to be as exploratory as an undergraduate level experience. Right? And so they do think that students should have a career plan, for after they return from Fulbright, so to be planning out as a graduating senior more than a year in advance, taking that longer term view right? And so they say, describe your career and or educational plans after completing a Fulbright grant.
[00:13:02.250]Courtney Santos: how will your Fulbright experience help you to reach these future goals? Right? So you want to be able to articulate a bit down the road, at least an entry level career goal, if not even further out.
[00:13:18.340]Courtney Santos: Essay group prompts may require short and long term vision. And we see this especially for leadership fellowships. Right? So I'm going to single out the Truman scholarship. Right? They're asking undergraduate juniors this question, what do you hope to do
[00:13:33.140]Courtney Santos: with your life, and what position do you hope to have upon completing your graduate studies?
[00:13:39.910]Courtney Santos: Right? So you're applying for graduate school funding. You're only a junior, and they're still asking you to look that far in the future. After completing the graduate studies. Then they hit you with the second half of the question. They say, what do you hope to do? And what position do you hope to have? 5 to 7 years later.
[00:13:56.320]Courtney Santos: Wow! Right? Those are hard questions. So how can students prepare for this? Because I'll tell you if you don't have something to put these boxes. You're not going to win the graduate leadership fellowships right? And so it is necessary to do this reflection, even though fellowship agencies understand
[00:14:14.530]Courtney Santos: that life is very, very fluid right? And that undergraduate juniors, you know, might put their best answer here. But
[00:14:25.160]Courtney Santos: in reality, 5 or 7 years later, if we check back with Truman's. Believe me, they're not actually doing the thing that they wrote here, but they're probably doing something that shows some similar values, right? That shows some similar level of ambition, even if it's not, everything has gone exactly according to the plan that they made when they were, you know, all of 21 or so years old.
[00:14:49.560]Courtney Santos: So students will ask me how to get started with this right? Because maybe you think you want to go to law school, or maybe you think you want to be a medical doctor, or maybe you think you want to be a research professor right? And so they'll try to
[00:15:04.030]Courtney Santos: kind of create something that goes around that. But they'll be like, I don't know about all aspects of this career. And I'm like, that's okay. Right? Sometimes students will come in. They don't even know what their entry level career goal is. But either way, if you start with an issue, you're going to be able to start answering those questions. And so this might seem a little bit like backward design, right? But if you think about the change you'd like to see in the world
[00:15:29.200]Courtney Santos: a problem that resonates with you, and that you deeply care about. Then it's a lot easier to figure out what career paths and roles might line up
[00:15:39.620]Courtney Santos: with that issue right? And this really strikes at the core of students values and deeper motivations. So this is a really good way to start and ensure that you are on a path that's going to take you on the most meaningful and purposeful direction that you would like to go right.
[00:15:58.610]Courtney Santos: So when I say that
[00:16:00.750]Courtney Santos: you know, you might think of your major, you might think of the extracurricular activities you've been involved in.
[00:16:07.060]Courtney Santos: But hopefully you can start to think of some issues or problems that resonate with you deeply right, those of you who are new care. This might even pertain to your research project, right? It might be something that you've decided is an important topic. You want to explore further through the academic lens. So what are some of the problems or issues of significance that are facing human society today. Let's reply in the chat.
[00:16:44.230]Courtney Santos: Carson says, the environment, yeah, what aspects of the environment?
[00:16:49.950]Courtney Santos: We could break that down further, couldn't we
[00:17:00.500]Courtney Santos: war? Yeah. And we could. We could break war down further, too, because war has lots of impacts on human societies. Right. It might have different impacts in different locations or
[00:17:12.410]Courtney Santos: for people in different situations.
[00:17:15.540]Courtney Santos: Lawrence's forms of addiction.
[00:17:18.290]Courtney Santos: Yeah, Bailey, says AI, and its capabilities colliding with current tasks. People are doing. Yeah.
[00:17:27.900]Courtney Santos: yeah, ethical use of AI could be one side of it, you know. But it could also be things like, how does it affect the workforce? How does it affect opportunities?
[00:17:41.090]Courtney Santos: Peter says, efficiency and agricultural resources? Yeah, i'd love to hear more about that one too? That's a good one.
[00:17:58.220]Courtney Santos: so those are some good ones. You know, I think we are gonna dig in deep on some ways that you can further explore these issues.
[00:18:07.504]Courtney Santos: Many of you are in Ucare. Right? And so research is one of the ways that you can do that. But there's also a lot of ways to have an impact, to take the knowledge that you hold, perhaps as a student researcher exploring these issues academically and to translate it to real world positive change, right?
[00:18:25.050]Courtney Santos: But we often see lots of folks on campus having those opportunities.
[00:18:31.380]Courtney Santos: So when we think about these issues, okay, so I'm going to take addiction as an example here, right? We might see that there's a variety of systems that are involved in them. We might be able to break this down and understand the stakeholders, and that can give you some ideas. For where the change Makers are actually situated on these issues, right? And so I'm going to take addiction and think about policymakers?
[00:18:55.270]Courtney Santos: Right? So when there was you know, drug war legislation. Right?
[00:19:03.410]Courtney Santos: you know, how do we decide who goes to jail. How do we work on systems of distribution right, and try to break those down that might bring us over into the regulatory side? Right? What do we do to enforce legislation?
[00:19:18.950]Courtney Santos: Maybe some of this really entails health policy. How do we help people who are addicted? How do we make sure there are folks who are trained and educated and prepared to help. Right?
[00:19:33.880]Courtney Santos: You know, we might look at nonprofit organizations as places where a lot of the assistance is actually being distributed to people who experience addiction that would include places like nonprofit hospitals, right? Rehabilitation centers, stuff like that.
[00:19:50.050]Courtney Santos: We might look at Academia and say, what are researchers doing to help inform us about why addiction happens, effective methods of helping what kind of interventions actually work
[00:20:02.360]Courtney Santos: right?
[00:20:03.470]Courtney Santos: Even the general public might be involved right? Because not only are they voting and advocating for particular resources to be provided, or maybe particular types of public safety initiatives adopted right, but they're also raising their children and their family members and assisting them directly with understanding addiction, right? And so really almost every level is involved. I left business out. Sorry.
[00:20:31.400]Courtney Santos: you know, business also runs hospitals. For example, business is also involved in a variety of ways in this, too. Right?
[00:20:38.860]Courtney Santos: so really, that touches on all systems, right when we talk about a complex societal problem like addiction. And so we could break down any one of these topics in this way and start thinking about. Well.
[00:20:53.060]Courtney Santos: what are the different career paths that might lead someone toward positive change? Right? Do I want to be maybe in academic research, so that I can understand how addiction works right, and be able to sort of advocate for positive change from that end? Or would I rather be directly helping folks in nonprofits context? Or would I rather be in policy trying to shape the national conversation and the legislative landscape around it? Right? So there would be a lot of different ways that someone
[00:21:22.960]Courtney Santos: could explore that issue and how to make positive change from different positions in our society
[00:21:29.860]Courtney Santos: right and your own values and perspective can then help guide you also, understanding your talents and strengths, and how they might line up with those paths. So we want to engage in a bit of systems, thinking
[00:21:42.666]Courtney Santos: and some questions that you can ask to help with that are going to be things like how pressing and important is the problem, what systems or stakeholders are involved? Right? Where are the sites of change?
[00:21:55.498]Courtney Santos: How neglected is this problem by others? Right? Are there a lot of resources being focused on it? Is it adequately funded how solvable is the problem?
[00:22:08.810]Courtney Santos: Right? Especially things that have. You know, kind of a persistent nature. Right? In what ways can we chip away with that? Maybe with incremental improvements, you know, then that means it might not be solvable completely, at least not within my lifetime, or something like that. But maybe it's something where
[00:22:30.210]Courtney Santos: some energy, some focused attention and creativity could help to make the problem smaller? Right? That's still a really positive thing.
[00:22:40.820]Courtney Santos: And so there's lots of resources that you could explore. Certainly your faculty mentors, if you're doing research on these topics would be excellent resources. But when I think about ones that are fairly general, there's a wonderful website called 80,000 h, it is run by a nonprofit in the Uk.
[00:23:00.270]Courtney Santos: And it has lists of sort of pressing world issues and ways to make a difference. It has excellent career guides for students. And so I see a lot of students who are attracted to our public service awards in particular, using this. But it's also helpful to, you know, academic researchers and scientists, and really, to anybody who wants to have a career built on solving an issue.
[00:23:25.420]Courtney Santos: There's also government websites like, I think, of the Us. Department of State policy issues, or, like the National Science Foundation, has a list of the big changes that they want to see right. And so those can be great. There's also private resources. So here I've given the example of Deloitte's government trends website, which they Update every year. And then, of course.
[00:23:49.170]Courtney Santos: things like academic journal searches, database searches can be really vital to understanding these types of questions, too. So I would say that there's really a lot of resources to explore an issue if you are passionately engaged in it.
[00:24:05.370]Courtney Santos: The other thing I would ask you to do is to find the change agents right, because this is where you're going to find potential role models for your career and people who can inspire and encourage you.
[00:24:16.690]Courtney Santos: maybe to build networks with so thinking about? Who is driving positive change? What roles do they hold? Are they in academia? Are they in the private sector? Are they in government?
[00:24:29.600]Courtney Santos: What was their path
[00:24:31.310]Courtney Santos: right? And so this is something you can take a little research into someone you admire right finding out how they gained experience.
[00:24:39.885]Courtney Santos: And our career. Coaches are just absolutely wonderful resources in this regard.
[00:24:45.490]Courtney Santos: I think it's great to go in and talk to one of them and talk about the pathways that folks have
[00:24:50.809]Courtney Santos: as they move up a career ladder. And they're very skilled in this analysis of, say, like a Linkedin profile. But I'm going to show you how to do that a bit today, but they'll have some additional ideas for you. I think another would be like actually talking to folks directly. So I've listed here our nonprofit and resident series on campus, because that's a great way. We have a week every year where we bring out nonprofits, and you get to meet them in person
[00:25:16.010]Courtney Santos: or our career. Fairs would be another opportunity to meet a lot of folks who are involved in positive change, or maybe in industry. And to start making those connections again on the 80,000 h website, they have lots of real life stories. They have podcasts and interviews with individuals. There's also national publications like the Forbes, 30 under 30, which can be really helpful to kind of seeing young leaders and learning more about them
[00:25:45.300]Courtney Santos: all right. So now I'm going to dig into some case studies of real Unl students, alumni and faculty who have been driving positive change. And I'm going to start with a student who was very interested in mentorship and specifically concerned that young talented people here in the Midwest might struggle for lack of mentorship.
[00:26:08.050]Courtney Santos: And so I'm talking about Des Moines Adams, who did an undergraduate degree here at Unl in political science, and then went on to our master's in educational psychology, which is a program. I'm also in
[00:26:19.514]Courtney Santos: and so you may know him already. He's a little bit famous among our alumni. He is currently the CEO for teammates, Nebraska, which is a strength based mentoring program for 3rd to 12th grade and college students. It's an organization that started small and scaled up.
[00:26:42.270]Courtney Santos: he was a 1st generation student. He's also a well-known motivational speaker. He's conducted research in educational psychology, focused on leadership, motivation and sociology.
[00:26:55.547]Courtney Santos: He's very into the Clifton strengths approach. And so I've listed his strengths here. I love futuristic. That really shows that a you know student is ready to create a vision. I think that's 1 that he's really leaned into. But also things like mentorship lean into individualization and relator, which are skills that I share with Des Moines.
[00:27:14.920]Courtney Santos: or rather strengths that I share with them.
[00:27:18.750]Courtney Santos: he also played huskers football. That's probably in many ways what he's best known for teammates was also started by Tom Osborne. Right?
[00:27:27.510]Courtney Santos: And so, you know, he he was in the conference championship. The Rose Bowl game also in the Nfl played for 3 different teams.
[00:27:38.091]Courtney Santos: I love this quote. He kind of puts it everywhere, but it really gets it sort of the core of what he does, and why he says, once you see where you're going, then everything you do must correspond with where you're going, and I think that is wonderful advice
[00:27:53.860]Courtney Santos: for students who are applying to major fellowships or other types of competitive opportunities right to be able to create a coherent narrative thread. Right? Everything you do must correspond, and so see the alignment in the things that you do with your motivations.
[00:28:11.950]Courtney Santos: All right, let's take a look at Des Moines Linkedin profile. So so we know he's the CEO of teammates. But where? Where did he start? Right? And so he's got his education here. I want to note that he jumped from political science to educational psychology. And while those are both social sciences, that's kind of a big leap. So for all of you who have changed your majors and worried about it.
[00:28:34.570]Courtney Santos: Worry no more. Right you. You can be successful and awesome with your life if you have done so, or if you're thinking of doing so
[00:28:42.940]Courtney Santos: all right. Fundraising experience is really key for a lot of folks who want to lead nonprofits right? It is something that they're always having to do is to cultivate donor relationships and make sure there's a steady stream of revenue for the organization right? And so he served here at the University of Nebraska Foundation, which is where donors give to our university
[00:29:06.700]Courtney Santos: right? And so, you see, he got close to 2 years of experience there. Right and so that was enough to start propelling the career forward right?
[00:29:17.090]Courtney Santos: He also, after being in the Nfl. Had, you know, sort of a national reputation that he could, you know, channel further into his work, and so became a motivational speaker kind of all game based metaphors, bringing in that sports persona right? And so that's something that's maybe unique to this profile. But I wanted to note it, because sometimes students have a lot of
[00:29:43.800]Courtney Santos: charisma or a certain reputation, you know, are known for something that they can channel into their work.
[00:29:51.440]Courtney Santos: and it's also never too late to start developing a curated reputation. If that's what you would like to do, and it would serve your career goals right. The information that you put out there about yourself online and in person can help to shape the story that you are telling about your career. So I love Des Moines as an example of that, and as somebody who has propelled himself to executive leadership through having a really strong branded personal identity.
[00:30:21.910]Courtney Santos: So that's an example of a nonprofit career ladder.
[00:30:25.330]Courtney Santos: But let's look at some other examples and other paths. Right? Because I think that can feel very specific. Right? So let's dive away from student mentorship to a different issue. Okay, we're going to go over and look at national security.
[00:30:41.970]Courtney Santos: So to craft effective policy and security strategy, we need deep understanding of Russia.
[00:30:48.630]Courtney Santos: Right? That's sort of the theme that I noted in this particular alums work.
[00:30:56.440]Courtney Santos: This is Annie Himes. So Annie is a graduate from our history, global studies and Russian majors. So a triple major
[00:31:07.730]Courtney Santos: and she completed her law degree at Yale.
[00:31:11.680]Courtney Santos: Annie is currently a senior associate at Wilmerhale associates in Washington, DC.
[00:31:18.010]Courtney Santos: And you'll see that her career sort of started in Nebraska and then started to move more toward a Foreign Affairs focus. And thus she ended up in DC, right? And so we're going to analyze, really how that happened. But I want to note that she started here at Nebraska. She was involved in State politics as a legislative page she won a Truman scholarship for law school
[00:31:46.540]Courtney Santos: And so she put a lot of heart and soul into that application. She also applied as a graduating senior to become a Fulbright English teaching assistant for Russia, and she started studying Russian language here in our modern Languages department.
[00:32:01.270]Courtney Santos: And so she wasn't done studying Russian so as part of her Fulbright grant, she added, on the critical language, enhancement award for Russian language, which remains one of the critical languages where they sometimes provide extra funding to students. And it's really because of the importance of Russia and its regional influence, right and national influence.
[00:32:21.940]Courtney Santos: And so then, because she had those skills
[00:32:25.870]Courtney Santos: and that depth of cultural knowledge from actually being present and teaching in Russia. She came back to the Us. And she worked in Washington, DC. For the 1st time, and this was at the James Skyler Junior Fellows program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is a major. Think tank right? And so that started drawing on those skills and history and global studies as well as the Russian language and cultural knowledge that she had.
[00:32:53.670]Courtney Santos: And then she did a stint at the State Department office of the legal advisor before she went into this private sector law environment, right? And so Annie applied for multiple fellowships, and in her testimonial about the Fellowships Office, she said, take some time to think about who you are
[00:33:15.230]Courtney Santos: right. This is her advice to students, she says, what you value and why? You specifically why, you
[00:33:24.590]Courtney Santos: could make a positive impact right? And so I think that's really great advice, as you're thinking about your career development.
[00:33:32.250]Courtney Santos: So when we look at Annie's work and I wasn't able to include her whole Linkedin, she she was really detailed. But I'm going to start at that guy there, Junior fellowship. Right? So now she's in DC, she's starting at a think tank, and she's doing policy research right.
[00:33:47.999]Courtney Santos: So where did she go from there? Well, she actually had another internship or 2 right?
[00:33:54.640]Courtney Santos: And so she was in Yale law school. So actually, she has 4 internships listed here right? And so you can see, she got some in private sector law, including the firm where she currently works Wilmerhale, right? But she also worked at national security action. You know, so more of a policy focused like, you know, nonprofit or advocacy organization.
[00:34:24.210]Courtney Santos: She was in the law clinic at Yale, focused on rule of law, so very interested in foreign affairs and governance type conversations, and she also worked at the Us. Department of State. So getting that government experience. So see how she combined multiple internships to touch on different aspects of that interest
[00:34:45.080]Courtney Santos: right? She also then got judicial experience as a law clerk for the 1st circuit Court.
[00:34:51.230]Courtney Santos: and then went into that private sector law firm with a really strong profile. Right. She had all these wonderful experiences that she was bringing in, and her story could be well understood, and it was easier for her to gain seniority and leadership there. So
[00:35:07.520]Courtney Santos: I'm going to give you one more. And this time we're going to look at a faculty member.
[00:35:12.520]Courtney Santos: So
[00:35:13.750]Courtney Santos: a critical issue facing the United States right now is that we need clean, affordable and probably homegrown energy resources. Right? There's a lot of interest right now in things that are made in the Us.
[00:35:25.270]Courtney Santos: Certainly within our state.
[00:35:27.740]Courtney Santos: So I want to talk about Professor Blon. I could have picked almost any mentor from Ucare.
[00:35:33.292]Courtney Santos: So you know, I I want you to know that. I could have picked any of your mentors right. But but I picked her
[00:35:41.260]Courtney Santos: because I wanted to look at the environment as Carson brought up
[00:35:45.390]Courtney Santos: and give an example from that. And I really love her work because she is doing such great research on renewable energy, right. And one thing I really love about her lab website is, it's easy for me to understand as a non scientist, right?
[00:36:01.800]Courtney Santos: So I think it's important to understand that when you are telling your career narrative and a big piece of it is making sure that lay people understand what you do that's going to translate to things like more funding and more support for your work.
[00:36:15.800]Courtney Santos: And Professor Buon does it so well. So she's investigating biomethane for a clean burning fuel source, right? Which has a lot of applications, transportation, electricity, all of that stuff.
[00:36:30.810]Courtney Santos: Right? She's also looking at Com. It has a longer technical name. I'm just gonna go with the shorthand here.
[00:36:37.310]Courtney Santos: The important thing to know is this is a molecule that you can apply to the plants, and it will increase their crop growth. And who doesn't want that right? I'm a gardener. I want things to grow, so do agricultural producers. I get it.
[00:36:49.540]Courtney Santos: And then she's also looking at extromaze, which is an enzyme for processing different types of biomass like corn, sorghum, soybeans
[00:36:57.940]Courtney Santos: into ethanol right? And so ethanol production. This could lower its cost right, and make that
[00:37:06.600]Courtney Santos: alternative energy the homegrown biomass.
[00:37:10.520]Courtney Santos: be more affordable and more reasonable as a solution. And so she's actually created a startup company called molecular trait evolution, where they are attempting to commercialize use of extra maids right? And so she's been able to be active within academia as well as off campus to realize solutions to the problem she identified.
[00:37:32.970]Courtney Santos: So this is a great example of a stem academics career ladder, right? And so I'm going to start right after graduate school, because I think a lot of folks understand at this point from my previous workshops about how to get into graduate school as a stem student. But maybe you don't know what happens after that.
[00:37:48.300]Courtney Santos: Right? So she's got a pre-doctoral fellowship. That's while she was in graduate school right? Then she did her postgraduate training. Right? So she finishes graduate school. Her 1st position, like many stem researchers, is a postdoc.
[00:38:05.700]Courtney Santos: right? A postdoctoral research fellow. And so it's typical for students to do that between probably 2 and 5 years after they finish grad school. If they want to be on the academic path
[00:38:16.950]Courtney Santos: right. If they want to go into industry, they might go straight in right. But a lot of students who want to become professors do this.
[00:38:25.530]Courtney Santos: Okay? Then she started engaging in entrepreneurship right? So already, you know, getting involved fairly early as well as becoming an assistant professor. Right? So she's kind of working on 2 goals early in her career.
[00:38:42.690]Courtney Santos: Well, that's getting her some attention. So you see, she starts to have peer influence. She becomes the faculty Senate President for the campus
[00:38:50.290]Courtney Santos: right? You know. They see that she can handle a lot of responsibility. So they ask her to be one of their voices.
[00:38:58.277]Courtney Santos: She does some service activities right? She's very passionate about things like graduate education. And you see that coming out even in her department leadership very recently, this past year. She's been the graduate program chair for her department.
[00:39:12.250]Courtney Santos: right? She's also gaining national influence, right? Including trying to work on major national problems through our Strategic Research Institute, right? And so we're seeing that she goes from being an assistant professor to an associate professor to a full professor. She's moving up that academic career ladder as she gains achievements in these areas.
[00:39:36.720]Courtney Santos: I just love it all right, so
[00:39:40.780]Courtney Santos: you may not know for sure where you're going to end up. I guarantee you. Professor Blonde didn't know she was going to do all of these things
[00:39:49.400]Courtney Santos: when she was a junior or senior or a young graduate student. Right opportunities
[00:39:55.010]Courtney Santos: appeared, and she sees that right. And that's true of everybody that we've just talked about can't necessarily predict where you're going to end up. But you should have some hypotheses
[00:40:05.980]Courtney Santos: right about the best longer term career paths for you. And so Professor Blonde might not have known she was going to do a startup and all of this other stuff.
[00:40:15.770]Courtney Santos: But maybe, she thought, well, I really love research, Professor, would be my top choice goal. And there's sort of some logical things I would need to do like become a postdoc first, st
[00:40:26.210]Courtney Santos: right? And so the more you can engage in that type of long term thinking about the career path the better.
[00:40:33.340]Courtney Santos: So I would encourage you to develop a career hypothesis
[00:40:37.470]Courtney Santos: right? And so to think about which communities or organizations are having the most impact.
[00:40:43.130]Courtney Santos: Right? How might you help them?
[00:40:47.350]Courtney Santos: What are some roles, skills, knowledge, or even influence gaps that need to be filled? So I think about what Des Moines can do for teammates mentoring
[00:40:59.180]Courtney Santos: because he has a reputation and influence. Right?
[00:41:03.513]Courtney Santos: So that's something that a lot of students don't think about very much. They tend to think a lot about the skills piece here. Or maybe the knowledge like, I need to take coursework in these areas. But also, how can you build things like influence? Right? That's another great question to ask a career services coach?
[00:41:21.420]Courtney Santos: Right? I also think that doing some research into organizations and how they are structured can be helpful. And I love our career fairs for that. Because you can go. You can usually meet different members of an organization's team at the Career Fair, and you can ask them, why do you do what you do?
[00:41:41.640]Courtney Santos: What are some of the skills you needed to have for your position. Right? You can also talk with local nonprofits. I love the foundry and Americorps because they recruit from our campus, and they love to talk to unl students about how service organizations work, how they're structured.
[00:42:00.170]Courtney Santos: You know how they find funding. Those are places where you can ask those questions.
[00:42:06.080]Courtney Santos: And then I think, also thinking about those skills, knowledge and even influence, you can look at things like the nace career, readiness competencies. Right? So these are 8 competencies that everybody needs to have a job. And they are translatable skills that allow students to maybe
[00:42:22.730]Courtney Santos: serve some years in one role, and then maybe a completely different sector or completely different organization and role. Right? So there are things like communication teamwork, self-awareness that you can move from one organization to another and rely on those strengths.
[00:42:44.590]Courtney Santos: Sometimes students need to do deeper research into a career path right? Especially when you start to narrow it down to a couple that you're considering, and so using the experiential learning requirement for your degree or internship opportunities.
[00:42:59.500]Courtney Santos: Certainly undergraduate research, especially if you're thinking of academia, or maybe think tank research or stuff like that
[00:43:07.240]Courtney Santos: study abroad. Right? We talked about how Annie used that to really get that depth of regional and cultural proficiency. Also languages, volunteer service. So really just being their hands on for the work.
[00:43:22.360]Courtney Santos: And then, of course, internships and entry level positions. If you are currently searching for work. You can look in handshake. But handshake is also great for just getting a look at what type of skills are necessary in different sectors like you can analyze the job descriptions to understand what skills you would need to build. If you're interested in seeing what's necessary for government work. U.S.A. jobs is wonderful. They have a whole section for students where you can look at that.
[00:43:52.640]Courtney Santos: So when we think about seizing opportunities for impact, right? Especially specific positions that you might hold all right. So now I'm going to take
[00:44:04.376]Courtney Santos: you know the example of Annie's research assistantship at the Carnegie endowment.
[00:44:10.640]Courtney Santos: Right? How effective is this position for addressing the problem or issue? Well, the Carnegie endowment has national influence.
[00:44:19.990]Courtney Santos: They actually attend meetings with Congress to give reports
[00:44:24.560]Courtney Santos: on the current state of affairs in regions that are facing a lot of conflict.
[00:44:29.850]Courtney Santos: Right? And so that's very effective. If you want to make major change as a researcher and have your research get national attention, get the attention directly of the policymakers
[00:44:42.490]Courtney Santos: right? Will you have a chance to contribute to or lead an event intervention?
[00:44:48.720]Courtney Santos: Right? So as a researcher, you might be doing a lot of the knowledge building and someone else is leading it. Is that your place of comfort right? Or would you rather be more the face of something like Des Moines, right where he's actually leading mentorship interventions and hiring and training people who are going to do that work, actually developing the curriculum and programs for mentoring.
[00:45:16.970]Courtney Santos: How many resources might this opportunity leverage toward this intervention? Right? So the Carnegie endowment and endowment is money.
[00:45:24.680]Courtney Santos: right? That is funding right? That's 1 type, you know, with teammates mentoring. They've got the organization's budget right? But they're probably having to seek donors frequently. Right? So what are those resources like? You can look at organizations, financial reports as an example. But there might be other types of resources, I think about influence again as something that's a resource that students can look at more carefully
[00:45:55.180]Courtney Santos: when you think about finding your personal fit in your career.
[00:45:59.950]Courtney Santos: I think it's important to ask, in what ways will you be able to take advantage of the position and its powers
[00:46:06.260]Courtney Santos: right?
[00:46:07.520]Courtney Santos: Are you likely to excel, based on your skills, experience, and other career capital that you hold.
[00:46:14.720]Courtney Santos: Why is this the place to invest those skills, those experiences, your influence?
[00:46:22.740]Courtney Santos: How well does the physician, match your strengths
[00:46:28.070]Courtney Santos: right? Is it aligned with your passions, your interests, your values, your talent.
[00:46:36.560]Courtney Santos: and then does it connect you to a supportive community? Right, because networks of people around us are really vital to our success.
[00:46:46.238]Courtney Santos: You want to work in places where
[00:46:49.200]Courtney Santos: folks are going to believe in and encourage you.
[00:46:52.160]Courtney Santos: Right? You're going to validate your contributions. They're going to treat you fairly in terms of resources that they give to you in exchange for your services right? But you are also going to want to work in a place where people believe you can grow especially early in your career. You want to have mentors at work. Speaking of the importance of mentorship.
[00:47:12.620]Courtney Santos: you want to have folks who are going to fight for you to get leadership roles
[00:47:18.300]Courtney Santos: or professional development opportunities. So you can continue to invest in your strengths as a young worker. Right?
[00:47:26.170]Courtney Santos: so I think those are critical things to look out for. Certainly people who can be good references when you move on to the next step, especially internships or other short term employment opportunities that you pursue.
[00:47:37.810]Courtney Santos: So again, talking to career services, coaches, even to alumni, maybe, who are in the areas where you want to work, you can get access to our alumni network through the Alumni Association, and you can talk to people who are out there in the world, how they're using their strengths at work.
[00:47:54.490]Courtney Santos: what it's really like work life balance at particular organizations. Whether there's mentorship there, that's adequate.
[00:48:02.251]Courtney Santos: I think Cliftonstrengths coaching is super useful for students who have access to it. It's something where
[00:48:10.140]Courtney Santos: I think you can usually buy the book on a deal on Amazon. Fyi if you have not yet taken the strengths test, and you're worried about the cost.
[00:48:19.560]Courtney Santos: because I think it's like.
[00:48:21.280]Courtney Santos: I don't know. I don't know the exact numbers, but it's somewhere around 40 or $45 on the Clifton Strengths website. But if you
[00:48:27.890]Courtney Santos: if you buy one of the books sometimes it's cheaper.
[00:48:31.940]Courtney Santos: there's also a free ebook that I'm going to tell you about called picture your career, which is available from Vanderbilt University, and I think this is a completely different and really cool way to look at your strengths apart from the Cliftonstrengts ecology. Right? Because that's a very particular model of understanding yourself.
[00:48:51.470]Courtney Santos: This one is a lot more creative. So if you are like me, and you like to draw or create vision boards, you know, make charts and graphics and stuff like that. This is more of a really cool journaling experience. It is available completely for free from the Vanderbilt University Career Center, and the folks who wrote it are national experts on career development can't say enough good things about them.
[00:49:16.530]Courtney Santos: so you can definitely check that out.
[00:49:22.270]Courtney Santos: and I'm coming pretty close to the end of the presentation, and then I will take some questions.
[00:49:28.680]Courtney Santos: so I think it's important as you
[00:49:32.260]Courtney Santos: start putting together a plan right? And that could be through those journaling activities in books like, picture your career.
[00:49:39.597]Courtney Santos: You know, or other ways that you have for mapping your ideas. But I think it's important to look beyond the entry level. A lot of students get caught up in this period.
[00:49:50.290]Courtney Santos: you know, of exploration and sort of testing intuitions. And that's important, right? Doing things like internships. You know, graduate study, especially, you know, up to the master's level, where it's still kind of exploratory, right? You're starting to narrow your interests, but it's still pretty exploratory.
[00:50:09.460]Courtney Santos: but a lot of students have trouble seeing what happens after that, right after I finish my Master's degree. And I go into a doctoral program. What am I really investing in myself at that point? What does it really mean to write a dissertation and really narrow in on a particular research topic?
[00:50:25.100]Courtney Santos: Right? Or for everybody else who doesn't do a doctoral degree kind of what happens after that right?
[00:50:33.380]Courtney Santos: and a lot of students might even know alumni who have kind of gone out there into the workforce and
[00:50:41.010]Courtney Santos: had trouble right? Maybe got a 1st position, and it totally did not align with their expectations right? And so I would tell you that young folks who are graduating from Unl or from other programs and heading out to the workforce right should see that as an opportunity to take some strategic risks.
[00:51:04.560]Courtney Santos: Right? So you know, your 1st job is usually not your end destination
[00:51:12.040]Courtney Santos: right? But rather an opportunity to
[00:51:16.830]Courtney Santos: start building networks, to start gaining references right, and to see if the thing that you set out to do is really what you want to do
[00:51:25.410]Courtney Santos: right. But if it's not.
[00:51:28.450]Courtney Santos: this period about the 1st 10 years after you graduate is when most people make big career moves
[00:51:34.770]Courtney Santos: right? If they are really into the organization that they 1st join. That's usually when they are trying to seek promotions right? They're trying to get themselves more visible amongst the entry level employees get noticed by leadership.
[00:51:50.390]Courtney Santos: get professional development opportunities to build further skills right?
[00:51:55.150]Courtney Santos: If you don't love the organization. This is the time to start setting up your path of transition out of it
[00:52:01.730]Courtney Santos: right? And so maybe to do some further self exploration, you had to make some strategic moves right? So for some students that might involve like working with a career coach or a live coach off campus. Right? Those those exist. They are actually out there. And they're fairly affordable. I've used one
[00:52:21.326]Courtney Santos: you know, and so don't be afraid to be a career changer right? But just know that it's likely to happen early in your career. Right? I have changed careers right? I did not start in student success.
[00:52:33.810]Courtney Santos: So it is. It is something that can be done. But you need to take strategic risks. So I'll give you the example of myself. Right? I did night classes to build new skills right
[00:52:46.360]Courtney Santos: you know, wasn't feeling supported at my employer, but was able to take advantage of some things that I was doing, and have those opportunities to do night school right for other people. It might be volunteering right? That's the strategic thing that you're doing. Well, I'm going to invest a little bit of time in this thing and see how that works out right and develop leadership skills outside my daytime organization.
[00:53:11.300]Courtney Santos: Right? It could be taking a new job opportunity that really stretches your skills in a new direction. Right? But think of it as an opportunity to invest in yourself and your own professional development outside of class as well as in it, right? It's something that can really pay off. If you think a lot about your career in those 1st 10 years, and then I would say that when you reach sort of mid career age, right? So again, the numbers here are kind of arbitrary, just for yourself.
[00:53:40.790]Courtney Santos: but more than 10 years out from graduating. You probably want to hold a leadership role
[00:53:45.920]Courtney Santos: right? Hopefully, you have connected with your passion. You have found a way to make change on an issue, and you haven't given up
[00:53:54.460]Courtney Santos: right. And so to understand that when we have students who are like Truman scholars, or whatever they might come in with a lot of ambition.
[00:54:01.280]Courtney Santos: It often takes more time to realize that ambition
[00:54:05.220]Courtney Santos: than you would think, because during all this time that students are investing in strategic risk during all this time that they're growing as people and professionals. They are also doing things like getting married. Have children, maybe having their 1st health crisis, right? So you know, understanding that it actually takes a long time to reach leadership, and that there is a ladder involved in that process is going to help. You see your trajectory beyond the entry level.
[00:54:37.860]Courtney Santos: So when you get that to that stage, especially after graduation. But even now you can ask yourself these questions in a fruitful way.
[00:54:46.070]Courtney Santos: I think you should ask yourself constantly whether what you're doing right now really aligns with your sense of purpose
[00:54:53.820]Courtney Santos: right when you understand that there are certain issues where you want to make positive change.
[00:55:00.700]Courtney Santos: Is this the best path?
[00:55:03.530]Courtney Santos: Right?
[00:55:04.660]Courtney Santos: So as you're exploring internships or studying abroad, or going to graduate school.
[00:55:11.540]Courtney Santos: We're taking that 1st job asking yourself, Will I be motivated on this path in the long run?
[00:55:18.390]Courtney Santos: Am I swimming with the current. Here am I engaging my passions?
[00:55:25.320]Courtney Santos: If so, if yes, definitely ask yourself, can I advance to leadership?
[00:55:31.430]Courtney Santos: Why? Because you've lucked out and found something that you love to do.
[00:55:35.910]Courtney Santos: and those opportunities for leadership will come right.
[00:55:43.310]Courtney Santos: Is there a path with more leverage and resources? You can ask yourself this if it feels like what you're doing is not aligned
[00:55:50.810]Courtney Santos: right?
[00:55:52.980]Courtney Santos: Maybe there are certain aspects that are aligned.
[00:55:57.520]Courtney Santos: But maybe there's a better way, right? And so, if one path is feeling slow
[00:56:04.840]Courtney Santos: and full of obstacles. Can you change paths
[00:56:09.440]Courtney Santos: right? And take one that maybe gives you more power, more leverage on the issue. You want to make headway on more resources.
[00:56:17.680]Courtney Santos: right?
[00:56:18.970]Courtney Santos: And so again, after you get out of school.
[00:56:22.080]Courtney Santos: So even when I'm not here to bug you.
[00:56:25.500]Courtney Santos: there will be mentors right? There will be career and life coaches that you can talk to. If you are in graduate school, you will still have faculty right. But there will be people
[00:56:36.540]Courtney Santos: in the network around you who can support you in thinking through these kinds of questions.
[00:56:45.980]Courtney Santos: All right, I've got the career coach map up here just reminding you that you can also talk to a career coach about your career development. And now I'm going to open the floor up for questions. We're a small group today. So if you want to unmute, you can do that.
[00:57:20.620]Courtney Santos: Thanks, Cindy.
[00:57:34.760]Courtney Santos: Here's a good question. Thank you, Peter. Outside of career services. Would contacting faculty be a good method to gain connections? Yes, yes, you know, I think, knowing which faculty you're asking can be helpful. Right? So different faculty have different expertise and different networks.
[00:57:56.840]Courtney Santos: Right? So like Nicole Juan, right? She's done a startup. So she has connections outside the university right looking out for faculty who have those kind of things. If you are looking to meet people outside of Academia, within Academia, too, some of your faculty, who are very, very focused on. You know, academic work are still great resources because they have networks through their professional organizations.
[00:58:22.410]Courtney Santos: Right? And they can tell you which professional organizations are worth the student membership fee. So that you can start making those connections yourself directly.
[00:58:32.865]Courtney Santos: Another really good way to make connections would be attending conferences.
[00:58:37.710]Courtney Santos: especially as students start to get ready for graduate school. So when you're a graduating senior, or maybe even a master's student, you know, attending a couple of conferences, regionally or nationally in your field, can be a great way for you to start networking on your own
[00:58:52.620]Courtney Santos: right and faculty are great for getting advice on how to do that, as are our career coaches, too?
[00:59:00.540]Courtney Santos: Yeah.
[00:59:02.520]Courtney Santos: Good question. Keep it coming.
[00:59:19.200]Courtney Santos: We all are thinking, I'm going to scroll back up to the slide that had the free ebook.
[00:59:25.450]Courtney Santos: Because I think for a lot of you this might be a logical next step
[00:59:34.740]Courtney Santos: probably put the link in the chat, too. If I get organized here.
[00:59:55.120]Courtney Santos: Okay, Bailey asks. In graduate school, we may see or connect with other businesses or nonprofits in the area that we previously did not know about.
[01:00:04.800]Courtney Santos: Are there any tips on ways to align our academic goals with the new opportunities?
[01:00:10.680]Courtney Santos: Yeah, oh, definitely, especially, you know you might know the a lot of the nonprofits or businesses in Lincoln, right? But maybe you go to graduate school somewhere else.
[01:00:20.490]Courtney Santos: Right now you can research them in advance. If you know you're interested in a particular type of issue, right? So let me just go back to the addiction one as an example, right? So I'm in educational psychology. Maybe that's something I would want
[01:00:37.710]Courtney Santos: in a graduate program is that it be located in a place that's making positive change on that issue. Right? So it might be part of your graduate school search, actually, that you look into what local say internship opportunities would be available.
[01:00:52.997]Courtney Santos: So that you can connect with businesses and nonprofits. And that's part of the plan.
[01:00:57.730]Courtney Santos: But other times you're just gonna learn about new things right? You know, when I moved here to unl, I did not know I was from California. I did not know all the local businesses and nonprofits. Right? So you know, and more are constantly being created right. That's what's happening over at the foundry. Right? So I don't think it's ever possible to know about all of them
[01:01:20.840]Courtney Santos: right? One thing that I would say is, while you're in graduate school, you're going to increasingly specialize. But that doesn't mean that you can't take new opportunities right? Sometimes you might see that they're already aligned with your existing academic goals, but, generally speaking, graduate students are able to meet with their advisor, usually about once a semester kind of have a sit down conversation about their professional development
[01:01:46.700]Courtney Santos: so that can include doing course selection right? So like which elective courses do I want to plug into my master's degree?
[01:01:54.999]Courtney Santos: It could include talking about how your research questions might be evolving new research projects that you want to explore.
[01:02:03.355]Courtney Santos: It could be that you end up talking about things like internship opportunities that might be offered on a semester by semester basis. A lot of graduate students have the opportunity.
[01:02:14.810]Courtney Santos: for example, to do a summer internship in between taking classes in the academic year, and maybe they can even receive credit for it as undergraduates do right? So it might be built in sometimes that you have certain clinical experiences, right like in my particular master's program. I actually have a clinic on campus
[01:02:33.840]Courtney Santos: where I can work. But I also have a field experience that I have to plan right. And so I'm going to be able to get the chance to choose a particular nonprofit or business where I want to gain experience. And I would say, that's true of a lot of graduate programs. It's gonna
[01:02:51.110]Courtney Santos: vary based on your field right? But you're probably going to have a lot of opportunities to customize graduate study programs based on the unique intellectual and professional interests that you have.
[01:03:03.580]Courtney Santos: It was a great question, Bailey. Thank you so much. I think we have time for one more.
[01:03:08.390]Courtney Santos: If anybody else has a burning question.
[01:03:15.450]Courtney Santos: and if not, the recording will be available online within about a week.
[01:03:20.280]Courtney Santos: And I would like to give you a couple minutes of your Friday back. It was great to see you all thanks for coming out
[01:03:26.330]Courtney Santos: and have a great weekend.
[01:03:33.807]Courtney Santos: Bailey asks, how have you been able to combine your field experience with your other job interests? I'm interested in combining my lab experiences with the field. Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't started my field experience yet. I get to select next year my field experience. But
[01:03:49.890]Courtney Santos: I was able to go to the call where we got to talk to the people who were gonna host field experiences this year, and I actually asked to go to this call wasn't ready to start selecting my field experience yet, but I wanted to learn.
[01:04:03.770]Courtney Santos: So that's another thing I would tell you. Ask always be asking when you're in grad school, right? And so I was like, I want to plan ahead. So I went and met a bunch of the folks. And so I'm in the counseling program and I got to do rotations. It was like breakout sessions on zoom, where I got to meet with different local nonprofit and business leaders and mental health areas.
[01:04:28.110]Courtney Santos: I've also been recently to at the College of Education. They hosted a career development event, for undergrad and graduate students. This was maybe about a year ago. I hope they do it again, and they actually had the folks come out in person right? And so I was able to learn more that way.
[01:04:48.390]Courtney Santos: but I think it's important to know, like, if you want to specialize in a particular area, right? You know. You can learn about the different organizations that are doing that. And then you can build in a field experience that makes sense for you.
[01:05:03.570]Courtney Santos: You also want to think about stuff like, how do I need to develop skills, wise, right or leadership wise? You know, for some students that hands-on experience might be an opportunity to lead a project for the 1st time
[01:05:19.450]Courtney Santos: to gain skills and stuff like project management for others. It might be that they really want to work on their presentation skills.
[01:05:27.710]Courtney Santos: It might be that they want to build networks in a particular sector. Right? So doing, your homework into the organization and the particular aspects of the position that would align with those other professional interests that you have will really pay off right in terms of plan, a successful experience.
[01:05:50.030]Courtney Santos: And one thing that's been helpful for me is talking not only to the people who supervise, I think they do a great job, usually of explaining kind of what they're looking for in interns or field workers or things like that.
[01:06:05.120]Courtney Santos: But then to also talk to maybe somebody who has recently held the position so like in my case it would be another graduate assistant, you know, who has gone to that particular field experience and done it for a semester or a whole year. Right? So getting those perspectives to from folks who have held the role if you can.
[01:06:27.000]Courtney Santos: it's not always possible. Sometimes people quit jobs and you can't talk to them right? But maybe you can find them on Linkedin, right? Or something like that.
[01:06:38.243]Courtney Santos: You know. Yeah, you know. Or maybe they've given a testimonial, or you can talk to their coworkers who are still there.
[01:06:46.730]Courtney Santos: Yeah, thank you again for these questions, Bailey.
[01:06:51.110]Courtney Santos: All right, I do offer advising appointments. So if anybody wants to follow up and ask more questions, y'all can do that.
[01:06:58.260]Courtney Santos: I hope you have a great weekend. Thanks for being here.
[01:07:02.020]Courtney Santos: and thanks for all these wonderful questions.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Planning for Careers with Impact

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments