The English and Writing Department is hosting a Career Connections Weekend tonight and tomorrow giving students the opportunity to examine their career paths by talking to alumni from the department.
The six alumni attending the event are Rand Bellavia, library director at D’Youville College; Krestia DeGeorge, News Editor, Alaska Dispatch News; Samantha Lioi, Peace and Justice Minister for Eastern District and Franconia Mennonite Conferences; Dani Rizzo, Immigration Attorney; Brenda Tremblay, Morning Classical Host on WXXI-FM; and Scott Ross Wilkins, Director of Marketing and Communications at Luxbrush. The alumni all graduated with degrees in English and Writing at Houghton and have a wide range of experiences that allow them to relate to students who are not necessarily English or Writing majors.
The event will from Friday evening on March 20 until mid-afternoon on Saturday March 21. On Friday, the first session begins at 4 p.m. with Career Stories from the alumni. Then, on Saturday, there are small group sessions and a conversational lunch in the Alumni dining room. It is a small event that is open to all majors which allows students to network and have one-on-one conversations with the alumni in their field. Professor Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb feels that this event will allow students to, “see what they can do with English and Writing Majors” because there is a “wide range of possibilities.”
“[I] hope students are encouraged to pursue majors such as English and Writing and see that those are foundational majors that you can do a lot of different things with” said Bruxvoort Lipscomb. English and Writing majors prepare students to have good reading and analytical skills which are very important and helpful in different jobs. Rizzo,an immigration lawyer, got her first job after Houghton as a paralegal because she possessed creative writing skills even though she did not have any prior experience in the field. Bellavia, library director at D’Youville College, said, “The combination of good writing and problem-solving/critical thinking skills is more attractive than most liberal arts graduates think” because “employers can no longer assume that a candidate with a BA or a BS has these skills.”
Often when applying for jobs, students eliminate themselves from the pool of candidates by submitting poorly written cover letters and resumes due to a lack of proper editing. However, “In journalism, and probably in other fields, a certain minimum level of writing ability is taken for granted, so simply possessing some skill as a writer was rarely enough to make a candidate stand out” said DeGeorge.
Bellavia constantly writes reports; white papers, a government or authoritative report giving information or proposals on an issue; budget and grant proposals; and letters of renewal or promotion as an academic administrator. Rizzo, however, drafts petitions to the U.S. government to request immigration benefits on behalf of her foreign national clients and their U.S. employers. DeGeorge said, “Writing is central to my job, even when it’s editing other people’s writing.”