Faculty and advisors play a central role in helping students make meaning of their liberal arts education and connect what they are learning to their lives beyond Kalamazoo College. This work does not happen in a single course or moment. It develops over time through coursework, advising conversations, reflection, and experience. It develops over time through coursework, advising conversations, reflection, and experience.
Academic Advisor Resources
The Advisor Playbook for Supporting Student Career Connections provides advisors guidance around common student questions and advising conversations by class year, along with quick-share resources to support those conversations.
Hiring and Managing Student Employees
For faculty who wish to hire students in your department, visit the Supervisor Resources under Student Employment at Human Resources, or How to post a job in Handshake.
The Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) partners with faculty and advisors to support this developmental process by embedding career readiness into the curriculum and co-curriculum in ways that align with disciplinary goals, respect faculty expertise, and support students across the K-Plan. You can also view our strategic plan, Advancing Career Readiness Through the Liberal Arts: Building a Career Ecosystem, to see how this work fits into the college’s broader goals.
Career Readiness as a Developmental Framework
Career readiness at Kalamazoo College is grounded in the belief that students develop clarity, confidence, and direction gradually. The CCPD’s Career Readiness Curriculum provides a shared developmental framework that outlines the skills, knowledge, and reflective practices students should cultivate over time. This framework draws on nationally recognized career readiness competencies and aligns with Kalamazoo College’s Institutional Learning Outcomes. It is not job training. Instead, it supports students in recognizing, integrating, and articulating what they know and can do as they move toward a wide range of post-graduate paths.
To partner with the CCPD, please contact a CCPD staff member or write to career@kzoo.edu.
Shared Passages: A Foundational Approach
Shared Passages courses play an important role in helping students make sense of their liberal arts education over time. Because they are the only courses all students take, they provide a shared foundation for reflection on learning and skill development across the curriculum. Infusing career readiness in these spaces ensures that every student engages in these conversations early and consistently, regardless of major or prior experience.
First-Year: Beginning and Belonging
The first year is a critical period for helping students begin to make sense of college. At this stage, students are not expected to explore specific careers. Instead, they benefit from opportunities to develop a sense of purpose and to think of college as a lab for exploration, reflection, and growth. In the first year, two elements of the Career Readiness Curriculum are especially relevant to students’ early development:
- developing a sense of purpose and direction at K (see First Year Forum), and
- creating a foundational, college-level resume
These elements offer shared tools and language that students can continue to build on over time, whether through coursework, advising conversations, experiential learning, or CCPD resources.
First Year Seminars and First Year Forums
CCPD Partnership Opportunities for First Year Seminar Faculty
Faculty may choose from several flexible, low-lift partnership options:
Option 3: Resume Module + Assignment (Best Practice): Faculty assign the module and ask students to submit a draft resume to the CCPD for feedback. This ensures all students complete the module and receive early, individualized guidance before applying for experiential opportunities. (CCPD tracks module completion and resume submissions)
Option 1: Brief Introduction to the Resume Module (5 minutes): A Career Advisor or CCPD staff member introduces the Basic Resume Module and shows students how to access it independently. See: Building First-Year Confidence: Career Advisors Visit 15 Seminars This Fall
Option 2: Resume Lab (One class session): A CCPD-led session that includes a short introduction followed by time for students to begin drafting resumes with in-class support.
Drafting a College-Level Resume
Creating a resume in the first year is not about preparing for a job search. It is about learning how to identify and describe experience, skills, and growth. A first resume gives students a starting point they can revise and strengthen as they gain experience.
In the first year, students:
- Learn the purpose and basic conventions of a professional resume
- Practice translating academic, co-curricular, and early work experiences into professional language
- Create a baseline resume for application to experiential opportunities that they can revisit and refine over time
The CCPD supports this work through the Basic Resume Module in the Career Connection Toolkit, designed for students with little or no prior experience.
First Year Forum: Crafting Your Why: K-Planning is Career Planning
All first-year students participate in the First Year Forum, Crafting Your Why: K-Planning is Career Planning. This experience introduces the idea that college is a space for exploration rather than a straight line to a single outcome.
Through guided reflection and discussion, students are encouraged to:
- Begin articulating emerging interests, values, and motivations
- Understand that a personal “why” should develop and change over time
- Think of “college as a lab” and create a K-Plan to explore their interests
- Explore careers and fields of interest through their “blank spaces,” including classes, campus involvement, work, and experiential learning
This shared experience provides advisors, and others who support students, with a common language that can be useful in advising conversations as students make choices about courses, experiences, and next steps.
Sophomore Year: Declaring & Exploring
Why the Sophomore Year Matters
The sophomore year is when students begin to connect what they are learning to what comes next. Reflection and exploration at this stage help students link ideas, people, and experiences in ways that shape future academic and experiential choices. By the sophomore year, students understand how to navigate college expectations and resources. The focus shifts from adjustment to more intentional exploration and engagement beyond the classroom.
Career readiness in the sophomore year emphasizes connecting academic learning to opportunities such as study abroad or away, civic engagement, research, internships, and summer experiences. Sophomore Seminars provide a strong setting for this work as students plan the next phase of their K-Plan.
Sophomore Seminars
CCPD Partnership Opportunities for Sophomore Seminar Faculty
These options are designed to build on one another. Faculty may choose how far to go based on course goals and timing.
Option 1: CCPD-Led Design Your Path Workshop (In Class)
An interactive workshop focused on interests, values, and next steps.
Option 2: Career Conversations Module + KConnect Assignment (Foundational)
Students complete the Career Conversations module in the Career Connection Toolkit and join KConnect to explore interests and build social capital through alumni engagement.
Option 3: Career Conversation or Investigative Inquiry + Reflection (Applied Experience)
Builds on Option 2.
Students complete a Career Conversation, Investigative Inquiry, or CCPD organized Hornet Huddle and submit a brief reflection connecting the experience to future academic or experiential plans.
Exploring Pathways and Possibilities
Students move from broad reflection toward more focused exploration, asking:
- What am I learning, and what holds my interest?
- How might these interests connect to fields of study, industries, or roles?
- What people and experiences would help me explore these questions further?
The goal is to support curiosity and experimentation, not to push students toward early decisions.
Making Connections and Expanding Networks
As interests develop, students learn how to engage with people beyond the classroom by:
- Recognizing the value of conversation and mentorship
- Practicing how to introduce themselves and talk about their interests and experiences
- Engaging with alumni, employers, and campus partners connected to areas they want to explore
These interactions help students see how academic interests connect to real-world experiences.
Preparing for Experiential Learning
The sophomore year is often when students begin preparing for experiences that shape the remainder of their time at K. This may include:
- Applying for study abroad or study away programs
- Seeking internships, research opportunities, civic engagement, or summer employment
Developing persistence and flexibility when navigating unfamiliar or competitive processes
Senior Year: Launching & Transitioning
Senior Seminars and Capstones offer time for students to synthesize their K-Plan and prepare for life after K. By this stage, career readiness is less about exploration and more about integration, articulation, and transition. This work assumes students have already engaged in exploration and experiential learning earlier in their college experience. Faculty teaching Senior Seminars may wish to explore additional guidance and sample facilitation approaches on the Senior Shared Passages Capstones page.
Senior Seminars
CCPD Partnership Opportunities for Senior Seminar Faculty
The CCPD partners with faculty in flexible ways that complement capstone goals:
- Facilitated reflection and skills translation sessions
- Alumni or professional engagement
- Support for application materials and storytelling
CCPD staff tailor support to disciplinary context and timing, reinforcing rather than replacing faculty-led reflection.
Exploring Pathways and Possibilities
Students move from broad reflection toward more focused exploration, asking:
- What am I learning, and what holds my interest?
- How might these interests connect to fields of study, industries, or roles?
- What people and experiences would help me explore these questions further?
The goal is to support curiosity and experimentation, not to push students toward early decisions.
Making Connections and Expanding Networks
As interests develop, students learn how to engage with people beyond the classroom by:
- Recognizing the value of conversation and mentorship
- Practicing how to introduce themselves and talk about their interests and experiences
- Engaging with alumni, employers, and campus partners connected to areas they want to explore
These interactions help students see how academic interests connect to real-world experiences.
Preparing for Experiential Learning
The sophomore year is often when students begin preparing for experiences that shape the remainder of their time at K. This may include:
- Applying for study abroad or study away programs
- Seeking internships, research opportunities, civic engagement, or summer employment
Developing persistence and flexibility when navigating unfamiliar or competitive processes
Other Ways Faculty Partner with the CCPD
In addition to specific the specific partnership opportunities provided in the Shared Passages sections above, faculty across the College partner with the Center for Career and Professional Development in a wide range of ways. These collaborations help students connect academic work to people, pathways, and post-graduate possibilities, often within the context of a specific course, major, or program.
Faculty Partnerships
Below are examples of common partnership models. We are always open to additional ideas and creative approaches.
Common partnership approaches include:
- integrating alumni or employer engagement into courses or departmental programming
- designing class-based career conversations, Hornet Huddles, or networking experiences
- supporting discipline-specific professional skill development (e.g., interviews, resumes, storytelling)
- sharing and interpreting post-graduate outcomes data to inform advising, events, or curricular review
- coordinating employer or alumni visits to classes, programs, or student organizations
We partner with faculty and departments in many different ways. The examples below highlight a range of collaborations that connect coursework, alumni, and career exploration.
- Political Science: Students Lead Civic Government Panel on Careers in Public Service
- German: Curious about Working Abroad? These K Alumni Are Living It!
- Psychology: Exploring Career Paths: Psychology Majors Engage with Alumni
- Spanish: Linguistic Skills in Professional Communications
- English: Bridging Academia and Career: CCPD and English Department Collaboration