New focus on career discernment seen in Lawrence's transformative building projects

Career discernment is being built into the 315 E. College Avenue and Fox Commons projects as Lawrence University puts new emphasis on career preparation.

Kevin Gaw, who arrived in June 2023 as the Riaz Waraich Dean of the Career Center and Center for Community Engagement & Social Change (CCE), has made discernment a key piece of career counseling, facilitating conversations with students that encompass strengths, passions, values, and skill-development as they prepare for life after Lawrence.

“It’s understanding your work values, your personal values, your social values, understanding your interests, what’s important to you,” Gaw said. “What do you get excited about doing? It’s about knowing you have skills but also knowing you can develop skills.

That focus can be seen in the Fox Commons development, where partnerships are being forged with health care and business organizations to give Lawrence’s pre-health and business and entrepreneurship students avenues to mentorships, internships, and other collaborative experiences. And it can be seen in the 315 E. College Avenue development, where, among other things, a Humanities Center is being designed to foster experiential learning and internship opportunities in the Fox Cities and beyond.

“It’s not just sitting here and reflecting on your interests,” Gaw said. “It’s getting out there and having experiences. We’re trying to develop more of that, and these projects will help us do that.”

Faculty lead planning for new academic spaces in two transformative building projects.

Gaw and others in the Career Center are working closely with Constance Kassor, associate professor of religious studies, who has taken on a two-year role as special assistant to the president, focused in part on institutionalizing programs that ensure students are prepared for the next steps when they graduate. Funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Kassor is collaborating with faculty and staff to develop programs that will support students in career exploration and vocational discernment.

That includes leading the planning for the Humanities Center in the 315 E. College development. Building connections to the Trout Museum of Art, which will be housed on the building’s first floor, is just one piece of the puzzle. Creating space on the second floor to facilitate community partnerships and build avenues to experiential learning for humanities students is another big piece.

That is part of the enhanced attention being placed on career planning across campus.  

“It’s something we owe to our students as an institution,” Kassor said. “We need to be setting them up for success after they leave this place. I think we do a really nice job of supporting students while they’re here. And we can and we will be better in the future at supporting them as they make the transition into what’s next.”

Some of that work by faculty is already happening at a high level, Kassor said. The 315 E. College and Fox Commons projects will make that work more robust and more visible, in part because of the community engagement that’s built in.

“It’s not always explicit to students, and it’s definitely not always explicit to the broader community,” Kassor said. “And it may not be explicit to parents of students or prospective students. Part of this work is trying to lift up things that we’re already doing and that we actually do really well. This space is going to support that work a little bit more and hopefully help showcase that work.”