Undergraduate Mentor Program Partners with UW Career Center

Submitted by Nicole Johns on

The Economics Undergraduate Mentor Program, now in its fourth year and popular with students hoping to gain an edge in the search for internships and careers, this year established a partnership with the UW Career Center to offer students in the department a variety of opportunities for personal and professional development.

Patrick Chidsey
UW Career Center Counselor Patrick Chidsey

Kicking off the partnership was a two-day workshop on professional development. The first day focused on resumes and cover letters, social media and job/internship searching, while the second taught students how to network and interview successfully. Career Center Senior Counselor Patrick Chidsey gave both of the presentations, providing critical information and resources for students and creating new networking opportunities for the participants.

According to Chidsey, many economics students followed-up the workshops by going to the Career Center, participating in Center events and making appointments with counselors after meeting in the workshop. Further workshops and networking opportunities are being planned for winter and spring quarters.

“What we provide for the Economics Department and for the economics mentor program are more tailored and customized workshops,“ Chidsey said. “Students have access to career counselors who can become partners with them.”

Additionally, Career Center staff have developed a Career Success Certificate for economics majors, a self-paced non-credit course of study offering a structured yet flexible plan for optimizing career and job-search success using the myriad resources available through the Center.

Alumni mentor Kerry Kahl Alumni mentor Kerry Kahl

This partnership complements the benefits of the mentorship program as it exists now, giving students additional networking contacts with knowledge specific to economics majors. Kerry Kahl, one of this year’s alumni mentors, observed, “Our mentor volunteers bring the depth of their own career growth and experience to share with our student mentees. By having our students complete many of the basics in preparing for the job search such as resume writing and interview practices, using the excellent resources of the UW Career Center, then our mentees and mentors can work together in more depth and really target areas to work on for each student’s job search."

With workshops and certificates that are tailored to the Economics Department, students will be able to connect with resources more efficiently. “We view students as very capable, very intelligent people who really have a lot of potential, “ Chidsey said.  “Sometimes it’s just a matter of helping them see that potential."


Written with assistance from student Irene Lu (@yilu1994), a double major in Economics and Journalism and a contributing writer for the UW Daily, for our series “Econ Students on Students,” stories written by our undergraduate students about some of the interesting and unique things their peers are doing.  
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