Developing an Early Career Exploration Program for Sophomores (feat. Michele Doran and Melanie Murphy)

Career Everywhere

Michele Doran and Melanie Murphy of Denison University share how their team built the Journey Program, a popular two-day workshop that helps sophomores with early career exploration.

The Journey Program includes four 90-minute sessions designed to help students explore careers, think critically about what they want out of work and life, and come up with a plan to make it happen. The four sessions include:

1. Reflect: Students look back on all the things they've done in high school and their first year of college and think about what motivates and fulfills them.
2. Imagine: Students start thinking about how they might want to live their lives—beyond career. Where do they want to live? How important is money to them? What does wealth mean to them? Where might they want to live? What kind of time do they want to devote to the things they care about personally?
3. Plan: Students think about how they're going to use their time at Denison to build the skills, values, and habits that will help them achieve their goals.
4. Build: Students start creating a roadmap for their plans. They work on resumes, cover letters, and other essential building blocks of a strong career.

In the episode, Michele and Melanie share what the Journey Program entails, why they created it, how they built it, what the results have been, and more.

Resources from the episode:

• Michele’s LinkedIn profile
• Michele’s email: [e-mail]
• Melanie’s LinkedIn profile
• Melanie’s email: [e-mail]
• Journey Program homepage
• Denison Magazine story about the Journey Program
• Helping Sophomores Succeed book
• You Majored in What?: Designing Your Path from College to Career book
• Designing Your Life book
• Denison virtual career center (powered by uConnect)

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