Brown University has launched a Center for Career Exploration to better prepare students for the modern-day workforce.
“Brown students are ambitious and driven, and the Center for Career Exploration will provide them with exciting opportunities to grow personally and professionally while they develop their skills and explore career possibilities,” Dr. Christina H. Paxson, president of Brown. “In addition to re-imagined career advising, the new center will spur significant growth in support from our extended Brown community of alumni and families. They play a vital role in contributing both their job opportunities and their experiences as mentors, opening new paths for successful lives and careers for our students.”
The center will provide personalized advising, mentoring, opportunities, and resources for various career pathways to Brown’s undergraduates, Ph.D. students, and recent graduates. Instead of offering just generalized career services, this revamped center will seek to have knowledge bases and advising about specific industry sectors.
These sectors include health and medicine; law; technology; finance and consulting; arts and media; science and engineering; and careers in the common good — nonprofit, government, education, policy, and climate change.
Brown’s expansion of its career services center involves hiring more than a dozen new staff.
“Exploration is a critical activity that students undertake as part of their Brown education — not as something in addition to academics, but as something integral to the student experience,” said Matthew Donato, executive director of the Center for Career Exploration. “Through more internships, research opportunities and shadowing experiences, we can help students prototype career possibilities for themselves. We want students to be able to try lots of things out, test their assumptions, reflect on those experiences, and think about whether an experience has changed their interests.”