Career Center

Anna Paikert ’13 has always known that she wanted to help people, and she’s always loved working with children. When she first came to Hamilton, she thought she would follow a pre-med course and become a pediatrician. While she changed directions and became a creative writing major, she retained her central purpose of helping children. This summer she will be joining the NYC Teaching Fellows, a program that enables its fellows to teach full-time in a New York City public school while pursuing a master’s degree in education. Paikert will go into special education, building on in-depth involvement in education during her time at Hamilton.

The College’s First Year Forward (FYF) program was the focus of an article published on May 13 in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “'Little Tricks' Help Disadvantaged Students Plot Career Paths.” The New York Times also featured Hamilton in a Sunday, May 12, front-page article titled “On a College Waiting List? Sending Cookies Isn’t Going to Help.”

Many Hamilton students and alumni talk about the value of the “Hamilton network” in helping them explore careers, find internships or jobs, or simply provide advice. For nine students interested in filmmaking that network came alive when Benjamin Eckstein ’01 conducted an intense two-day workshop on the Hill on April 20-21.

Trial and error, changing careers and taking risks are all steps to realizing one’s true passions. These were just some of the messages alumni in the field of communications shared with students at Hamilton’s first Communications Bootcamp, sponsored by the Career Center and held in the heart of Times Square on March 23.

This past weekend, Hamilton College held a series of events to kick off its spring social entrepreneurship programming.  The Levitt Center – in conjunction with the Career Center and the COOP – sponsored various talks and information sessions to get students thinking about social innovation.

Hamilton’s Maurice Horowitch Career Center is without doubt one of the most valuable assets on campus for students preparing to make the transition off the Hill and into the “real world,” but sometimes stepping through the doorway and into the third floor of Bristol can be a little intimidating. To address this issue, the Career Center has teamed up with the Days-Massolo Center to offer a collaborative workshop series spread out over the course of the second semester.

Hamilton’s Career Center is constantly evolving and creating new programming to help students achieve success following graduation. On Jan. 27 the Career Center launched its newest program, Interview Mojo, which focused on the skill of job interviewing and the ways in which it can be practiced and improved.

Five members of Hamilton’s class of 2013 spent a week shadowing resident physicians at the St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica, from Jan. 14-18.  Tiffany Andrade, Emma Geduldig, Robert Hawkins, Megan Lander and Akritee Shrestha all received real-life experience in medical careers. The program, “A Week in the Life of a Family Medicine Resident,” is in its eight consecutive year.

During the two weeks before they returned to campus, some 143 Hamilton sophomores got a close look at possible careers as they took part in the third HamiltonExplore, sponsored by the Career Center.

Transitioning to college can be tough for anyone, and international, first-generation, and historically underrepresented students may face additional challenges. Recognizing the possible need for extra support in taking this step into higher education, Hamilton created the Multicultural Peer Mentoring Project (MP²). Peer mentors offer these students more assistance based on their own experiences making the same transition.