Mark's Story
How Careers With A Conscience Got Started
As a career counselor I have met with many students who try to select lifetime work based on personal needs, financial needs, personal talents/skills, and the strength of certain kinds of work in the job market (job security). However, each year there are always a few students who try to place themselves in the world of work from a different vantage point. They want to do something with the time of their lives that will be helpful to others, or to the environment, or to the development of a better world in some way. These are the altruists, for whom financial success, or even personal success, are not the first concern.
These few altruists can often describe well the sort of life, and work life, they want, but rarely find any resource to help them in their pursuits. They frequently become discouraged and settle for something less than what their hearts desire. So I began to keep a list, on my computer, of organizations and work sources that provided jobs, internships, and volunteer opportunities that might satisfy the goals of these different job seekers, and dreamed of creating something more accessible and complete at a later time. After all, groups like major corporations and the military have a tremendous presence in any career search service, but nowhere in career services do we see promotion of non-violent work to educate the destitute, save habitats, or bring economic justice to the beleaguered. Yet there are students who yearn for such opportunities.
In the back of my mind I kept thinking, I need to speak to Doug Clark about this. Doug is the political science teacher who advises our Peace Studies Program, our colleges only internationally recognized program. Instead, Doug came to me. He had the same idea and had already applied for a tuition grant from Student Life and Leadership for a student to begin finding applicable sources and creating a web site. Shortly thereafter we hired Brook Colley to begin creating our site. It was Doug's idea that this site needed to be tended to by the Career Center, rather than Peace Studies, so that students would see the link on our web site and be able to respond out of their own interest. To that end, another counselor, Dael Dixon, and our Service Learning coordinator, Sherry Rosen, became involved in working with Brook, our part-time, student employee, and the project came to life.
Our hope is that this site will help those students who do not see their personal values reflected in the general world of work, to find a way to have productive and happy lives. The pursuit of happiness, after all, means different things to different people.
