By Miranda Lee, CCL Student Staff
After years of hosting an annual NonProfit Expo in collaboration with the Center for Career Development (CCD) --an event that consisted of a panel followed by a fair in which interested students could interact with different organizations--Dr. Danika Burgess Brown got the sense that Rice students were looking for more opportunities to explore and enrich their interest in possible careers in the nonprofit and public sectors. While the NonProfit Expo was a start, Dr. Brown and the CCL staff envisioned a series focused on civic professionalism, the intersection of civic leadership and career-building AND one of the center’s foundational concepts.
Thus began a collaboration between the Center for Civic Leadership, the Center for Career Development, Alumni Relations, and LILIE on how to create a campus-wide series that made support for these types of careers visible to students. They worked to put together panels and workshops, ranging from topics such as LinkedIn and networking to alternative paths with a graduate degree. Furthermore, they designed a networking event in which facilitated discussion and mingling would allow students to generate connections and relationships that could help them understand and realize their own goals for the future.
Unfortunately, due to our Spring 2020 being cut short by the COVID-19 crisis, the Civic Career Series was never able to finish, and the planned networking event had to be cancelled. Despite this, the CCL will absolutely continue the series in the future, likely stretching it over both semesters. Too often Rice students are offered a narrow view of what their futures and careers can be. The Civic Career Series of the future will help to broaden these perspectives and bring the values of civic leadership and professionalism to more of the Rice community!