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UNC system: life after graduation |
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Tuesday, 05 December 2006 |
by MALLORI MORRIS
Intern News Reporter
As exams get underway, nearly 1,000 Appalachian State University students are preparing for life outside of Boone.
Whether graduates are destined for their hometown communities or big-city life, they will soon be alumni, but where do they go?
According to Appalachian’s alumni affairs Web site, Appalachian has
83,467 alumni living in the United States, with 61,670 of those in
North Carolina.
South Carolina and Florida are the second and third top destinations for Appalachian graduates.
Marjorie N. Ellis, interim director of the Career Development Center,
said 55 to 70 percent of students look for jobs in the corporate world
while the rest of graduates stay with smaller jobs to start out.
Most job placements depend on a student’s major. Education majors tend
to stay local or return to their hometowns while business majors may
venture outside their comfort zone, Ellis said.
Each year, recruiters visit Appalachian and hold on-campus interviews
for future college grads to try and land a job after graduation, Ellis
said.
“[This is an] exceptional tool for networking students with recruiters,” Ellis said.
She said she has seen a large number of Appalachian students hired by
these on-campus interviews because they are convenient for both the
student and the employer and they do not have to go through a service.
Mardy Ashe, director of career services and cooperative education for
Western Carolina University, said after students graduate, it becomes
hard to track them down and find out where they found jobs and where
they are living.
“Once students graduate, they really don’t stay in touch with our office,” Ashe said.
Ashe said the best way of tracking alumni is through six-years-out surveys sent to education majors.
However, these only receive a 32 percent response rate.
Ashe said for the most part, students share their future plans before leaving the institution.
Ashe said Western’s most popular majors are construction management and criminal justice.
“[The] majority [of students] wind up going to [work] somewhere in North Carolina,” Ashe said.
Like Appalachian, Western offers a career development center for
students to practice interview skills, find internships, learn
networking strategies and use career counseling and resume assistance.
Western is currently preparing one-year-out and six-years-out surveys
for all majors that will help keep track of graduated students, Ashe
said.
Charlenne Figgins, program assistant with alumni relations at
University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said UNC-Wilmington
recently launched an online community for students to report back to
the school about where they found jobs and are presently living.
The site has already attracted 632 alums of UNC-Wilmington to submit their information.
Figgins, an alumna of UNC-Wilmington, said a large majority of students stay in the Wilmington area after they graduate.
Appalachian alumni can keep in touch with the school after graduation
by contacting either the Office of Alumni Affairs or the Career
Development Center.
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