NetVUE Grant to Help Students Prepare for Careers

NetVUE Grant to Help Students Prepare for Careers

 

Presbyterian College has been selected to receive a NetVUE Vocation Across the Academy Grant to strengthen the link between the liberal arts and career preparation.

“The grant allows us to move forward with interventions to help our students be career-ready after graduation,” says grant co-coordinator Kim Lane, associate dean of students and director of career and professional development at PC. “Employers across all industries want to hire college graduates who possess the liberal arts competencies, so we need to help our students be able to develop and articulate them across the academy.”

The $25,000 award will fund project activities that are part of PC’s IDEA program. An acronym for “Inquire, Decide, Engage, Achieve,” IDEA provides opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to explore the intellectual and theological dimensions of vocation.

Opportunities for Students and Faculty Members

The project activities funded by  NetVUE, or Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education, provide opportunities for students and faculty members.

Opportunities for Students

Students will take three immersion trips, or career treks, to regional metropolitan areas to tour workplaces and to engage with professionals. Each out-of-town on-site visit supports a different career cluster:

  • arts and media/entertainment in Atlanta
  • banking and finance in Charlotte
  • government, public service, and nonprofit organizations in Columbia
  • health and advanced manufacturing/ and automation in Greenville

The NetVUE grant will fund need-based scholarships to defray the costs of students taking unpaid internships in workplaces that do not pay interns, such as nonprofits and in healthcare and other service-related settings.

The offices of Career Development and Religious Life & Community Engagement will connect the content of vocational exploration to existing student communities and small groups, such as Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Student Volunteer Services and Multicultural Student Union.

The NetVUE grant will provide students access to PathwayU, an online tool to help students connect their exploration of calling and purpose to their academic plans at PC and to their future career plans.

Opportunities for Faculty and Staff

Scholarly presentations by faculty will provide opportunities to form a learning community based on the study of vocation and calling.

The NetVUE grant will also fund summer stipends for faculty to develop vocation-related content to embed into the curriculum of their fields of inquiry.

Campus Life staff will create co-curricular learning communities of faculty and staff to explore vocational themes and how they intersect with their own life purpose and career pathways.

Dr. Sharon Knight, Compass director and Professor of Spanish, is the PC faculty grant co-coordinator.

NetVUE is an initiative administered by the Council of Independent Colleges and supported by the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Learn More

Please visit Compass: Chart Your Course to learn how PC students navigate through the IDEA program. For more about how PC students are prepared for life after college, please visit the Career and Professional Development page.