New career office sets students on path to professional success

Monday, May 21, 2018
Students meet employers at the Natural Resources Career Fair sponsored by the St. Martin Career Exploration Center.

When Lucy Spence ’18 graduates from UNH, she won’t just be leaving Durham, she’ll be moving out of the country: The Zoology major is heading to Nicaragua to work for the Peace Corps as an environmental educator. Spence, who minored in Spanish, is ecstatic about the opportunity to teach elementary age children about the environment and show adults how to build environmentally friendly stoves and repurpose items they might otherwise throw away. 

While her four years at UNH prepared her well for this assignment, she credits the new career office at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture with helping her clinch the job offer.

“The St. Martin Career Exploration Office was exceedingly helpful in my Peace Corps application every step of the way,” says Spence. “I am so very thankful for all of the constructive help I received — from perfecting a three-page [federal] resume, to writing a succinct essay, to preparing for my interview.”

Nearly half of COLSA’s students took advantage of at least one of the office’s many services this past fall, more than 300 students participated in career counseling and nearly 500 students attended employer-sponsored events, such as the Biotech Career Panel, Resume Review Day with employers and the Career and Internship Fair. And, students seeking internships are benefiting from expanded employer partnerships and corporate engagement.

The St. Martin Career Exploration Office, which is part of UNH Career and Professional Success, was officially launched in 2016 to serve the specific professional development and career needs of COLSA's students. The office is funded by a generous gift from Christine Carberry ’82 and is part of a university-wide priority to strengthen career preparedness. 

Carberry spent several years mentoring students through UNH’s Pathways Mentoring Program and Career Mentor Network, and through listening to students and participating on the COLSA Development Board, she learned that one of the best ways to attract, retain and support students in the life sciences is to help them better understand what opportunities are available in their fields.

The biochemistry major now serves as the chief operating officer at Keryx Pharmaceuticals, but says the path from earning her degree to discovering the right fit in pharmaceutical product development was not clear-cut. Carberry had wanted to be a pharmacist — until she spent time as a pharmacy technician after graduation. She hopes that the career office will help students discover what they’d like to pursue as early as their first or second year of college.

“When I was a student here, I thought if you were in the sciences you went directly into research or you taught,” Carberry says. “It wasn’t until I was out of school and exploring that I saw the huge range of directions you could take your career — and science was a great base to launch from. And so that was the beginning of the discussion of what would really make an impact to attract, retain, develop and launch students into a life sciences track. That’s when the St. Martin Career Exploration Office came to life, and it’s been absolutely wonderful to hear from students.”   

Carberry’s major gift builds upon the Christine St. Martin Carberry Fund for Biological Sciences, which she established in 2005 to provide discretionary program support for the biological sciences in COLSA. The St. Martin Career Exploration Office is named after her parents.

“I felt like the office should be a supportive resource, just like my parents have been my supportive resource. It should help students be successful and provide them a direction and a place to go,” says Carberry, whose son is in UNH’s class of 2020. “Now they will be part of helping students for years and years.”

Jon Wraith, dean of COLSA, says he and the board are grateful to Carberry for her visionary gift to endow the St. Martin Career Exploration Office. 

“We’ve already seen an incredible increase in the number of students who are actively preparing for and investigating career options, and similarly those who are being recruited by top companies,” he says. “In addition to making sure that our students recognize all they can do with their COLSA education and helping connect them to appropriate mentors, employers and positions, the office is giving our students a gift that’s far more important: an informed start on the pathway to a rewarding life after UNH.”

Carberry adds that participation in an internship is the number one factor that differentiates students who are successful early in their careers from those who are not. Not only do internships prepare students but they help the business community, too —another goal of the center.

“When I was at Biogen, because bio manufacturing was a new field, there weren’t programs and there weren’t people who had the skills sets for that new kind of job,” she says. “We worked with schools to create curricula for bio manufacturing at several Boston area schools, as well as Great Bay Community College and UNH. We had internship programs, and students worked as part of the program, and by the end of the three months if we had an opening and the person was a good fit, it was a seamless transition. Our recruiting costs and time went to zero. This became our primary source for new bio manufacturing employees.”

Lori Dameron, who serves as director of the St. Martin Career Exploration Office and oversees a staff of three, says Carberry has been instrumental in helping staff bring her vision to life. Nearly half of COLSA’s students took advantage of at least one of the office’s many services this past fall, more than 300 students participated in career counseling and nearly 500 students attended employer-sponsored events, such as the Biotech Career Panel, Resume Review Day with employers and the Career and Internship Fair. And, students seeking internships are benefiting from expanded employer partnerships and corporate engagement.

Dameron and her team work to engage students from all class years, not just juniors and seniors.

“It’s just as important to engage first- and second-year students because we are able to assist in defining goals and develop career action strategies embedding experiential learning,” she says. 

This fall, the office will launch the St. Martin Sophomore Experience, a two-day professional development event that includes workshops, alumni presentations and networking.

Niki Navarro ‘18, a biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology major, says she has spent time working on her resume, attending classroom presentations and visiting career fairs at the St. Martin Career Exploration Office over the past three years. She agrees that visiting early and often are keys to developing professional interests and setting goals.

“Whether you want to work in a lab or do something different, there is a lot to learn about opportunities in the science world,” Navarro says. “Everyone at the St. Martin Career Exploration Office is here to help you succeed.”

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