HELPING STUDENTS FIND THEIR WAY: A Q&A WITH BRANDEN GRIMMETT

EMORY’S NEW PATHWAYS

CENTER launched this semester with the arrival of Branden Grimmett, new vice provost for career and professional development and associate dean for Emory College of Arts and Sciences. An integral part of the university-wide Student Flourishing initiative, the Pathways Center for the first time unites existing resources and programs from Emory College

Q. Tell us a little about your background and how you got here.

BRANDEN GRIMMETT: I have been working in higher education career services for more than fifteen years at six different private liberal arts institutions. My own personal experience as a theologian and musician has been helpful in navigating conversations with students and families, about their concerns around how a college student discerns their career path. I was more than my major and so are students today.

Investment in education is not always immediately seen as valuable on the day you take a course or graduate. Most students I’ve worked with look back on their time in college, and they really do see the value of what they learned. More importantly, they differentiate their own preparedness in the workplace compared to people who have not had a liberal arts education. Every Emory College graduate’s greatest asset is their liberal arts education.

Q. The Pathways Center is an entirely new entity and approach to the student experience for the university and for Emory College of Arts and Sciences in particular. What are its main goals?

GRIMMETT: We want to serve as a national model for higher education by seamlessly preparing students for and connecting them to local, national, and global internships, and Campus Life. It aims to provide students with career services, experiential learning, national scholarships and fellowship, pre-health advising, and undergraduate research under one roof. graduate and professional schools, postgraduate fellowships, and full-time employment.

We talked with Grimmett about how students can best leverage their liberal arts education at Emory into careers—and lives—of meaning and consequence postgraduation.

The offices that compose the Pathways Center are now all connected through the new center so that students don’t carry the burden of navigating this themselves, but instead can rely on the institution to remove some of the obstacles for them. Finally, we want the center to serve as a single hub for recruiting Emory talent and attracting top employers in every industry, locally, nationally, and globally.

Q. One of the bigger changes is that the Career Center has moved from Campus Life and is now based in Emory College. What impact will that have for students?

GRIMMETT: The fact that the Career Center is now a part of the academic experience of Emory means that we can more closely tie classroom learning to the skills that will help students solve some of the biggest problems in the world. We will be realigning our work to be more closely integrated with academic departments, ensuring faculty understand what the Pathways Center is doing and how it can be helpful to their teaching, and working together to identify ways we can help each other.

Q. Emory’s focus on providing an excellent liberal arts education has long meant it views education as a public good, not a private transaction. How do we counteract an increasingly skeptical public that sees college as a transactional experience?

GRIMMETT: The best way to counteract that is to look at the alumni of Emory College. We have a population of students who successfully launch after graduation by fully leveraging their liberal arts education to lead companies, governments, communities, and international bodies. Emory College alumni are leaders because they have an ability to navigate ambiguity due to their liberal arts education. They are adept in approaching difficult situations with empathy and understanding.

At the same time, they have developed the technical skills in their majors that allow them to lead with expertise. Everything we do in the Pathways Center will involve alumni, because they are the nearest expression of what our students’ hopes and dreams are.

Q. How do you plan to demonstrate to students how Emory’s commitment to liberal arts education, and the skills they gain in critical thinking, communication, team building, etc., can translate into potential careers in any field?

GRIMMETT: We want students to understand that their liberal arts skills are the same skills that employers are looking for in all jobs. The National Association of College and Employers has a set of career competencies that map very cleanly with liberal arts skills. Employers recruit and evaluate early talent based on these competencies.

The good news is that most employers looking for recent college graduates or interns are really measuring the fit for jobs in the same way that students are being evaluated in their curriculum.

When students successfully complete their time at Emory, whether they know it or not, they will also have prepared for navigating the workplace.

—April Hunt

topics such as leadership development, religion and spirituality, and careers in STEM. This year, new offerings gave students the chance to connect with peers who were interested in innovation, social justice, sustainability, and more.

“We don’t define who they ultimately become; that’s their journey,” says Enku Gelaye, senior vice president and dean of campus life. “We create opportunities for them to explore. We also don’t assume that they don’t have formed, or forming, identities when they get to us. No student comes here a blank slate.”

One of the biggest projects coming out of Campus Life is the Identity Spaces Project, which involves the renovation of Cox Hall. The first phase of the project involved renovating existing cultural identity spaces on the first floor of the Alumni Memorial University Center. In fall 2023, there will be new spaces for Asian Pacific Islander Desi American students, the Center for Women at Emory, Centro Latinx, Emory Black Student Union (EBSU), and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Life on the third floor of Cox Hall.

Gelaye hopes that by moving students into one space, there will be opportunities for cross-sectional programming to explore multiple identities. “You can be at El Centro and EBSU at the same time if you’re Afro Latina, for example,” says Gelaye. “Those spaces can be programming around similar concepts but also serve as launch points for students to utilize other opportunities at the university, such as research and study abroad. The center is not the only place these students can experience Emory. It’s a launching point to accessing all of Emory.”

Unlimited Exploration

Giving students more opportunities to explore and define their own, meaningful paths is the central mission of the Student Flourishing initiative. From new and reimagined courses to additional spaces for reflection and connection, student flourishing will fundamentally change how Emory defines student success.

The seven liberal arts, as outlined by Greek philosophers, are grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. For Provost Bellamkonda, the Student Flourishing initiative is building upon these traditional studies to create a be er world.

“The initiative is a journey to rediscover the liberal arts,” says Bellamkonda. “At the time they were conceptualized, these were the skills necessary for a person to be successful in life. At Emory we believe that today’s liberal arts remain fantastic vehicles to instill certain habits of the mind, including critical thinking, reflection, and analysis, so our students can flourish professionally and lead fulfilling lives.”

Gelaye agrees, adding, “What would be an incredible marker of our success is that when they graduate, students will say Emory cared about me as an individual, that Emory met me where I am, and being at Emory helped me be a be er person.”

BY PAM AUCHMUTEY