These classes can help in your job search

Looking for help on your résumé? Don't know what a personal statement is? ENGL391: Advanced Composition and the University Career Center can teach students all those skills and more.

ENGL391 is more commonly known as an option for the professional writing requirement, otherwise known as junior English. Students who do not receive an "A" in English 101: Introduction to Writing are required to take this class.

ENGL391 teaches students to create a career dossier.The dossier consists of a cover letter, application letter, personal statement, recommendation letter and résumé. 

Melanie Faith, who teaches ENGL391 each semester and literature some semesters said she thinks the class is beneficial to students.

"I think this class helps to prepare students for the afterlife by encouraging them to think as professionals rather than as students," said Faith.

The course also usually requires a research proposal prepared by a small group of students. The proposal requires in-depth research, and some of the student proposals have been presented to the university as viable plans for cost-cutting or quality-of-life improvement.

Career dossiers are used in the "real" world when students apply for graduate school, law school or a job.

 Faith said students who take this course, or ones like it, will be given an edge that other recent grauates may not have when applying to schools and jobs.

Faith also said she hopes the students enrolled in her courses "take away a sense of professionalism."  

She wants her students to learn teamwork and be able to use their carrier dossiers for the rest of their careers.

Three students currently enrolled in ENGL391 have different feelings toward the class.

Vaidehi Patel, a junior biology and Japanese major, is planning to use the personal statement she wrote for the class to George Washington University because the school requires one. Besides the personal statement, she does not feel like she has learned much so far.

"Mostly what I've done is fixed commas in this class," Patel said.

Junior art studio and communication major Courtney James does not plan to go to graduate school and thinks her art portfolio will be more important to potential employers than her career dossier will be. She also said she does not feel she has learned much in the class.

"I feel like a lot of what we do is mostly edit, though it's good to have the experience," James said.

But some students do find this class useful.

Anastasia Vvedenskaya, a senior environmental politics and policy major, took ENGL391 over the summer. According to Vvedenskaya, the class was beneficial to helping create a carefully constructed career dossier.

"It helped me organize my own thoughts about what to do after graduation," Vvedenskaya said.

Vvedenskaya even got to present her proposal, which she made in the class, to the Department of Transportation Services.  

She said she "recommends this class to juniors."

In addition to ENGL391, the career center offers several classes designed to help students.

One class the Career Center provides is EDCP108-I, which helps students transition into internships. They also offer EDCP108-J: Job Search Strategies which helps students learn how to get a job and interview properly. EDCP108-C: Career Clarification assists students in selecting a major. All of the classes are worth one credit.

The fourth class, UNIV099, is an internship seminar that is not worth any credit.

These classes "typically get filled up," according to Linda LeNoir, assistant director of student support services at the career center. The classes are offered in the fall and spring semesters and are taught by the University Career Center.

"These are classes that will make sense to you in the long run," said LeNoir.

ga@umdbk.com