Last month, five twenty-somethings stepped onto the Wanamaker stage: an attorney, a financial manager, a policy analyst, a non-profit executive, and a radio host. If this sounds like the cast of a new reality show, it wasn’t. These were five recent graduates of Principia College who represent some of the many potential career paths made possible by the coursework in the College’s new Center for Civic and Global Engagement.
Speaking to a crowd of students, faculty, alumni, and community members, Hunter Hummell (US’17, C’21), William Johnson (US’19, C’23), Logan Landry-Jennings (C’18), Marie Sherman (C’20), and Weston Williams (C’15) discussed how Principia’s liberal arts education had prepared them for their respective careers.
The diverse group has been around the world and back since their days in Elsah, but they all shared one thing in common: their agreement that Principia’s multi-disciplinary academic approach provided the perfect launchpad for a life of civic and global engagement.
Sherman, whose path has taken her to Kenya, Spain, then home to Toronto, is a policy analyst for the Ontario Ministry of Education. “My path wasn’t necessarily linear,” she says. “Everything just followed, one step after another, and Principia is where I built this foundation of skills that served me all through grad school and in my current work. It’s where I learned to think critically and challenge assumptions, where I learned how to research, write, balance many priorities, and manage my time. The concept of being a global citizen has been so crucial for how I approach everything in my life.”
Williams graduated from Principia College with a philosophy degree, but his divergent career path also benefited from the broad skills-based learning that now falls under the umbrella of the Center for Civic and Global Engagement. “I was able to do a wide range of things at Principia, which people I know who went to larger universities didn’t get. As a result, they left college without having had the opportunity to try the things they might be interested in.” By contrast, Williams let his curiosity and passion for classical music and opera open unexpected pathways while at Principia College. “I took a random class that I didn’t even read the syllabus for, and now it’s my career as a production coordinator and on-air host,” he says.
Like Williams, Landry-Jennings arrived on campus with a vision of a future that took a turn after a Principia class sparked a hidden passion. “My freshman year, I took a course on race and ethnicity,” she recalls. “That course changed my life and how I saw the world.”
Landry-Jennings dropped her notion of double-majoring in business and art and zeroed-in on sociology and anthropology. “I learned so much about the world and challenges that groups face that I hadn’t faced,” she recounts. “So, when I graduated, I was inspired to go into nonprofits so I could use my privilege to help others.”
Echoing Sherman, Landry-Jennings says, “The skills I learned at Principia are so hard to gain other places—like critical thinking, having hard conversations, finding solutions to issues. There’s always so much to learn, but those specific skills I gained in my sociology program degree are ones that you don’t learn on the job.”
Today, she manages fundraising for a Florida nonprofit that works to address housing and food insecurity. It’s no reality show, but when it comes to civic and global engagement, it doesn’t get more real than that.