U.S. News highlights Conn's excellence in career preparation, innovation and undergraduate teaching

U.S. News & World Report highlights Connecticut College’s innovative career and professional development program in a Sept. 9 article, “How Colleges Help Students Gear Up for Jobs.”  The College is also listed among the most innovative schools and among the national liberal arts colleges with the best undergraduate teaching. 

Conn’s Hale Center for Career Development helps students put their liberal arts educations into action with personalized advising, alumni mentoring and a Flexible Career Funding Program that offers students multiple funding opportunities for internships and career preparation during all four years at Conn.  

Khanh Nghiem ’19 told U.S. News that he used the funding to do three different jobs. He developed software to optimize college exam schedules with one of his professors, worked as a product manager at an education technology startup, and served as a lab assistant at a nonprofit research institute affiliated with Yale University. The diversity of his experiences paid off, he told U.S. News, as he recently began his career as a cloud technical resident at Google.

Career planning is a cornerstone of Connections, Connecticut College’s reinvention of the liberal arts. The innovative curriculum takes the traditional academic major and makes it even more relevant by linking it to a personally meaningful Pathway or interdisciplinary study, off-campus learning experiences, internships and other professional development opportunities to ensure every student graduates with the integrative thinking, problem-solving and leadership skills necessary for a meaningful life and career.

In the spring, U.S. News asked top college officials to identify liberal arts colleges making the most innovative improvements in terms of curriculum, faculty, students, campus life, technology or facilities, as well as institutions with with strong commitments to undergraduate teaching. Connecticut College is listed among the top 30 most innovative colleges and is ranked No. 25 in the best undergraduate teaching category. 

The College was previously recognized in The New York Times for setting the standards for undergraduate teaching. The article, “Teaching Professors to Become Better Teachers,” explores trends in faculty development and efforts by colleges and universities to improve the quality of undergraduate teaching. At Connecticut College, faculty learn to better motivate and engage their students through the Joy Shechtman Mankoff Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL).

“The best teachers are constantly working on their teaching: assessing, refining, improving,” said Michael Reder ’86, director of the center. “The CTL gives Connecticut College’s faculty a forum to exchange ideas, learn new skills and evaluate their success in the classroom.”