A career services center focused solely on graduate students has opened at Iowa State.

Graduate College Career Services is the result of concerns brought to the attention of Arko Provo Mukherjee, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. 

“The [other] career offices are already overwhelmed with undergraduates,” Mukherjee said. “It’s hard for them to specifically reach out to grad students.”

Mukherjee said a career service department focused on graduate students alone was needed because graduate students often have different needs than undergrads. Graduate students may need more focused assistance.

“If you earn an undergraduate degree, the field is wide open for you,” Mukherjee said. “Once you come to grad school, you’re trying to specialize … sometimes it can be difficult to translate [those] skills and showcase them as skills the industry can use.”

The new office located in Pearson Hall is run by Karin Lawton-Dunn, graduate career services coordinator. Lawton-Dunn transferred from her position as grant coordinator in electrical and computer engineering at the beginning of spring semester. While she is still working out the details of her new job, Lawton-Dunn has already begun to work with students.

She also plans to work with each individual college’s career services offices to find out which system works best for individual students. 

“Part of this position’s goal is to work with graduate students early in their program to start thinking about careers early rather than once they’ve recieved a master’s [degree] and a Ph.D. and realize that wasn’t the route they should have gone,” Lawton-Dunn said.

Mukherjee said the new program receives its funding directly from the graduate college and has had support from the provost office since the idea was proposed.

“Iowa State students earning master’s and doctoral degrees typically enter the workforce at higher levels, and often in leadership positions,” said Senior Vice President and Provost Jonathan Wickert. 

Wickert said the coordinator [Lawton-Dunn] also will serve postdoctoral research associates who typically are at Iowa State to strengthen their skill sets in preparation for advanced career positions.

“The new graduate career services coordinator will compliment our successful programs in each college, while offering additional counseling in communication, leadership skills and the breadth of career opportunities within and outside of academia,” Wickert said.

Lawton-Dunn said she sees an opportunity to help postdoctoral students right away because they don’t truly belong to any specific college.

“For example, I’m affiliated [with] the College of Engineering, but I’m also affiliated with the graduate college,” Mukherjee said. “So the challenge is to see where the College of Engineering can help the student and where the graduate college can help.”

Lawton-Dunn said they can help students learn to sell their set of specialized skills to potential employers, especially employers outside of academia. Graduate Career Services will also emphasize entrepreneurship opportunities.

“There is a lot of help on campus for students who want to go into academic jobs,” Mukherjee said. “But we felt there was not enough support from the graduate college to specifically help graduate students search for non-academic jobs.”

Lawton-Dunn said she hopes to use the resources at the Research Park to not only connect students to jobs directly, but to build networking opportunities. She also hopes to connect students who have the research know-how and a commercially-viable product with students and professionals with business savvy. 

Mukherjee and Lawton-Dunn said they hope to foster an improvement in the entrepreneurship culture at Iowa State.

“There is a lot of cutting edge research being done here,” Mukherjee said. “We should focus on what types of research can be … essentially sold or form companies.”

Possibilities could be plentiful, he said. 

“How cool would it be to have a “Google” come from Iowa State?” he added.