A Career Preparation Course for Students in Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

As professors, we all want our students to succeed, and to be motivated to study. We all get questions from students that can be boiled down to, What can I do with X degree? Certainly, a quick answer is to point students to career websites, or to send them to the career services department on campus. However, we want to do better than that. We want students to learn how to investigate these future directions, and to have them think about their future more holistically--not just an effort to find a job. To that end, we have developed a course at Whitworth University to help students in mathematics and computer science in their investigations. We help students to learn more carefully about their own strengths and values, and to find careers that match those strengths and values. We provide students with opportunities to consider many kinds of vocational options: industry, graduate school, and mission work. We push students to investigate how their life is affected and influenced doe to these various career directions, and to think further than just how to get their first job. Finally, we encourage students to think more holistically about vocation, and how their own faith and ethical values play an important role in their vocation. In this paper, we discuss the course and its components. When appropriate, we will also discuss how faith and ethics were considered in components

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