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Share thisWiedefeld Interviewed for "Christianity Today" Story About Student Motivations & Stable Jobs
Kimberley Wiedefeld, VP for Enrollment Management, was recently interviewed by Christianity Today for an article entitled, "Forget the College Experience: Students Want Stable Jobs." The article gives insight into how student motivations affect what colleges are offering.
Wiedefeld's interview responses in this story:
Kimberley Wiedefeld, vice president for enrollment management at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York, says that prospective students want to know how their degree will help them get a job and whether the faculty members will learn their names and become part of their professional network. “They’re looking for the best pathway to get to that next part of their story,” she says. “And sometimes they don’t know what that next part will be, so they’re looking for a place that is going to prepare them and help them figure [that] out . . . but it’s still career-focused.”
In order to serve students in that pursuit, Roberts Wesleyan College is building a community engagement center that will house a student union. “It’s not going to look like your traditional student union,” Wiedefeld explained. “It actually puts the career development center in the student union along with community institutes” like The Business Solutions Institute, which provides training and development opportunities to local organizations. In other words, those potential future bosses and job opportunities? They’ll be walking right through the doors of the student union, bringing career readiness that much more to the forefront of the everyday college student experience.
Wiedefield also says that while parents have always asked about safety on campus, there’s a specific component they’re asking about more often in recent years—schools’ focus on mental health. As rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide rise, some parents may not care about the old traditional markers of the student experience—the football games, the clubs, the rock-climbing wall in the rec center—but they do want to know that their students’ wellbeing will be prioritized as one form of ensuring their safety.
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