Saint Mary's Newsroom / Campus Notes

This article, which ran in the Rochester Post-Bulletin, is co-signed by Father James P. Burns, president, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota; Lori J. Carrell, chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester, Jeffery S. Boyd, president, Rochester Community and Technical College; Scott Olson, president, Winona State University; Adenuga Atewologun, president, Riverland Community College; John Poe, chair, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science; Jenifer K. Ward, president, Luther College; Kent Pekel, superintendent, Rochester Public Schools; Julie Nigon, executive director, Greater Rochester Advocates for Universities and Colleges (GRAUC); and Julie Ruzek, executive director, Cradle to Career.

If you’re helping a young person with this big decision, you may wish to talk through these reasons to consider going to college.

“So, what are you going to do when you graduate?” If you have the gift of a young person in your life, you know their decisions about next steps are pivotal — and stressful. I’m joined by nine other Rochester-area education leaders in affirming the importance of considering college. As educators and families work together to support high school seniors during this critical life transition, we do so in a context that is different from the one we experienced at that same stage of life.

Today’s young people are coming of age during a global pandemic and an era of societal strife. Social media feeds put those challenges front and center day and night, fueling anxiety about the future. The current tight labor market and inflation are evident to the grown-ups, making some — like the Texas authors of a recent Post Bulletin editorial on the topic — question the need and value of college.

At the same time, for young people these decisions are personal. They are moving from the childhood question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” to a more adult question that requires them to connect aspirations to concrete next steps. Many are asking themselves, “How can I make a living and make a difference in a world full of challenges?”

We know that one size does not fit all. Attending a two- or four-year college isn’t the right option for every student, but it’s something every student should be prepared for and should carefully consider. If you’re helping a young person with this big decision, you may wish to talk through these reasons to consider going to college.

1. You will be able to take care of yourself and others you love over your lifetime. That’s what economists call “return on investment” (ROI). Some credential or degree after high school still pays off when analyzed for lifetime earnings potential. A study at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that the average lifetime earnings of a worker with only a high school diploma is about $1.3 million, while a person with a college degree earns nearly $1 million more, and a person with an advanced degree averages nearly $2.7 million, or more than twice as much as the high school graduate.
2. You will find people at college who are committed to supporting your continued learning, development, and financial well-being. Higher education institutions in the Rochester region have caring professors as well as people ready to help you with financial aid and personal budgeting, career exploration, academic advising, tutoring, disability services, counseling, and more. You will not be alone as you strive for success at college.
3. You will have more choices in your future. Many of the in-demand professions important to the Rochester region (and beyond) require further learning beyond high school (and the credentials that represent that learning) — including most trades, nurses, medical doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists, counselors, researchers, accountants, and the list goes on. Other jobs that will become available in your lifetime don’t even exist yet, as artificial intelligence and other advancing technologies continue to change the way we work and the types of work that are needed. College can educate you for a future full of open doors and new possibilities.
4. You live in a world that needs you to develop your full potential. There are a lot of problems out there that need solving. Another kind of ROI is the common good of an educated citizenry ready to tackle the increasingly complex challenges of our world, together. The recent breakthrough in nuclear fusion that holds the potential to solve the climate crisis is an example of the kind of work the world needs. We want you to have a good life and make a good living, and we also need you and other young people to work for the greater good of humanity.
5. You will meet other fascinating young people. Many of us grow up surrounded by people who are similar to us. The diversity of a campus community provides the opportunity to get to know people with perspectives different from your own. Those new friendships can be fun, for sure — but connecting across differences is also a key competency employers are seeking (and that society sorely needs). College brings new friends, new perspectives, and new skills.
6. You have more to learn. No matter how much you know now, there is more to learn, and college provides the opportunity to dig deep into the problems you want to solve and the issues that make you curious. (Discovering a sense of purpose is linked with happiness!) At the same time, colleges in the Rochester region are connected with employers so we can ensure your coursework is not only relevant to you now, but also designed to develop the competencies that will help you launch your career when you graduate.
7. You can find a campus that is worth the investment. Colleges and universities in the Rochester region are innovating to adapt to the emerging needs of young people, employers, and society — including new approaches to decreasing student costs while increasing student success. There are many ways to finance your education, and there is no more valuable investment you can make in yourself and your future than a college education.

We are united in our commitment to develop human potential, providing pathways to financial stability for individuals while also contributing to the common good now and into the future.

Name: Grace Howard

Year: Senior (Class of 2023)

Major: Psychology

Internship site: Minneapolis VA (Veterans Affairs) Medical Center, Service to Science Scholars Research Program (SSS-RP)

What were your duties during the internship?

My internship focused on mental health research that is being conducted at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. As such, I had the great opportunity to have two mentors who are both clinician investigators at the VA. This means that they, as clinical psychologists, divide their time between research and clinical practice. I worked with Dr. Carol Chu, who is a suicide risk and prevention researcher, and Dr. Jacob Finn, who is a TBI (traumatic brain injury) rehabilitation and outcomes researcher. I got to meet with both of them regularly and have conversations about their work, their areas of research, and what it’s like to be a clinical psychologist in a healthcare setting. I found these meetings extremely helpful, but I was also happy to help out on projects like data entry, creation of materials related to participant retention, and creation of materials for studies (ex: procedural checklist and entering questions into software used for ecological momentary assessment, or app-based questionnaires). I also spent time catching up on the body of literature on both my mentors’ fields so that I would have a better theoretical understanding from which to build. My cohort attended professional development seminars, research seminars, and a weekly class on data analysis and visualization using R and R-Studio in addition to our various responsibilities to our mentors and their projects. The professional development seminars were very helpful, as we went over lab structure, grants, posters, how to give an elevator pitch, and most importantly, some of what to expect from being a research-oriented clinical psychologist.

What did you learn during your internship?

In addition to the skills that I developed, I learned what a career as a clinical psychologist can look like in the real world, and especially outside the world of university professorship. It opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities I hadn’t considered. More importantly, I got a feel for whether I found careers like those of my mentors appealing. For me, this experience taught me that I do want to be a clinical psychologist, and gave me some professional skills for reaching that goal. I learned what to look for in graduate programs for research, and I took the GRE in preparation for applications. I learned about research grants and how research is funded, which gave me helpful insight into administrative expectations for a career similar to that of my mentors.
I also learned that I know more than I thought I did. I wasn’t sure, going into the program, how prepared I would be compared to the others in my cohort, some of whom were already admitted to doctoral programs. I have to say that I realized through my internship that I was ready far beyond my own expectations and that I was capable of actually being helpful and contributing to real-life, professional-level research.

Finally, I learned useful skills, including some basic R and R-Studio skills for data analysis and visualization, professional-development skills, and strengthened my research skills! It was extremely beneficial to me to have the opportunity to discuss my mentors’ research with them and to be able to ask them both theoretical and practical questions ranging from “how is this part theorized to work with this other thing” to “why use this scale over another scale” and “how reliable is this scale?”

How did the work connect to your education at Saint Mary’s?

I was constantly drawing on everything I learned in my classes at Saint Mary’s. I was so thankful for my experiences here that allowed me to be so prepared for a research internship like the one in which I participated. I can find connections between almost every psychology class I took and the skills I used in my internship: general research skills and knowledge of different measures from scientific research in psychology, interviewing skills from clinical and counseling psychology, research methods and process knowledge from the body image collaborative research lab, data analysis skills from quantitative analysis, and much more. My mentors made comments on how they were impressed that they didn’t have to explain certain parts of the research process to me, and I was happy to be able to engage in discussion with them on a more knowledgeable level. As a part of the internship, my cohort attended data analysis and visualization seminars that used R-Studio as the software. I had no clue how to use R or code at all before this experience, but I found myself helping to explain it to others because my professors had prepared me to think critically and understand the analysis, even if I was completely new to the program.

Overall, I found that my psychology education at Saint Mary’s prepared me amazingly well for this internship, surpassing my own expectations.

How will this experience help you after you graduate from Saint Mary’s?

This experience has helped me decide what I want my next steps to be after graduation and how to reach them. More than that, I know that having had the opportunity to take part in a research internship like the one I did at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center this summer will be a great help in showing my preparation and skills for graduate programs that will be looking at my experience. I know that I will draw heavily on this experience in terms of having professional and applied experience already in my chosen field. I do think that the most important thing it will help me with is confidence. I know, because I did this internship, that I can meet standards and contribute to psychology research in a professional setting.

Name: Maeve A Hastings

Year: Senior

Major: Psychology

Internship Site: Association House of Chicago

What were your duties during the internship?

I worked as a Rehabilitation Services Associate (RSA) at a Psychosocial Rehabilitation (PSR) program. Every day I would work closely with adults with serious mental illness (SMI) with groups focused on independent living, medication and symptom management, building interpersonal relationships, and other areas with the focus of helping the participants gain independence and eventually live on their own. My personal responsibilities included co-administration of group therapy, the completion of case notes, and serving breakfast each day for the participants. Primarily, when I would be administering groups on my own at the end of my internship, I would use art therapy techniques in order to help my participants communicate their symptoms and feelings where it might have otherwise been difficult to vocalize.

What did you learn during your internship?

I really learned a lot about presentations of schizophrenia, as the majority of the participants in the program were individuals with schizophrenia. I also learned more about PSR programs as a whole and was able to see firsthand what psychosocial rehabilitation is able to do for social skills building and independence fostering. I also learned how some individuals with SMIs can learn to live independent lives, working with their illnesses instead of against it.

How did the work connect to your education at Saint Mary’s?

My experience this summer was a part of the internship requirement in the psychology major, and as such, I am incorporating what I learned into my senior psychology capstone, which will be presented on Dec. 3 at the Psychology Symposium. I was also able to utilize a lot of the classes I’d taken for my major, including Clinical and Counseling, Learning and Cognition, and a class I had taken outside of my major, which was Introduction to Arts and Healing. These classes helped me utilize skills in order to properly serve the population I was interacting with on a daily basis. Some of my participants had been in the program for over a decade, and they were very interested to hear the more scientific side of psychology, helping them further understand their disorders. So, being able to utilize and teach, at a very basic level, the skills I’d learned in my classes was very helpful.

How will this experience help you after you graduate from Saint Mary’s?

Something invaluable I learned was how the clinical field of psychology can function. I learned skills that will put me a step above my peers in graduate programs and will set me up to succeed when I do my clinical internships at the end of my graduate career. I also made a lot of networking connections within the field, which will be invaluable after I finish my education. It also allowed me firsthand experience with individuals with SMIs, which I was fortunate to have as an undergraduate student. I think that if a student has a chance, even if it isn’t required, they should complete an internship in the field they hope to enter.