Dr. Nancy Arnesen helps humanities students plan a life post-graduation.
Students in Dr. Nancy Arnesen’s innovative Applied Liberal Arts class spent the fall semester learning how to turn their liberal arts majors into careers.
As part of the class, Dr. Arnesen hosted several alumni panels, including one in October that featured Annie Wilkinson ’08, Liz Jansen ’07, and Ellen Almer Durston ’94, who all shared their post-college experience with the class.
Jansen, an English major who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, is the founder of Women Unite!, a nonprofit she started with four other North Park alums that offers Chicago-based charities help with fundraising, communications, and professional development and training.
“Much of this work was inspired by the community-minded, service-oriented mission of North Park,” says Jansen, who, along with Wilkinson and Almer Durston answered students’ questions about job interviews, work-life balance, and how to turn career obstacles into advantages.
Wilkinson, an art major, is Head of User Experience at the Brandel Library and Almer Durston, an English major, works in North Park’s University Marketing and Communications department.
Dr. Arnesen developed the unique class after her own daughter decided to attend a liberal arts university.
“I kept telling my students, and my daughters, that you can do anything with a liberal arts education,” says Arnesen. “Then I thought ‘well, what does that mean? What does that really look like?’”