Sonia Elliott - Fusing Career Support and The Liberal Arts
Education, Culture, and Society, M.S.Ed. 2001
Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, doesn’t have a career services office. Instead, the private liberal arts college boasts the Office of Student and Post-Graduate Development, where Director of Employer and Community Partnerships Sonia L. Elliott, C’88, GED’01, and colleagues work with students from freshman through senior year. “What attracted me to this institution was that it had the most holistic model I’ve ever seen for this kind of work,” says Elliott. The 2,400-student F&M has ventured beyond traditional career services that tend to focus on limited, senior-year support. Instead, F&M’s take on workforce development starts before freshman year at an event for admitted students. It continues with programming offered through college houses, Greek organizations, athletics, and multiple student groups. All are nontraditional venues for career services, Elliott notes.
“We’re going to find your child as a freshman—it doesn’t matter if they aren’t sure about what they want to do. We’re helping them to start having the conversation and try things out.”
Over the course of a student’s four-year experience, the Office of Student and Post-Graduate Development offers hundreds of touch points, Elliott says. Her focus on employers includes not only job fairs, but also job seeker boot camps with alumni, winter break mini-internships, and immersion trips exploring various industries. “I try to give students different perspectives on what a particular industry is,” Elliott says.
As she works to strengthen F&M’s relationships across industries and sectors, Elliott draws on a background of leading higher education initiatives and developing community and corporate partnerships. She began her higher education career at Penn and joined F&M in 2015 after serving in posts at Temple University, the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office, and a charter school management organization. Elliott also draws on her time in the Education, Culture, and Society master’s program at Penn GSE as she seeks to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. “DEI is not just about students of color,” she says. “It’s about all students. Employers want to know that you understand the importance of inclusion.”
Within six months of graduation, Elliott says, 96.3 percent of F&M’s Class of 2021 was employed or pursuing further education. For Elliott and her colleagues, the work does not stop there. True to its name, the Office of Student and Post-Graduate Development offers lifelong career development to alumni.
“I love what I do,” Elliott says. “Our focus on a strong and diverse liberal arts education encourages our students and alumni to think critically, and ultimately transform theory into practice, in an ever-changing and challenging world.”
This article appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of The Penn GSE Magazine.
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