|
OUR
PROXIMITY
ADVANTAGE
Location,
Location, Location: New York
and Philadelphia are extensions
of Lafayette’s campus
By Rob Stewart
Illustrations by Terry Stout
Photography by David W. Coulter
Alysse Henkel ’08 is at the Austrian Cultural Institute in midtown Manhattan, taking in an exhibition of works by women
Maurice Bennett ’06 (left) served a summer internship in equity sales and trading at Credit Suisse First Boston, New York City.
|
|
artists. Down in the financial district, David Greenberg ’06 is touring the New York Mercantile Exchange. Wide-eyed on the West Side, Carolyn Waite ’06 is surrounded by the Chemical Process Industries megashow in the vast Javits Center.
Meanwhile, Kelly Barrows ’06 is in Philadelphia, peering
at portraits by Charles Willson Peale at the Museum of Art.
A little later, while Megan Kaesshaefer ’08 enjoys a performance of the Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera House, Dale McCreedy ’78 drives from Lafayette to her home in the Philadelphia area after speaking with students on campus about career opportunities in her field.
Though what goes on in the classroom and the interaction between faculty and students define the deepest sense of an institution’s character, geographic location plays a significant role in determining its personality.
Curriculum, diversity of the campus community, costs, and just about every other aspect of higher education have changed since many of the nation’s outstanding liberal arts colleges were founded in what was then rural America, but the advantages these institutions provide—typically including small classes,
close relationships between students and faculty, a
tight-knit community, and a beautiful setting—remain.
THEN & NOW
Will Wermuth ’98
Following a junior-year
internship in Lafayette’s
admissions office, Will
Wermuth ’98 decided he wanted to be “on the business side of higher education.”
An internship at the College Board in New York City during his senior year helped him get his career started.
“I woke up every Friday morning at 4:45 and traveled to New York.
To be able to commute once a week to the city and have that real-world experience was phenomenal,” he says. “The proximity that Lafayette has to New York was an enormous benefit for me, because it opened up the internship opportunity that would have never been available to me if
I had gone somewhere else.
“Traveling to New York for job interviews was cake. The internship definitely paved the way for my first job,” in the admissions office at Carnegie Mellon University, he adds.
Now, as manager of NBC’s renowned guest-relations page program,
Wermuth hosts Lafayette students during interim-session externships.
“I think the externs really do get a feel of what it is like to work here,”
he says. “They get a ‘hands-on’ feel of what the job is really like.”
Will Wermuth ’98 (right),
manager of NBC’s guest-relations page program, hosted an externship in
January for Catherine Miervaldis ’07 (left) and Brittney Rothweiler ’06, who met Matt Lauer of
the Today Show.
|
|
A remote location can have disadvantages however—especially, perhaps, in relation to the job market after
graduation. Even in the Internet age, today’s students need access to people. Edward R. Murrow said that the most important aspect of communication is “the last
three feet.” Face-to-face contact plays a greater role in today’s job market than ever.
Lafayette’s location within a 90-minute drive of
two great metropolitan centers, New York City and Philadelphia, provides students prime access to all the professional opportunities—and the educational and cultural resources—these cities offer.
“I love it because we’re so close to things here,” says Henkel, who’s from West Des Moines, Iowa. “At home
the closest thing to me is four hours away in Minneapolis or six hours away in Chicago. I’ve been to museums in New York with classes. I’m also a Marquis Scholar, and we’ve gone to New York and Philadelphia as a group.
Just to be able to be so close to things that are really diverse and a really different resource, well, you just
can’t find that in Des Moines.”
Wall Street Calling
Students seeking a career on Wall Street can’t do better than Lafayette, says Don Chambers, Walter E. Hanson/KPMG Peat Marwick Professor of Business and Finance.
“The concentration of Lafayette alums in investment houses, adjusting for size of the school, is as good as any college or university. I don’t know of any school that would beat us,” Chambers says. “It’s amazing how many Lafayette people are on Wall Street now. It’s become a core strength that we’ve developed.”
“We place about 8-10 students with Wall Street firms every year, so that’s a large percentage of our economics and business majors,” says Susan Averett, professor of economics and business and head of the department. “These placements are often the result of having done an internship on Wall Street, and also often the result of alumni coming back to campus to participate in a panel discussion or to recruit for their firm.”
“In the old days,” echoes Chambers, “it seemed that students would go through four years of school, then in the fourth year send out a resume that would launch them into a job. Now it’s a case of networking and ‘internshipping’ your way into a job on Wall Street.”
Maurice Bennett ’06 is a case in point. The economics and business graduate and Patriot League football scholar-athlete of the year has accepted a position at Credit Suisse, the result of a successful summer internship with the firm.
“If you really want to get a job on Wall Street and you can get an internship, you’ll have a much higher chance of getting hired full-time. Of the 17 people that were interning at Credit Suisse last summer, I believe 10 or 11 were hired. That left only 6 full-time spots or so for everyone else to compete for,” Bennett says.
Not surprisingly, the competition for internships is sharp.
“I know last year Credit Suisse said they had 5,000 applicants and they hired 17 summer interns. It’s pretty competitive,” Bennett reports.
Since internships are vital for getting that first Wall Street job, then easy access to New York is an important asset for Lafayette students. Internships require in-person interviews for the final selection process, Bennett notes.
An hour-and-a-half drive, or a bus from downtown
Easton, will have one in the heart of Manhattan easily
and economically.
Amanda Niederauer ’08 (left) experienced the publishing field in an externship with Kimberly Sica ’04 in the New York City office of the weekly Hearst magazine Quick & Simple.
|
|
But all students, not just those who hope to work in New York or Philadelphia after graduation, reap the benefits of being close to the cities. Lafayette students come into contact with the cities’ educational and cultural assets by way of field trips, internships, and visiting lecturers, who can easily fit a trip to Lafayette into their schedules. The constant academic interaction with these metropolitan areas adds a cosmopolitan component to Lafayette’s small, liberal arts college personality.
“Most people don’t think of liberal arts as needing a lab, but we do,” says Suzanne Westfall, professor and head of English, who feels field trips to theaters, museums, galleries, festivals, and other events are “absolutely necessary to the teaching mission.”
Art students, of course, have wonderful resources at their disposal in New York and Philadelphia, and classes routinely take trips to famous art museums, private showings at galleries, and artists’ studios. The cities’ “cosmopolitanism acquaints students with the world and the diverse types of people they might not see on campus,” adds Ed Kerns, Clapp Professor of Art and director
of the Williams Visual Arts Building.
Students engage in a “different type of conversation” when seeing things and events firsthand, says Barrows,
an American studies graduate. “When you are on-site
you raise different questions from when you are
looking through a book or watching a video.” She
and her classmates visited Philadelphia’s art museum
with Robert Mattison, Metzgar Professor of Art.
“We were able to see Copleys, Rembrandts, and all the Peales,” she says. “There is nothing like seeing the real thing, standing right in front of what you are learning about. It was really neat to study a painting by looking
at it. It’s not necessarily an ‘awe’ experience, but the ability to see how brush strokes are made—you can’t see
that in a slide.”
Barrows also took a field trip to Manhattan’s International Center of Photography in a course with Andy Smith, assistant professor of English and chair of American studies. Smith incorporates trips to sites of historical importance and art exhibits into many of his classes. They show students “how history is represented, organized, and presented,” he says.
“Many students have visited these places in high school, but they now see things with totally new eyes. It’s not just uncritical absorption of what is being presented, it’s ‘How has the museum chosen to exhibit this? How have they arranged it—what’s in, what’s left out? How do they juxtapose issues?’ And the students are shocked by what they didn’t learn before.”
The music department is another frequent visitor,
says Larry Stockton, professor and head of music.
“We use both cities as extensions of our classrooms.”
Orchestras, operas, and jazz clubs are standard program for music students, as well as backstage tours. In the interim-session course The New York Jazz Experience, students spend a week in Greenwich Village, taking in performances at the Blue Note and other world-renowned clubs, enhanced by artists coming to give private sessions to the students at their hotel.
Michael Werner ’07 (left) explored the field of environmental consulting in an externship with Joseph Heaney ’85, principal of Walden Associates, Oyster Bay, N.Y.
|
|
Students and faculty in religious studies courses
visit places of worship and attend religious services, according to Eric Ziolkowski, Dana Professor of Religious Studies. Students’ understanding of religious traditions must “include the ritualistic, liturgical, and institutional aspects” in addition to studying texts in the classroom, “otherwise you are missing some of
the essential features,” he says.
For students and faculty in foreign languages and literatures, the interaction with New York plays out in numerous ways. The latest foreign films can be seen
“on the spur of the moment,” according to Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, associate professor of German and head of the department of foreign languages and literatures.
Lafayette’s affiliations with Deutsche House at NYU and French House at Columbia enable students to participate in these institutions’ events and programs with scholars, writers, and artists. Proximity to New York also gives Lafayette access to the speakers, artists-in-residence, scholars, and programs brought to the United States by the Max Kade Foundation, which promotes the study of both German and German-American history and works
to increase understanding between the people of Germany and the United States.
Many students’ involvement with the close cities’ riches begins in their First-Year Seminar. Several of these interdisciplinary courses, which help introduce students
to the intellectual life of the academy, take advantage of the resources of New York and Philadelphia.
Courses taught by faculty in art, anthropology and sociology, mechanical engineering, and religious studies went to New York in the fall to visit places as varied as Ground Zero, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a comedy club.
And, Kerns adds, “Sixty-five to seventy percent of the visiting artists at Lafayette are from New York. Being close makes it much easier to convince them to come here. We are able to pull people out of New York that you might not be able to get.”
Proximity to the resources close to Lafayette has also brought the intense academic experience of for-credit internships, where students work for organizations for course credit, and honor theses. An art student working in a museum or gallery, an engineer working with a construction firm, a neuroscience major studying animal behavior in a zoo—all these experiences are made possible because students can commute once or twice a week to New York and Philadelphia.
Lafayette recognized the value of getting students work experience years ago. The program of internships for academic credit began in 1979 and was followed two years later by the externship program, where students shadow Lafayette alumni, parents, and friends at their workplaces for two to five days during interim session. In addition to learning about the day-to-day aspects of careers, externships give students a wonderful networking opportunity.
“Last spring I had an internship in New York and I was able to catch the bus once a week,” recalls Bennett of his for-credit internship on Wall Street. “I was working with a financial advisor and I was able to match the theory I learned in class with reality. It really aided the academic process. That internship would not have been possible if the campus had been more than an hour and a half from Manhattan.”
The two-week Gateway to Dentistry program at the New Jersey Dental School in Newark gave Alexandra Schmidt ’07 her first inside look at her future career.
|
|
Waite, a chemical engineering major, attended the “Chem Show,” as it’s known—the largest expo of its kind in North America, with her classmates in a course taught by Polly Piergiovanni, associate professor of chemical engineering.
“At the exhibition we saw what were learning about in school and the cutting-edge technology being developed,” Waite says. “In class we learn generally about pumps and heat exchangers, but here we saw the actual ones used in industry, as well as the new technology.”
Piergiovanni says, “The show is a collection of chemical equipment vendors exhibiting scores of products the students will be designing, or purchasing, or trouble-shooting in their careers. A lot of times students can talk to vendors, and that has led to job interviews. If they come with a resume, it’s a way of finding a new place they may never have dreamed of working for.”
That’s one kind of networking opportunity Lafayette’s location affords student job-seekers. Networking with alumni is another, says Linda Arra ’74, director of
Career Services.
“From the Career Services standpoint, the impact of Lafayette’s location is huge,” Arra says. The office does much with its New York and Philadelphia affiliations, coordinating professional work experience for students
via scores of internships and externships, utilizing the
large alumni populations in both cities, and getting students access to potential employers via recruiting
and networking events.
THEN & NOW
Charles Bergstresser 1881
Upon graduating from Lafayette in 1881, Charles Bergstresser moved to New York and took a job with Kiernan News Agency as a reporter covering the stock market. He quickly earned a reputation for being able to talk the truth out of Wall Street’s movers and shakers.
The following year the frugal young man became the silent partner who bankrolled the publishing venture of Charles Henry Dow and Edward Davis Jones in a basement office at 15 Wall Street. The company produced daily hand-written news bulletins called “flimsies” delivered by messenger to subscribers in the Wall Street area.
By 1889 Dow Jones & Company had grown to 50 employees, and its
business publication, founded in 1883 and called the “Customers’
Afternoon Letter,” evolved into a full-sized newspaper, which Bergstresser named The Wall Street Journal. It contained four pages and sold for two cents.
|
|
The range of employers within
90 miles of Lafayette offering internships and externships includes dozens of the premier names in corporate America as well as nationally recognized hospitals, museums, nonprofits, and government agencies. The breadth of fields is extensive. In addition to financial firms, career services routinely places students in television networks, magazine and book publishers, newspapers, defense contractors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Wall Street isn’t the only field where interning has become the path to a job.
“There are those stories about people arriving in
New York with two suitcases and no place to stay, but
the reality is—at least with the candidates that I am seeing—the caliber has increased immensely, and now
it is commonplace for people to have internships on
their resume,” says Will Wermuth ’98, manager of
the guest-relations page program at NBC.
Networking with alumni is as important an asset as
any a college can provide for its students, and because New York and Philadelphia are such professional draws and close to Lafayette, the alumni base in these cities is large and well-utilized.
Career Services’ Finance Night in New York puts upwards of 40 Wall Street alumni face-to-face with
dozens of students who are interested in financial careers.
“Alumni on Wall Street came to meet with the Investment Club,” says Greenberg, who was president
of the club. “So obviously if we weren’t in close proximity to the city, transportation would be an issue.
“It’s really easy for students to get in contact with alumni who work right in the field. And Career Services
has a lot of contact with people on Wall Street. That gets
students motivated. You can see what you would be doing because you visit right where the alumni are working,” says Greenberg, who graduated with a B.S. in computer science and an A.B. with a major in mathematics-economics. He received an offer of employment from
IBM in New York City.
The last general networking night in New York had to cap alumni attendance at 150 because the room capacity was exceeded. Alumni dinner panels, where five or six alumni come to campus to talk about their respective careers with students, are put on three times a semester.All-day conferences where 40 alumni return to campus attract 120 students.
Haley Schaefer ’07 delved into the field
of law in an externship with attorney
Susan G. Rosenthal P’08, a partner in the
law firm of Sheppard Mullin, New York City.
|
|
Results at such events speak well of alumni affection
for their alma mater, but also underscore the role Lafayette’s location plays in keeping them connected.
“A couple of times I’ve gone
back to Lafayette just for the evening or just for the day, to either give a presentation on NBC or to participate in a career day. The fact that it is just an hour and fifteen minutes away
helps keep that connection,” says Wermuth. The sentiment is echoed
by many alumni who can work until late afternoon, come to campus, and still get home at a reasonable hour.
The same holds true for Philadelphia alumni, says McCreedy, who is director of gender and family learning programs at the Franklin Institute.
“The short distance to campus certainly allows me to
go up for a day at a time. That’s important to me, because I travel on my job, and with kids at home, I don’t want
to take additional overnight trips. It’s a real advantage,” she says.
Proximity not only keeps alumni connected, it also brings more recruiters to campus, according to Arra.
“Because of the way college recruiting has gone,
small schools don’t attract thundering herds of employers. Campuses that have 2,300 students just don’t have the numbers of potential candidates,” Arra says. “But proximity to places like New York and Philadelphia gives us access to employers who swing by because of our proximity—they wouldn’t trek out to us if we were
farther away.”
“It’s having the best of both worlds,” says Kaesshaefer, an English major with a concentration in theater studies, who has been to New York eight times with classes.
“I love the small-campus feel, and that’s what attracted me to Lafayette. What I’m not provided with here—lots
of options for the theater—I am able to get when we go on field trips. We can leave at four and be back by midnight, so it’s easy. That’s fantastic.”
|
