Alumni Career Development Center

Alumni Career Development Center

The MCPHS Career Development Center is rolling out new initiatives this year to support students and alumni. We talked with Executive Director Doug Edwards about an upcoming mentoring platform and his tips for alumni looking to support student success.

What role can alumni play in the lives of our students?

It’s important to us that our students get pre-professional experience in greater numbers, and earlier in their college career—and our alumni play a crucial role in helping us succeed. Whether an alum can sponsor an intern at their company, have a mentoring conversation, or join a classroom panel—we would love to have them engage with our students.

We want the students to sense that they’re not just moving through MCPHS with their cohort, but they’re part of a larger generational tradition. It enriches our students’ experience when they can connect with alumni firsthand, to get to know those who have gone before them and can provide some valuable insight and help.

You mention mentoring. How can alumni get involved?

Coming this fall, we’ll be piloting a brand-new online platform that enables mentoring between alumni and students, as well as among alumni. It’s an opt-in program, so we’ll be reaching out to all alumni this summer to invite them to join.

Alumni who say “yes” will have six virtual meetings with a student across the 12-week semester, in a 1:1 mentoring structure. We’ll do our best to match alumni backgrounds with each student’s career interests, and we’ll provide guidance through the semester.

For the students, the program isn’t about getting a job or an internship—it’s about gaining wisdom. We expect conversations like, “Here’s what I wish I had done differently,” and “Here’s what worked for me”—conversations that will help students gain clarity on their path and maybe even accelerate their success.

Are shorter-term options available?

Of course. We understand that 1:1 mentoring might be too big of a commitment, so we also invite alumni to volunteer for ad hoc mentoring—basically one-off conversations with students. Imagine a nursing student wanting to talk with a nurse who moved into the administrative side, or one who is practicing in a specialty that they’re considering.

We also welcome alumni to join us on campus to talk about their careers. We have an ongoing alumni speaker series with student audiences who love to hear from alums about their career journey. It gives students a better sense of what’s ahead.

What are other ways alumni can support students?

Honestly, the best support is to champion an internship. We’re as flexible as possible about what that might look like: paid or unpaid, 8 hours a week, full-time co-op for six months, and all points in between. We can work with the alum to figure it out together.

The Center serves alums beyond graduation. Any advice for those on a job hunt now?

Have as many conversations as possible with folks in your area of interest. Find the companies who are doing well and make connections. It also never hurts to have your resume reviewed by our office or someone in your industry. It pays to get more than one set of eyes and one voice of feedback.

In your networking, make sure every conversation leads to another. Your last two questions should be: “What would you recommend I do to break into your company?” and “Do you have a colleague you’d be willing to introduce me to, to continue this conversation?”

Any AI tools you would recommend for a quick resume update?

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Feed it the job description and your resume, and write your prompt with enough detailed instruction so you get a good output. A good starting point would be “Imagine you are the hiring manager for this position and evaluate how well my resume indicates I’m a strong candidate for it.” GenAi also does a decent job of writing a cover letter from scratch, but you’ve got to reframe it in your own voice. The best applicants are using AI but you can’t tell.