Gwynn Klobes ’08, ’14, Director of Personal and Professional Development in the Pamplin School of Business, is driven by student success and University of Portland’s mission of holistic education. She directed the creation, development, and implementation of a required professional development program (P4) where all students participate in activities that assist them in figuring out their path in life. Gwynn has a three-fold lens into the UP experience–that of a student, a parent, and a staff member during the development of the program. She is now a published author in this subject in the Journal of the Academy of Business Education with an article entitled “Maximizing the Educational Investment with a Required Personal and Professional Development Program for Business Majors.” This program enables her to guide and assist students with their transition from academia to a vocation. In the article below, Gwynn shares about her work and the Pamplin School of Business experience through the lens of the P4–Pamplin Professional Preparation Program!
In 2007, the Pamplin School of Business began to discuss how we could better challenge our students to not only find a job after graduation, but also to discover a vocation. We developed a mantra: “A job pays the bills; a career is about self; but a vocation is about self in the context of community.” We strived for a tangible way to help students answer the University Core Questions of “Who Am I?” and “Who Am I Becoming?” From this came the development of the P4–Pamplin Professional Preparation Program, a required curricular program providing a mechanism for a holistic learning experience to foster students’ preparation to enter the world as business leaders.
The P4 goes beyond the classroom and provides a robust educational experience for students, guiding them through the right-fit vocation discernment process and helping them pursue lives rich with meaning and purpose. Additionally, the P4 has strengthened the University’s relationship with the business community and alumni, as they are active contributors to the program. With connections to over 500 companies in the Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco areas, P4 helps students build a professional network in which they can pursue their passions and find right-fit vocations. On average each year, 250 alumni connect with students. Many of those alumni return to campus to share their experiences and advice with students. Since the inception of the P4, 100% of junior business majors have completed internships, and an average of 93% of seniors are employed within six months of graduation. The professional networks students create provide a solid foundation for them to explore their passions. Because of the students’ participation in many professional experiences, the P4 also gives employers confidence that our students will adapt well to professional work environments.
P4 better prepares and challenges students to discern and pursue a vocation that builds on their strengths by requiring experiences such as personal assessments, job shadows, a ropes course, informational and mock interviews with alumni, networking dinners, speed-networking, volunteer service, portfolio production, and professional internships. This strategy of conceptualizing, developing, and communicating culminates in a personal brand video employing marketing concepts, giving students a competitive advantage in finding a vocation. The video helps students articulate who they are and who they are becoming as professionals and leaders. This video is a transformative experience for our students, as it requires honest reflection about who they are as people and discernment in how they want to go forward in a vocation.
P4 encourages students to approach this process creatively and spend time deciding how to depict themselves through pictures and videography. These video resume packages have three layers of digital assets: the video itself, a voice over, and a music overlay. Students upload their personal brand videos to LinkedIn, where they can share them with prospective employers. Learning to edit video is an additional skill set that is increasingly valuable and relevant given the growing technological importance in the work place. Students are then ready to go find that “right-fit” internship.
P4’s unique combination of traditional theoretical curriculum and experiential learning gives students a competitive advantage. Each activity’s impact is largely defined by the individual student, giving students power over their own learning and allowing them to explore their passions while developing their leadership abilities. Particularly, the personal brand video facilitates each student’s discernment about “who they are” and “who they are becoming,” and allows them to communicate this to prospective employers in a creative vehicle to help them pursue their vocation.
Learn more about P4 through the program website and video.
Gwynn Klobes ’08, ’14 is a double degree holder from the University of Portland. She received her BA in Theology in 2008 and her MBA in 2014. She has been married to her husband Jeff for 38 years, is the mother of four kids (two of whom are alumni of UP), and a grandmother to eight.