Gwynn Klobes
Gwynn Klobes, Director of the P4 program, wants students to answer a fundamental question before launching out into the world of business. “Who Am I?” is one of life’s most perplexing questions but Junior year business students have an opportunity to explore some answers while working through a unique process of scripting and shooting a “Brand Identity” video. Klobes meets with each of her 150+ students to act as a sounding board while students try on monickers to find resonance. Leader? Trail Blazer? Risk Taker? Compassionate Listener? What feels right to students becomes part of their narrative and forms the basis of a script used to craft a video. Students have creative reign over their video productions and find a way to visually represent themselves in 60 seconds in front of the camera.
Klobes explains in this podcast the important role these short video resumes play as students enter the job market. She also talks about the feedback she’s received from students as they find a sense of authenticity. Klobes is currently working with a business journal on an article about this unique program and process.
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Complete transcript of our podcast here
From Our Conversation:
Sam Williams: I think we’re going to mostly focus on that last part of your [ATR] project for this Podcast which is answering the University core question “Who Am I?” through the use of video. Do you want to give us a little bit of background on how you got to this place with the project?
Gwynn Klobes: Once we started the professional development we wanted it to be holistic way of approaching professional development so we have two components. We have the self assessment process that happens the Freshman and Sophomore year, of course it continues in your Junior and Senior year but we really focus on that in the Freshman and Sophomore year. Then the Junior year it became a natural process where the students were doing all these self assessments in their P4 classes and then we were like, how do we really answer the core question Who Am I? At that time you guys were starting the videos and we had the lab and everything and I was like, okay this is a way.
…I’m looking at those videos right now for the juniors and it’s really interesting to see who looks really nervous and who really seems self-assured and that kind of thing. I think when a student looks at themselves in video, if they aren’t uncomfortable then maybe they really are struggling with that question still…How do you really fit professionally for your personal statement? That’s kind of the goal and I think we are achieving it, I really do. I feel like this is an outcome that we can actually show as a university of that core question. How do you answer that? It’s very tough, right?
Maria Erb: Yeah. How do you work with the students so that they can answer that question?
Gwynn Klobes: It was a process I thought about for a long time and just didn’t have the opportunity to do until two years ago. Cause I had worked with students as a counselor for a long time. Also being a parent, I think all those things came together. Also I was a student too, so I really had a three fold perspective of academia. When I would be in these counseling sessions a lot of things would occur. I brought them together in a process. I meet with each sophomore student and we go over their own assessment. We go over their strengths, which I think is the most important. I become their secretary. I just become their listener. I also go over their reflections of their job shadows. You’ll find common threads that come through in their language that they don’t even notice themselves. I’m copying and pasting into a Word document and at the same time they are reading through their strengths and they are only telling me what they do buy into not what they don’t buy into.
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