PUC’s Counseling Center hosted Career Day on November 5 for aspiring job-seekers looking for a little advice and direction. The event brought about 70 working professionals from a variety of fields to PUC’s campus for direct consultation with students exploring career options.

A large portion of the visiting professionals were PUC alumni. “Our alumni have a connection with our students on a very real level, more so than other consultants, because they were in their seats at one point,” says Laurie Halverson, director of the Counseling Center.

“We had about 30 of them say that they’d be willing to work with us and set up an internship,” adds Doug Ammon, former director of the center who helped coordinate the event.

“It was very helpful,” says Amanda Acmoody, a sophomore who recently took up a major in photography. “The photographer I talked to encouraged me and gave me a lot of ideas of what to do in the summertime—taking an internship, or even just shadowing someone to learn what the job is like.”

One highlight of the Career Day program was the featured speaker at colloquy. Notable alum Clyde Holland, chairman and founder of the residential development firm Holland Partners Group, encouraged students to keep Christ in mind when deciding how to develop their careers.

In addition to his participation on Career Day, Holland also serves on PUC’s board of trustees. “PUC gave me a sense of community and family and foundation—that the network that I had was larger than me and I had something to fall back on,” he says. “It’s been a lot of fun being in the business world and we’ve been extremely blessed, but I’m getting to a point in my life when it’s important to pass the baton on to the next generation.”

 The counseling center is especially interested in keeping PUC’s alumni involved with plans for next year’s Career Day. “I’d love for them to think back to what it was like when they were here, realizing that students are pretty similar,” says Halverson. “Our current students are probably feeling just as lost as they once did, and they need that personal connection. I think if we’re really going to continue the vision of PUC, we need the people who bought into that vision once before to come back and continue to teach it to the students that are here.”