Dear Families,
When I left Illinois State University for a post at Bentley University three years ago, it raised a few eyebrows among the liberal-arts colleagues I was leaving behind and at the business university where I would become their dean of arts and sciences.
Higher education has taken a hit lately for not preparing graduates for a successful career. Arguments are flying that graduates walk across the stage with degrees that have left them ill-equipped for today’s complex workplace. In particular, employers are disillusioned by their inability to relate to and manage millennials. It would be easy to dismiss this as a generational gap, or millennials not understanding the realities of the workplace, but the story is more complicated.
As a part of the PreparedU Project, we sat down with Vice President of Human Resources at Bain & Company, Suzanne Roeder, who shared her views on how companies can help millennial women advance in the workplace. See Suzanne’s profile in the PreparedU Project’s Infographic Storybook on Millennial Women and Workplace Transformation.
Isabel Runge, College Junior
As a junior in college, with many friends in their senior year, and others already a couple years beyond school, I have to admit that my main priority for the next couple of years is to be employed after graduation. With the employment and unemployment rates what they are, most of the people I’ve talked to are terrified of not being hired.
On September 11, 2012, Ambassador Chris Stevens was slain in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens spent his life, and gave his life, to bring good will from the United States to the people of the world. We may never know all of the circumstances of Stevens’ death, but we do know this: ongoing protests against the U.S. in other parts of the world mean that we have not yet succeeded in building strong bridges. We don’t understand them, and they don’t understand us. Some even harbor resentment, which we also don’t understand.
