Launching Wesleyan Students into a Lifetime of Meaningful Work
With tuition and fees just above $100K a year, students and parents are justifiably concerned about the return on investment of a Wesleyan education. In 2023, the Gordon Career Center launched a five-year strategic plan in which we aspired to be among the best career centers in the country based on key performance indicators.
In 2025, we were a recipient of Handshake’s Career Spark Award based on student and employer engagement and our strategic use of data, putting us in the top 2% of 1600+ member schools and in the top ten 4-year, private institutions.
Over 90% of undergraduates use our office prior to graduation, most starting in their first year. Our outcomes remain strong despite economic headwinds, demonstrating the value of a liberal arts education in turbulent times.
Our plan has three pillars:
Campus Engagement
Partner with faculty and staff across the university to expand support for student career exploration and build greater awareness of our resources.
Alumni Engagement
Strengthen the connection between students and alums by providing opportunities for meaningful engagement, on and off campus.
Supporting Equity in Outcomes
Support equity in career outcomes through expanded data collection and analysis, identity-aware advising, and expanded grant support for low-income students.
Wesleyan’s Gordon Career Center has been recognized by Handshake with a 2025 Career Spark Award, placing us among the top 2% of career centers nationwide. The award celebrates our innovative approach to student engagement, strong employer partnerships, and strategic use of data to help students explore careers, discover opportunities, and build meaningful connections.
Success Stories
Campus Engagement
In 2024-25, two-thirds of students overall used the GCC, inclusive of advising, recruiting, and event attendance, up from 59% in 2022-23. Notably, 79% of first year students did so, versus 58% in 2022-23, reflecting the growing interest in learning about careers early at their time at Wesleyan.
Each academic division and student service office on campus has an assigned career center staff member for the purpose of answering questions, referring students, and co-sponsoring events. The GCC hosts or co-sponsors well over 200 events per year, often with campus partners, external employers, and graduate programs. 41% of undergraduates attended a GCC-sponsored event in 2024-25, up from 25% in 2022-23.
About two-thirds of Wesleyan students work on campus before graduation, and we have a unique array of opportunities for students to gain practical experience without leaving Middletown. In 2022, the Gordon Career Center established the Campus Employment Office to ensure that students were aware of the opportunities available and to provide support for students and their supervisors. Over 400 students attended events hosted by the office in Fall 2025, with the the Campus Employment Fair alone attracting 280 students.
An optional course, CSPL405: Ideals into Practice, give student employees and their campus supervisors a means to identify, track, and articulate transferrable skills developed on the job via online portfolios.
Our website is now a digital career center that allows advisors to curate information they actively use in advising for different industries, bringing together events, research materials, interview training, relevant Wesleyan courses they recommend, experiential and project-based learning opportunities, jobs and internships, and more. The digital career center is available 24/7 so that students and those working with them can find the resources they need, when they need them. Since its launch in 2022, page viewshave increased by over 230% and active users by over 330%.
This event, formerly known as Research-a-palooza, held in collaboration with faculty annually beginning in 2024, allows students to connect with faculty and their research assistants, explore campus labs, and learn how research works at Wesleyan across disciplines.
In January 2026, we held a series of virtual panel discussions so both current and prospective community members could hear students discuss how they secured internships, the roles and projects they took on, and the skills they built across in-demand fields, reflecting pragmatic liberal education at work. Industries represented included Art & Design; Business, Finance & Consulting; Film & TV; Law, Government & Public Policy; Health Professions; and STEM research. Attendees also learned about opportunities for grant funding as well as summer campus employment.
In Spring 2024, the GCC partnered with faculty to sponsor Humanities in Action, a week of events designed to highlight the applicability of humanities beyond the university. Offerings included an alumni panel, a student internship showcase, and a career trek to The New Britain Museum of American Art, featuring keynote speaker Nyasha Shani Foy ’06, Wesleyan Trustee and Sotheby’s VP and Assistant General Counsel of NFTs.
Alumni Engagement
Each year, the GCC engages hundreds of alumni, connecting them with students through recruiting, campus and virtual events, and treks to their workplaces.
WesLink pairs students with alumni for virtual conversations during Winter Break, allowing students to explore paths in arts, health care, tech, policy, education, finance, and more, get practical advice, and build lasting connections. In January 2026, 399 students and 247 alumni took part, roughly doubling our numbers from 2022-23. We also piloted WesLink Global, connecting 49 international students with 21 alumni who shared this identity while at Wesleyan.
Since 2023, career center staff have brought students to site visits, often with alumni, to a wide variety of locations, including:
Broadway
Children’s Aid
CT General Assembly
CT Innovations Talent Fair
Creative Artists Agency (CAA)
Hartford Hospital
ESPN
Genentech
Google
Jackson Laboratory
LEAP (Leadership, Education, Athletics, in Partnership)
LSAC Law School Forum
Meta
MIT: NESCAC Hackathon
New Britain Museum of Art
NYC Open Data Week
Stoopid Buddy Studios
UN
Wall Street
As hiring mechanisms for new college graduates shift away from traditional campus recruiting, we work with alums and parents both to facilitate employment in their organizations and demonstrate how students can leverage their Wesleyan education in a wide variety of fields. Organizations with which we have relationships facilitated by Wesleyan community members include:
AlphaSights
Analysis Group
Atlas Holdings
Bain
BCG
Brattle Group
Centerview Partners
Charles River Associates
Goldman Sachs
Fashion Scholarship Fund
Fidelity
Jefferies
JP Morgan
Kubrick Group
L’Oreal
McKinsey
Pfizer
RBC Capital Markets
Scotiabank
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Trinity Life Sciences
Ungvarsky Law
United Talent Agency (UTA)
Supporting Equity
Career opportunities are not always equitable. For instance, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has demonstrated that students who do two or more internships are twice as likely to have a job six months after graduation, but many of these opportunities are unpaid or do not pay enough for a low-income student to accept. Furthermore, the process of landing an internship, job, or graduate school placement involves expenses not typically included in a financial aid package. Students routinely ask the GCC for help with graduate exam fees, attire for job interviews, career-related travel, and costs associated with practical skills training.
As completing robust summer experiences like internships or research has become increasingly important for employability after graduation, the GCC has worked to increase the amount of funding available so students on need-based financial aid can choose an opportunity without worrying about pay. The number of summer grants awarded by the GCC has more than doubled over the last decade. In 2026, Wesleyan was awarded $100,000 from the Hearst Foundation to further build this program.
Through the Career Development Grant program, students on need-based financial aid are awarded up to $500 during their time at Wesleyan to offset expenses like interview attire, conference travel, and graduate exam fees. We have awarded over $135,000 through this program since 2022.
In 2023, the career center staff took part in identity-aware advising training offered by The RoundTable Institute, confirming our commitment to providing an inclusive and accessible space for all students.
