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Job Sector Guides

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As part of the Bonner Four-Year Developmental Model, students who are Bonner Scholars and Bonner Leaders are encouraged, educated and guided to think about their lives and pathways after graduation. Program supports for this career and vocational exploration includes a number of dimensions including:

• Continual one-to-one meetings and advising with Bonner mentors, including staff, faculty, and peers
• Workshops and meetings on topics like resume writing, interviewing, and post-graduate planning
• Workshops, readings, and trainings on vocational discernment
• Senior Retreats, where seniors participate in a longer session to look back and look forward
• Junior/Senior Capstones, which include a focus on finding projects that might pave the way for future employment, graduate school, and post-graduate interests
• Senior Presentations of Learning, which provide students with a culminating meaning making experience looking back over their four year journeys and to their future post-graduate pathways

Across many campuses, many of these elements involve the collaboration of Bonner Program staff with staff in Career Services, Religious Life, and other departments. Indeed, campuses often report how they involve these colleagues in providing education, advising, and support to Bonner students and how much their colleagues find this a rewarding and deep experience.  

All of these supports make a difference in student success and positive post-graduate outcomes. As revealed by the seven-year longitudinal Student Impact Survey and Bonner Alumni Survey, Bonner graduates tend to exemplify high degrees of civic-mindedness, both in their professional and career choices and in their personal behaviors. You can read more about the Student Impact Survey findings here and access the publications and scholarship that have resulted from those studies on our website under Impact. Graduates and alumni share that their Bonner experiences is often accompanied by pivotal learning and reflection opportunities that shape their major, career interests, and post-graduate plans and choices. Our narrative profiles of Bonner Alumni, available on the Bonner Website, provide individual and tangible stories of these themes.

Moreover, as both assessment and stories point out, Bonner Alumni find ways to live out the values that they gained and clarified in college and as Bonners throughout their careers. For instance, Bonner Alumni often describe ways that they maintain their civic and community involvement, whether as volunteers, careers in the sector, or professional and personal civic associations. They also describe ways that they seek to make an impact on issues and causes they care about, like education at the K-12 and higher education level, housing, economic and community development, health care, and more. For many graduates, this means a lifelong commitment to the Common Commitments, like civic engagement, community building, diversity, international perspective, spiritual exploration, social justice, and wellness as well.

We know that Bonner students and alumni want to find career and vocational pathways through which they can both earn a living while making a difference. With this context in mind, the Bonner Foundation has begun the development of new "Job Sector Guides" as a resource for students, staff, faculty, and campuses. These resources, designed to point out potential professional pathways for students and alumni, have been written to include sector research, typical jobs and positions, salary information, considerations, and where to learn more. Learn more about the structure and usefulness of these Guides here.

Bonner Training Modules

To help ensure that the job sector guides are integrated within Bonner Programs, we have incorporated them into two new curriculum modules. These modules are designed especially for upperclass students as they begin to look toward and plan for post-graduate steps. One session is part of the new Recommended Eight Themes series for Third Year Spring. The second is part of the Fourth Year Fall. Regardless of your campus's integration of the new 8 Themes Curriculum, both sessions are great to integrate at any convenient time to support students to learn more about potential career and vocational pathways and to be introduced to the inspiring, powerful stories and examples from Bonner Alumni.

We encourage campus programs to take a look at these sessions as they are made available.

Third Year Spring

• A Reason For Being: Exploring the Concept of Ikigai and What it Means for Life After Bonner (new): This workshop will help participants reflect on the intersections of passion, mission, profession, and vocation (Ikigai in Japanese) to come to a more nuanced understanding of their steps forward post-graduation. This workshop will incorporate Bonner Alumni Profiles and Bonner Job Sector Guides as resources, proving inspiring stories.

Fourth Year Fall

• Finding Your Pathway After College (new): This workshop provides students with a chance for reflection on their Bonner journeys. Students will reflect on profiles and perspectives from Bonner Alumni, who have pursued careers across all sectors yet stayed civically engaged. Students will brainstorm potential pathways for post-graduate opportunities like employment, year of service programs, and graduate school. As part of this, they can use the Job Sector Guides to identify some potential career interests and people to talk with for more guidance.