Growing Minds, Not College Resumes: Why the Elementary Years Aren’t about College Admissions

My passion for higher education and working with students began as a resident assistant, admissions overnight host, and study abroad enthusiast as an undergraduate student at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Working with high school and college students has been at the core of my professional experiences ever since. My first few years out of college included serving as an AmeriCorps member, working in public health, and teaching yoga. I later worked for the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Boston College and subsequently served as a lead administrator of a freshman study abroad program at Northeastern University in collaboration with their admissions team. While at Northeastern, I worked with faculty, deans, students, and parents in a wide-array of academic disciplines in several countries. It was exciting to provide robust academic and cultural experiences for students all over the world as they started college before returning to Boston to pursue the rest of their degree. I most recently served as an admissions officer at my alma mater, where I recruited students of diverse academic interests primarily from the East coast, California, and Arizona, and worked with applicants from all over the United States and the world. While at Lewis & Clark I worked with deposited students taking a gap year, coordinated the college’s release of admissions decisions, served as an athletics liaison working with athletic coaches and recruits, helped oversee visit and student-interviewer programs, and managed and trained new admissions counselors.