Issue date: 9/1/09 Section: News

Choosing a major can be difficult, especially for students who do not know what they want to do after graduation.

Career Services can help. It offers a program called DISCOVER to help students choose majors and career paths.

"DISCOVER is basically a self-assessment tool to give students an idea of what they might be interested in majoring in," said Holly Andrews, Career Services' externship coordinator.

Last year, 1,320 students used DISCOVER, whether for class, research or at an adviser's referral.

To participate in the ACT-created program, students must request a username from Career Services, complete the three online inventories, which includes: interests, abilities and values tests, and have a meeting with a career counselor.

Some students may have completed a similar assessment in high school, but Andrews feels the college version has its advantages.

"The difference is when they take it in high school, they don't usually get the follow up," she said.

Meeting with a counselor - like Bobbi Kingery, career adviser for the College of Arts and Humanities - helps students apply the results to their lives.

"We take the results further and see what is going to interest them and what their options are," Kingery said.

The counselors consider career fields in the geographic area students want to live as well as their interests and abilities.

Kingery said the values section in the inventories helps the counselors find a career students will enjoy.

Andrews said the never-changing values can prove to be revealing.

"Your interests and abilities are going to change as you go through college and gain knowledge, but your values are going to stay the same," Andrews said.

The online assessment takes between 30 and 45 minutes and the meeting takes about an hour in most cases.

"I often, with some students, will have a follow-up meeting," Kingery said. "You can't always figure it out in an hour."

Although pinning down a specific career path takes some time, DISCOVER puts students and counselors on a faster track.

"It gives us a lot of information on students quickly so we can focus our question," Kingery said.

The program is presented to students and parents at freshman Panther Debut Orientation Days during the summer to help students start in the right direction.

"If they start with an idea of what they want to do in their lives they're less likely to go into a wrong major," Andrews said.

The program is not just for undecided majors, though.

"It has some value even if you've already chosen a major," Andrews said. "Sometimes it opens up doors to things they hadn't considered before. Things they maybe didn't even know existed."

Usernames are valid for a student's entire career at Eastern, and the assessment can be retaken.

"It's updated annually," Andrews said. "They add in new jobs and descriptions because the world is a rapidly changing place with all the new technology."

Sarah Ruholl can be reached at 581-7942 or at seruholl2@eiu.edu.

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