So you are a junior and you still have not declared a major? You might need to work on that. The Career Counseling Center is your best bet in finding a career, a major, or just learning a little more about what interests you.

The Career Counseling Center has recently become a division of the Student Success Center in Clement Hall. Previously located in the Counseling and Career Office in the UC, the office moved after Dr. Robert Beard, a career counselor, retired last semester.

The office is structured to help you decide on a major or choose a career. There are many tools they use to help you do that. Discover is one of the avenues you can take. Discover is an online program that will get you started in the search for a major. The program can help you explore careers and potential graduate schools, keep up with your resume material and give job search and resume writing tips. Discover also has interest, abilities and values inventories that can help you define your areas of interest. The program will help you look at how a career field is growing and what the salaries are like in that field. It will also give related occupations and military alternatives for that field.

The office’s main goal is to get students to come and meet with them on an individual basis. That way, they can get counseling designed specifically for their needs. The office will create a plan of action for the individual student to explore the majors that best suits them. That plan of action may include anything from talking to a professor or a student in that particular major to taking inventories such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Strong Interest Inventory.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an inventory that is used for many different things besides seeing what career field you will fit best in. The inventory provides information that describes your personality. There are different personalities in every job field, but often certain personalities lean toward certain jobs or career fields. The inventory can also be used to help you understand your learning style or relationship style. The MBTI is free to take.

Another inventory the office provides is the Strong Interest Inventory. This is an inventory that is offered online but is only available through the Career Counseling Office. The Strong measures your interests, not your abilities. It tells you about your pattern of interests and how your interests compare with those of people from a wide variety of occupations. It gives you many options to explore. The Strong Interest Inventory costs $15 to take.
In addition to Discover, Myer-Briggs and the Strong Interest Inventory, the Career Counseling Center also has other career assessments such as SIGI3 and Self-Directed Search to aid in the counseling process. For those who are interested in an in-depth career search, GENS 201: Career Exploration is the class for you.

The office is headed by Melanie Young and Terry Duncan. They said they intend on hiring another career counselor soon. The colleges will be split up among the counselors to provide the best service to students.

“If you are unsure what career path to follow, don’t just jump in to anything. Come by and let us help you explore your options. Your decision on a career path is based on your values, interests, skills, and personality. Even if you know what you want to do, there is much to learn about your chosen path. We can help in every aspect of career counseling. The purpose for choosing an academic course of study is to help you begin to develop your life plan,” said Young and Duncan.

For more information or to contact the Career Counseling Center, you can reach Melanie Young or Terry Duncan at 731-881-1689.