“What am I going to do after college?”

That is the big question nearly all of my seniors brought to class, but it is not one that a professor can answer. A professor can do plenty to respect the question, however, by connecting students with professional practice and career development.

Senior Seminar is the capstone class for Anthropology, Sociology, and Criminal Justice majors at Messiah University, my liberal arts school in south central Pennsylvania. With the support of the Anthropology Career Readiness Network, I developed a client-facing project with the War, Peace, Justice Project (WPJP). This organization hosts public events that invite citizens to ponder the costs of war, and to take local action for peace and justice.

Our project was to document local understandings of conscience and moral agency as preparation for a film event showcasing the Fred Korematsu story. He and thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry experienced WWII in internment camps, or “Assembly Centers” as they were referred to by the U.S. Government. This film, shown several weeks after the semester ended, would be the first in a film series: “An American Experience: Through the Lens of the US Constitution.”

The film opened up big questions of conscience and justice, but how would students open up their own big questions about professional futures?

My students and I took on the project together. We looked at an empty course schedule and divided up the semester into parts: project planning, data collection, data analysis, and presentation development. We divided the class into teams, with a topic assigned to and one student with a role to:

• Liaise with WPJP; this student was invited to participate in a regional peace-making workshop.
• Conduct a survey; this student was taken on a field trip to a peace museum in Ohio, along with the staff of the WPJP.
• Research national networks of Korematsu-related experts; this student cultivated a relationship with one of the lawyers who took the Korematsu case to the U.S. Supreme Court and that attorney came to our university to speak as a panelist after the film.
• Secure a piece of art depicting Japanese American life as a Studio Arts’ double major; we added an art display to the film event.

This is all fascinating, but many students were still asking, “What am I going to do once I graduate?”

Along with developing skills in participant observation and client engagement, students used the career readiness competencies offered by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). They assessed their own work by listing practical examples in each category, and then compared and contrasted their results with those of their classmates. Here are examples, with identifying details obscured.

• Communication. “I didn’t know how to email with real adults! I had to learn how much to say, how quickly to reply, and how long to wait for replies.”
• Critical Thinking. “Researching conscience and moral agency seemed vague and hard to pin down. I had to analyze big concepts and bring them down to earth so I could conduct interviews.”
• Equity and Inclusion. “I didn’t know anything about Japanese-American internment before this class. The U.S. Constitution safeguards equity and inclusion, and this episode of American history breached our nation’s foundational values.”
• Leadership. “I’m leading our class? What? I haven’t had people take me seriously as a leader before.”
• Professionalism. “What should we wear to the presentation? What if my only shoes are tennis shoes?”
• Teamwork. “It’s hard to work as a team when someone is absent, or doesn’t do their work, or doesn’t answer texts. I want to do even more to pull my own weight when I’m on a team in a professional setting.”
• Technology. “I learned certain software programs in Studio Art that I can apply in this class to make posters and digital visuals that showcase our work.”
• Career and Self-Development. “In any professional setting, I want to be the one who brings people together, sparks enthusiasm, and networks.”

Students will still have to find their own answers to the question of what to do after college. Contributing to a client-facing practical anthropology project as a senior capstone experience was a unique way to advance self-understanding and professional development. Even though the film event was scheduled to occur a month after the semester ended, it was a great success. For the client, the film event was the big hurrah. For students, the best part was the process: collecting data and interpreting it for a client who would put the analysis to work.

Students came to see the value of anthropology in their undergraduate education because their work was meaningful beyond the grade. They expressed the value of anthropology to a ready audience, the War, Peace, Justice Project and the people in the community surrounding our university.

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