Dear Ed Board,

First of all, we at the Hegi Family Career Development Center would like to thank The Daily Campus for the fine coverage of the varied happenings in the SMU community and in the world, including many of the events that we sponsor. We appreciate everything you do to promote our various Brown Bag discussions, workshops and career fairs, through well presented articles before and after these events take place. It is through your publication that many of our students from all majors are made aware of our events, often for the first time.

It is for this reason that we are responding to the editorial of March 1, 2006, entitled “Be ‘liberal’ with other majors.” We would like to offer clarification of your main point, that the Recruiting Expo that took place in February was too focused on business majors and did not include enough “jobs for liberal arts majors.”

The problem herein lies in the definition of just exactly what is a job for a liberal arts major. Upon closer examination of the job descriptions that companies posted on our Web site, you would find that many of the companies were seeking applicants from all majors.

In fact, by our calculations, 53 out of the over 80 companies represented posted job descriptions seeking either “all majors” or seeking majors other than business. While there were also, indeed, those companies seeking only business majors, we feel that to characterize the Recruiting Expo (and by proxy the Hegi Family Career Development Center) as “Cox obsessed” does not do it or us justice.

We feel that the services we provide and the events that we sponsor are truly for all majors here on campus. Our mission is to serve the needs of all SMU students and alumni, and through a variety of programming we aim to succeed at this goal. Although it may often seem “harder” for a liberal arts major to find a job upon graduation than it is for a business student, our position is that it is not “harder,” just different. The method by which a liberal arts major searches for a job may involve different tactics than the method employed by the business major; however, we at the Career Center have the resources to assist a student of any major with this task, and we encourage all students to avail themselves of our services.

We invite Ed Board and the entire SMU student body to attend next fall’s Recruiting Expo and really look closely at the job descriptions that are represented there. In the meantime, we invite you to come to one of the many events that we host throughout the year for all majors. Some recent events have included a panel discussion on jobs in government and non-profit agencies, jobs in cinema and TV, and jobs in healthcare. On March 22 at noon we are hosting a Careers in Art Brown Bag discussion in the Hughes-Trigg Atriums A-B. We hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

The Staff of the Hegi Family Career Development Center