What do students plan on doing once they are out of Eastern? For the most part, more are staying longer at the university, and more are taking up similar majors.

Eastern counselor Bobbi Kingery has said the sooner students get involved with their career planning, the better off they will be in getting their degree at Eastern.

However, in spite of this, she did say most students do not get the job they expect right out of college.

“Most people do not get their ‘dream job’ directly out of college, but if they have done their research, they will be able to move into a position that will get them on track to reach their dream job,” Kingery said.

Seniors Stephanie Damery and Ariane Codey, both majors in biology, have their dream jobs in mind, but do not expect to reach them right out of Eastern.

Although Damery, who hopes to have a job as a marine biologist and Codey, who wants to be a zookeeper, both think they will probably wind up at the soy manufacturer ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) in Decatur out of college.

“They [ADM] do various things. I’m from Decatur, and pretty much everyone from Decatur works at ADM,” Damery said.

More and more seniors are going into graduate school as well, according to the dean of Eastern’s graduate school, Bob Augustine.

“We do see a greater demand for graduate students,” Augustine said. “In the past five years, we’ve seen the graduate school grow from more than 1,400 students to more than 1,700.”

In fact, Kingery said that many fields today require grad school as a requirement and that many students are taking it for the wrong reasons.

“Many students opt for graduate school because they don’t know what they want to do, which isn’t a good method to decide on a career,” she said. “Graduate study is most effective when a student knows their career goals and selects a program that will make them more competitive in the job search process.”

It is the freshman and sophomore students that Kingery and the counseling center are most concerned about, however.

Kingery said the center is working very hard with freshman and sophomore students to get them first to select a career and then a major, so that they cant then have a career field in mind when they graduate.

Freshman Joe Bongiorno is undecided on a major, but hopes to one day own his own construction business and build skyscrapers.

“I hope to be a general contractor when I’m out of college,” he said.

According to princetonreview.com, business, psychology and elementary education rank among college’s top three majors.

Elementary education teacher Denise Reid has contributed the large following in elementary education to the field offering stable jobs and because it is a good field for women to get into too, where the mothers can work their hours nicely with their children.

“Eastern has a reputation that is good, practical and progressive for students in the education program,” she said.

This is the case at least with sophomores Christine Morano and Kelly Putlak, both elementary education majors.

“When I graduate I hope to teach in a kindergarten classroom and somewhere down the road I hope to be an administrator,” said Putlak. “This campus seems to be a good one for elementary education,” she said.

Kingery sited taking advantage of such things as Career Network Day, the Education Job Fair, Graduate School Information Day, and Multicultural Career Expo, along with workshops and meetings with counselors to better determine a career path.

To schedule an appointment with a counselor, call 581-3413.