Laura Love, director of external relations for the career center is the new kid on the Mungo Exchange block. Joining the staff in April of 2024, Love’s first big project was to develop the “Career Center Experience.”
As she was once a student wary and unsure of her own professional path, Love is the ideal candidate to join the staff in the Career Center.
Love attended Clemson University as an undergraduate where she studied biology. When deciding her future after college, Love was set on higher education, medical school, but ended up working in a high school as a teacher.
Quickly realizing that was not for her, Love began to pursue a job working with students at her alma mater, Clemson. Serving students became her passion and goal in all of the opportunities she pursued.
Love joined the advising staff for the biology department at Clemson. This past April, she joined the Wofford community in the Career Center.
Evolving from the sophomore year experience, the office aimed to host an event that would bring students from sophomore, junior, and senior classes together for an event to kick off the school year. In her planning, Love prioritized connecting with students, a strength of the Career Center and the Wofford community.
“I like that this team in the Career Center could walk around campus and they know just about anyone,” Love said.
The event was planned as a way to give students connections to the Career Center, employers in the Spartanburg area and alumni. It also provided a way for students to be more connected to the career center and the resources it has to offer.
This evolution in the Career Center’s programs developed tremendously in preparation for a back to school event. The event, once a small project taken on by Love, took on a mind of its own.
The experience evolved into workshops, talks, discussions, and alumni career panels. The experience also featured treks or trips to local companies. One trek took the biology and healthcare route, taking students to Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System and the Edward College of Osteopathic Medicine.
For finance and general business interests, there was a group that visited The Johnson Group composed of Johnson Development Associates (JDA), OTO Development and American Credit Acceptance (ACA). Students on this trip also visited PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Spartanburg.
The last group went to the construction site for the Sparanburgers baseball stadium, currently under construction, and Milliken and Company.
Career panels featured legal and medical professionals, young alumni in marketing and finance experts. Additionally, the Career Center hosted workshops on resume building, the interviewing process and graduate school admissions.
“Instead of just bringing in employers, I thought, let’s also bring in alumni, who can also connect with students because they have been here and know what the liberal arts degree means,” Love said.
In total, around 55 students attended the Career Center experience, with around 25 alumni returning to campus to share their Wofford experience and postgraduate stories. Athletes from the baseball and softball teams were also present.
The Career Center experience aimed to gauge student interest from a variety of populations across campus. By promoting this opportunity to athletes, the Career Center made sure athletic commitments did not interfere with the programming.
Margaret Axelson ‘26, a biology major on the softball team interested in a health care profession, appreciated the “Career Center Experience” as a valuable opportunity to connect with alumni and learn from their lived experiences.
“It was encouraging to see that most of their paths were not linear and many of them are in a different position than the one they imagined. Overall, it was a valuable experience that gave me direction on making educated choices now to develop my skills for a career in the future,” Axelson said.
The event exposed students to a variety of careers and subjects. Love has a desire to connect students with alumni and a personal story related to the confused path of many students. Her addition to the Career Center staff and involvement in this project show she is a great addition to Wofford.
