Representing Creative Careers at Lake Forest College

Caleb Pope ‘27
popecse95@lakeforest.edu
Staff Writer

At noon on February 20, Lake Forest College held an event in Brown Hall showing creative majors at the school and the diverse career paths available to students.  

Danielle Kelly, Senior Associate Director of Creative Arts and Communications at Lake Forest College was the organizer of last Thursday’s activities in Brown Hall’s Tarble Room. The event focused on students with creative interests who were unsure of their career path.

“The goal was to provide a place for creative arts students to start to explore their interests and really start to imagine what’s possible professionally,” Kelly said. 

Kelly felt that the creative arts did not receive enough credit regarding the possibilities they bring.

“A lot of times there’s a stigma around creative majors where students question their options,” Kelly said.

Acting both as a seminar on career pathways and an interactive activity between students, Kelly created the event as a follow-up to the Career-A-Palooza event last year on March 23, 2023.

“The event this was partially modeled on, Career-A-Palooza, was very popular, but not everyone feels comfortable in a large group setting,” Kelly said. “I wanted to do this one because it was smaller and more personalized.”

When organizing it, the director wanted students in the creative arts to feel heard, as they are a small subset of majors at Lake Forest College.

“I really wanted to have an event like this, for students in the arts, so that they would have an opportunity to think about these [creative careers],” Kelly said. 

The programming contained two different pieces. The first was explaining what kinds of traits and qualities are important for certain careers. The next was an exercise for students to express what traits and qualities they felt were personally important.

“I wanted to have a space for creative arts students to write down their values and how that relates to careers in the arts.”

Creating a space that would gain attention from newer students was also a priority, according to Kelly. Danielle Kelly wanted to increase the number of students present at career events.

“I can tell you; I saw some people here that I’ve never seen at other events, and that’s what we want,” Kelly said.

The administration plans to continue creating more of these events. Although the Gates Center is split into different major groups, Kelly is planning more events for the arts & communications majors.

“Yeah, I loved this I definitely want to do it again, maybe after spring break when it’s a little bit warmer,” Kelly said.