Johns Hopkins undergraduates go out into the world with more than bachelor’s degrees from a top-10 university. They leave their alma mater civically engaged and ready to design their career.

The university has ramped up its programming to support our students throughout their time at Hopkins and help them find meaningful work after graduation. This includes significant investment in career preparation for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the appointment of Farouk Dey, a nationally recognized leader in the field of career and experiential education who became the university’s inaugural vice provost for integrative learning and life design in summer 2018. Dey’s charge is to bring a fresh approach to bridging academic and life aspirations across the divisions and to encourage experiential learning programs that encourage students to go beyond coursework to embrace opportunities on and off campus.

“Without an overarching framework of life design and a roadmap for students on how to leverage their time in college, they may not engage in available opportunities like studying abroad, pursuing an internship, volunteering, or working with faculty on a research initiative,” Dey says.

The university has also helped take some of the guesswork and stress out of voting for undergraduates, many of whom vote for the first time while at Hopkins. For the 2018 midterm elections, the Center for Social Concern ran a #HopkinsVotes campaign, a nonpartisan effort—in partnership with several student groups—aimed at simplifying the voter registration process and increasing student participation at the polls, as well as enhancing voter education and awareness on campus.

Photo: “I’ve seen and heard so much about the importance of voting, and to finally be able to participate in it was very interesting,” says first-year student Kristen Alicea-Jorgensen. “It really felt like I was contributing to society, which is very cool.”