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Message from the Director

Empowering Women - Cara Putman

Snow is falling on campus as I write this, and students are focused on heading home for a quick Thanksgiving break before the last weeks of classes and finals. At the Center we've spent much time this semester thinking about how to help our young women become more confident in their communication and leadership skills.Snow on the John Purdue statue

This semester we launched a communications workshop series of four distinct courses in conjunction with the communications faculty at the College of Management. Knowing you can communicate well in multiple settings by better understanding your audience with applied critical thinking and inclusion give s our students more tools that they can apply now as students as well as in the future in the workplace. This was the test of a communications pathway that will be offered on an on-going manner with the goal being to move students to taking the 101 workshop their first year and build across their four years with us.

We've also launched a workshop series integrating Gallup MyStrengths more richly into the School of Management by equipping students with understanding of what their individual top five strengths mean as well as how to use them to be a more successful student and team member. We're also considering workshops with employers to help students see how MyStrengths are used to develop employees and plan careers.

Now that we have made progress on two critical skills so that our young women can graduate as confident young professionals we're turning our focus to peer-mentoring for incoming students and an alternate for our graduating women. I am so excited to work with our graduating seniors on a program to help the launch well as they transition from student to professional.

Thank you for the ways you partner with the Center so that we can provide these targeted opportunities for the young women at the School of Management. We could not do this without your help and partnership.

Cara

Cara Putman
Clinical Assistant Professor
Director, Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management