At the beginning of this semester, the newly funded Career Accelerator program launched following a $5 million donation from Board of Trustees member Heidi Hu ’85 and her husband Daniel Hsieh, alongside an additional $600,000 in seed funding matched by Lewis & Clark to support its early operations. From an LC Strategic Imperatives Advisory Council (SIAC) Executive Summary, the Career Accelerator is one of the first major initiatives adopted from the “Strategic Imperative: Maximizing Return on Investment.” The SIAC was tasked with identifying and recommending imperatives, not actual plans, that created a vision of concepts and proposals to steer LC’s success.
The Career Accelerator is a separate hub from the Career Center — the Career Accelerator aims to help students make meaningful impacts through their four-step commitment: skills, guidance, experience and connections. Joe Hewa, the current Director of the Career Accelerator, spoke to The Mossy Log to frame the current stage of development the program is in and expand on what students can look forward to.
“There are things that need to be done during college to prepare students for when they graduate, and the Career Accelerator is all about creating those opportunities,” Hewa said. “It’s about finding what is the area of life that you want to really invest your time and energy into in the future and make a meaningful impact on the world through that.”
According to the Career Accelerator website, the initiative promises that students will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful experiences and skills that prepare them for future careers. Through their four-step commitment, certificates and skills classes in various disciplines will be introduced over the next five years.
The Career Accelerator emphasizes that this career-readiness focus will be integrated into the college’s broader liberal arts ethos. While liberal arts students graduate with competencies in critical thinking, communication, problem-solving and teamwork, specialized skills differentiate them from other job candidates.
“One of the things that we’re finding in labor markets is that students coming out of college have a combination of skills that are inherent in their discipline,” Hewa said. “So if you’re a computer science major, you have the skill of coding and the use of different programs that would be expected for a computer science major. But if you, in addition to those, have skills that are often more associated with other majors, those set you apart.”
While still in its early stages of development, this semester the Career Accelerator is supporting 20 juniors and seniors in paid internships across a variety of sectors. One of those students is Sophie Homolka ’26, a mathematics major and health science minor. She is currently a data analyst intern for the Multnomah County Health Department Ryan White HIV Services Planning Council, which manages HIV care and services for Multnomah County. The Career Accelerator was an essential support for Homolka, whose internship lost funding from the LC Data Science Practicum over the summer.
“My time was funded by a grant that Professor Greta Binford had received years ago as a collaborative National Science Foundation grant for data science. That’s how I was funded in the spring,” Homolka said. “But then, with the federal government doing what it is currently, I believe she was not able to receive a no-cost extension again this year, so I was looking elsewhere for potential funding to continue pursuing this work.”
As a student and a member of the men’s varsity crew team, Homolka did not have the extra time to work at her job to support an unpaid internship. Thus, without the help of the Career Accelerator, Homolka would not have been able to secure this impactful internship, which aligns with her goals of pursuing a career in disease epidemiology. This internship allows her to gain real experience in epidemiology, connecting her to mentors and strengthening her application for graduate school.
“The idea of this Career Accelerator through the Career Center is so important because it lets people explore their passions without being inhibited by having to work for free,” she said. “I love volunteering, but at the same time, you can’t do that work if you can’t support yourself first. So putting money back into stuff like this really shows me that we’re taking the right steps.”
Alongside skill development, the Career Accelerator will work with the Career Center office to expand guidance and career support for every student, curated around their interests and future career goals.
“We’ll be, in the future, assigning or having a career advisor associated with each student, ideally around interest areas, so a career advisor who has a focus in a particular arena of jobs and of majors and disciplines, and then students who are connected with that advisor,” Hewa said.
The Career Accelerator is also committed to providing professional experiences for all students throughout their undergraduate program. Outside of the current student cohort, Hewa shared that all undergraduate students will have the opportunity to have at least one paid internship, study abroad experience, or research and creative work with faculty.
“We want to ensure that every single Lewis & Clark student can have, during their time here, at least one, if not ideally, more than one (career-building experience), at a high-impact practice that sets them up for success in their career,” Hewa said.
These experiences can also create future networks for students in their careers, which finalizes the last commitment of the Career Accelerator: connections. According to CNBC, estimates suggest that up to 70% of jobs are not published on job search sites. What makes the difference in future careers is connections and networks that bring students directly to future employers. Not only does the Career Accelerator hope to use experiences to grow connections, but it also hopes to create a stronger networking environment between students and alumni.
“We want to level the playing field for all of our students and make those kinds of opportunities available to them, and the best way to do that is for them to get the experience they need to get in the door, and then build the networks through that and through connections that we can help them develop to to get access to those opportunities,” Hewa said.
Current students can look forward to these commitments becoming integrated within their undergraduate experience, which will become more defined with each semester. The ultimate goal of the Career Accelerator is for every LC student to graduate well-prepared to launch a fulfilling and successful career, making a difference in whatever field they choose. Over the next five years, regardless of their major or interest, students will be supported in a new way through the Career Accelerator.
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