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Studying English to Create a Career Path, with Jason Snart
•College of DuPage Career Services•Season 12•Episode 103
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In this episode, Rebecca Harrington interviews Jason Snart. Jason Snart is a Professor of English at the College of DuPage and chair within the English department, specializing in areas such as creative writing, film, and literature. In the interview, they discuss the wide range of career paths an English degree can support, the transferable skills students develop—such as communication, critical thinking, storytelling, and research—and how these align with employer expectations and the NACE competencies. They also explore the different areas within English studies, the importance of audience awareness, and ways students can gain experience and stand out through involvement and curiosity. After listening to this episode, we hope you have a better understanding of the value and versatility of an English degree in preparing for a variety of careers.
Full episode transcript can be found on the episode page. Below is a general timestamp summary.
00:00–02:30 | Introduction & Overview of English Degrees Rebecca Harrington introduces the episode and welcomes Professor Jason Snart, who shares his background and explains the broad scope of English studies. They begin by framing English as a versatile degree that supports many career paths rather than a single, direct profession.
02:30–06:30 | Transferable Skills & Career Readiness The conversation focuses on key skills developed through English programs, including communication, critical thinking, research, and collaboration. These competencies are connected to employer expectations and NACE career readiness standards, emphasizing their relevance across industries.
06:30–11:30 | Areas Within English & Storytelling Skills Snart highlights different disciplines within English—creative writing, literature, film, and professional writing—and how each builds analytical and creative abilities. The importance of storytelling, audience awareness, and adapting communication for different contexts is emphasized.
11:30–15:30 | Experiential Learning & Co-Curricular Opportunities They discuss ways students can build experience outside the classroom, including clubs, events, and campus involvement. Both stress the value of engagement, curiosity, and applying classroom learning to real-world environments.
15:30–19:30 | Career Preparation, Positioning Skills & English as a Complement Advice is shared on how students can market their skills, develop an “elevator pitch,” and use English courses or a minor to enhance other fields of study. The discussion reinforces English as a strong complement to technical degrees.
19:30–23:30 | Long-Term Value, AI, & Final Advice The episode concludes with reflections on the lasting value of communication and critical thinking skills, even as technology evolves. Snart underscores the importance of authentic voice and adaptability, encouraging students to leverage English skills throughout their careers.
Welcome to the Career Ready podcast. Learn about resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn, interviewing, and all the things you need to be career ready with the Career Services Center at College of DuPage. I'm your host for today's episode, Rebecca Harrington. In addition to learning about resources in the job search process, an important part of being career ready is understanding different career paths to help us explore professions. Using an English degree. I've invited Professor Jason Snart on the show today. He is a professor of English here at College of DuPage. Welcome, Jason. Thanks for having me. All right. Well, before we get started with questions, can you share a short introduction or as we like to call it, in career services, an elevator pitch, elevator pitch, as though I were selling elevators. Okay. Yes. So I'm Professor Jason Snart. I've been at the college for quite a while now. I was hired in 2002. I'm the chair of English or chair of English, specifically creative writing, film and literature. But English is a big assortment of programs, and the chairs in English work collaboratively together on all kinds of different things. Things. Awesome, great. So you'll be able to talk to us about all the different programs and areas. Absolutely. Yeah. It's really interesting that English brings sort of this big umbrella of the one term English, but in fact there are a lot of different programs within that that share some really interesting similarities, but do do different things as well. Absolutely. So why don't we just start by talking a little bit about getting a degree in English and kind of maybe I mean, you talked about it. There's so many different things. So some of the different career paths that it can lead to either directly or indirectly. Right. So that is both a really easy question to answer, but also sort of opaque or complicated at the same time. So what career does it lead to? It leads to every career. Every career. Yes. But unlike other kinds of academic fields that lead very specifically and very obviously into a career in that field, English, like you don't get a job in English per se. You could be an English teacher at the high school level, an English professor at the college level. Those are pretty obvious ones. But really, the skills that English provide effective communication, critical thinking, creative thinking, creative problem solving. What organization doesn't want that skill set at the table? Yeah, absolutely. I think that we talk about it a lot on this podcast. So anyone who has listened to the show before knows this, but we talk a lot about the Nace competencies, which is the National Association of Colleges and Employers who survey employers every year and ask them, what are the skills you're looking for? Communication, critical thinking, teamwork, professionalism, all the things that I think any of the areas of, of English will prepare you for. Yeah. And I obviously would be motivated to encourage people to do an English degree. But truthfully, even if you have interest in engineering, accounting, chemistry, you name it, an English minor is terrific. Even English classes, they give you that sort of additional skill set that sometimes those other areas don't necessarily focus so much on. Yeah, I think that's great. And then maybe so kind of to build off of that. Then what are some of the specific we've touched on these but specific skills or strengths do students gain when completing an English program? Again, whether that's a certificate or a minor or a major? And how can that help prepare them for a bachelor's degree, or maybe even going right into the workforce after an associate's? Yeah. So again, it's that set of related skills, you know, collaboration especially important in the 21st century now is sort of like digital or asynchronous collaboration, working in shared documents, working in other kinds of shared composing spaces is really valuable, basic, you know, critical literacy and research tools are really, really valuable. They're certainly helpful academically. They'll be helpful professionally and truthfully. They're helpful personally, too. We don't really think of ourselves as active, like, oh, in my spare time, I do a lot of research. Most people don't think in those terms, but it's true. Like any sort of time you book, travel or plan an event or buy a car or even smaller stakes, stuff like you're always sort of in the business of doing research your price, comparing. You're thinking about what features does this one have? Does it merit the price point versus this other thing that I'm interested in. So we're never really that intentional about, you know, being at the clothing store and thinking of pulling, you know, sweaters and jeans off the rack. I'm doing my jeans research now, but really, you are like, you're already you're always in that, in that sort of mind space. Oh, yeah, I guess I yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. And I agreed that. I think it is. English courses are a great gateway into learning research as opposed to, you know, I mean, sometimes I'm sure obviously in engineering or things like that, you're doing research into that field. But English, you oftentimes get to pick what you're researching or you can have a lot of variety. And it's just a it's a really great vehicle into that process and kind of how to approach a topic. Yeah. And I think one of the great things that English does, again, as that wider umbrella is it provides not just kind of that analytical skill, but also the creative side of it, where presenting someone with just a list of numbers or a spreadsheet, that's not going to be compelling, right? That data needs to be turned into a compelling story to have some impact in the world, whether it's internally at an organization or externally right from that organization into the world. So English gives you that great kind of combination of those analytical, critical research skills, but also the compelling creative writing storytelling skills as well. Yeah, I was going to ask a little bit about that too, because as kind of alluded to, there are different even areas within English. You know, there is kind of that research component, what we typically think of as in the English class, right, that you took in high school or that you have to take, you know, as your when you're getting your associates or bachelor's, but, you know, you also work with creative writing. There's journalism in there too. I mean, you know, even if it's, you know, can be a little different depending on the school business writing, you know, technical writing, there's so many different things. Are there any I guess I'll start with creative writing. What what is when students take that, what are they thinking about typically like are they do they want to be authors or you know what. What are some other career paths or things they might have in mind that they're taking creative writing? I don't know that a lot of the students are really taking it with a view to a career, per se, but that's okay because they're still learning those skills of, again, just creativity generally, but effective storytelling and being aware of audience and how to have an impact on that audience. So they might be doing creative writing because it just feels good for their soul. Sure. But it even if they don't intend it or think of it this way, it's still having a profound, you know, personal and academic and professional impact as well. And you also have classes on film, right, and, and things and literature where you're learning how to write about those topics. Right. So you're developing analytical skill in like a literature class or a film class. So our English department here at Cod includes writing studies, which is composition advanced rhetoric and that kind of thing. Writing for the workplace, literature, creative writing and film. And again, they all sort of take a different approach to these things. But essentially it's about, again, effective communication, creative problem solving, creative sort of idea generation, all of that kind of stuff. In fact, literature is a really interesting one because it maybe suffers the most from that stereotype of when you think about, oh, I took English in high school or whatever, right? For a lot of people, the term English sort of means nothing, or it just means I read Shakespeare and then had to write an essay, and then I read another Shakespeare play. I didn't understand and had to write an essay on that. It sort of rinse and repeat. Right. So our program is a much more dynamic than that, but also one of the really kind of interesting and almost hidden skills that people are developing in something like a literature or a film analysis class, is this ability to predict what might happen next, and in fact, in a really good book or story or player movie or whatever you might be looking at, if you get if you sort of lose the sense of yourself and you just fall into that story, essentially what you're doing is waiting for that next thing to happen. And just like with the jeans and the sweatshirts off the rack, you might not intentionally or consciously be thinking, I'm in my predicting what's going to happen next mode. It just happens naturally. But it's a really amazing skill to develop, essentially based on the evidence of pages 1 to 127 or wherever I'm at in the book. I think that on page 128, these two characters are going to come into conflict or this problem is going to be resolved or not resolved or something like that, and that ability to sort of like predict a next thing based on emergent patterns is really pretty powerful. Again, we don't go into a literature class thinking about about it in those terms. Exactly. But it really is a pretty foundational skill that has application in other academic settings, certainly professionally, but again, even personally and interpersonally, that ability to kind of read the room, that's like a literary studies skill right there, right? Oh, I love that. That's a great way to think about it. You know, and for some reason I just was thinking about this. So many well, not just young people, but, you know, want to get into social media. They want to be influencers, right? Or they want to or just have a good social media presence. I can't think of anything better to help prepare them for that than learning how to tell stories, learning how to understand stories, learning how to communicate those stories, then that. So it's kind of an offshoot one. But I there's just I think we can't even like I said, we can't even get to all the different careers that could be affected by it. Yeah. And I think one of the most powerful, sort of like philosophical underpinnings of our department generally is our attention to or insistence on always writing for situation or writing or composing for audience. So again, we think of stereotypical English as often long form essays or papers or it's very academic. It has to have a certain number of sources and be ten pages and all that stuff, which certainly has its place, and it teaches valuable skills. But like TikTok, is not the place to write or post a ten page thing or a 30 minute thing or like whatever the long form. So again, one of the skills that you will develop in English is that attention to audience and what we call rhetorical situation. Who's the creator of the message, the author, the composer, the creator? What is that message? Video, text, audio, usually some multiple of all those things. And then who's the audience and what will they expect? If your audience expects 32nd video clip and you're posting ten page research essay like we've we've missed ship passing in the night, right? Right. So a lot of what we do in English is not just this kind of writing or just that kind of writing, it's what kind of writing or composing does this particular situation demand? Yeah. Which again, we know employers and and again in our personal lives is needed. Awesome. So lots of skills, lots of strengths. What are some maybe experiences or opportunities that you recommend developing professionals seek out, you know, as they're preparing for their career that that might be related to either their English classes or getting an English degree of some sort. So that's a tricky one. I mean, it's very student dependent in terms of what their free time, quote unquote looks like, what their other kinds of commitments are, their time on campus. But, you know, and I'm not just saying this, I promise anything career services related is going to be great because then you're getting not just what I tell you in a classroom or how you interact with your classmates. You're seeing how that actually plays out in the workplace. And maybe it's slightly nuanced. Maybe it's there are aspects to it that you just never realized until you live it in that kind of professional environment. And just generally like one of my favorite sayings is, it's not where you go to college, it's how you go to college that really matters. And especially at a place like Cod, there's just so many opportunities to get involved and do a thing and see a show and watch a sport. And, you know, it's just a great place to be. Yeah, I always say when I ask employers, hey, what do you look for when you're looking at hiring an intern? Every single one says people that are involved, every single one. That's because obviously they know you don't know the job yet. That's the point of an internship, right? But if you aren't, if you don't have a job outside of school or are involved in a, you know, a group or a student club or a sport or, I mean, again, any of those things are fine. They don't care. It could be, again, the science fiction club, right, that you know, that English has it's like it doesn't matter. It just matters that you're doing something and you're getting involved and you're getting those leadership skills and those communication skills, and you're kind of using all of that. They love it so and so just kind of with that. And I think maybe this kind of goes with my next question to like there are things at Cod and I'm sure also at other colleges that kind of run through the English department, right, that students can choose to be involved with. So what are some of the, the, the kind of extracurriculars, I guess, for lack of a better word, but but other things that that students can do. Yeah. So there's lots of things and I won't get them all off the top of my head. We have a, you know, Creative Writers Club, the Great Read series, sort of that one book, one campus idea is facilitated sort of through the English department. One of our colleagues. We have great film screenings that are managed by our our film committee. So there's yeah, there's all kinds of things. And the one thing that I'll say is like, for sure, I didn't list them all. And then the other I think great opportunity that Cod provides. And this is again for students, if if there's a thing that you want that it's that isn't there yet like go make it. Yeah. Because Cod's the place that will be behind you 100% is able to support you in doing that. Yeah, absolutely. No I always say yeah, if there's some club that you wish we had, go, go create it. You know, because we we can do that. So yeah. Anything else that you would say that you're doing that we haven't talked about yet. Just that you guys are doing to help prepare students for their next steps in the with the English department. Yeah. So I'll go back to something that you had mentioned in this idea that employers often will really appreciate people who've been involved in a variety of things. So maybe they didn't get straight A's or like whatever numbers matter to people, it's that level of involvement. And I think if they don't use the term, what really speaks to them is this idea of someone who's curious about things, and maybe they love basketball and thus go to the basketball games, but they're just sort of curious about the play that's running at the Mac or the symphony concert. And so they went to that. They're curious about this club. So they went to that. And I feel like that habit of mind must speak really, really highly to employers as a, as a thing that, again, we try to cultivate in English is that sense of curiosity. Well, I always you know, for me that phrase critical thinking is always thrown around. And I just full disclosure, I think I've, I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I have been in English faculty before, so of course this is close to my heart, but I think that term comes out a lot. And my question is always like, what is that? As it seems very like, what is critical thinking? But I think to me that is what critical thinking is, is curiosity and asking questions. Yeah. You know, because you're not just taking it at face value. You want to explore it deeper and right. Employers don't want someone that just accepts everything, you know. But I think that's the impression sometimes. But that's that's really not true. They want you to ask questions and push and especially with AI. Right. So I guess you know that. Yeah. Like you need to be able to kind of figure out what's a better way to do something. I don't, you know, I guess we'll say we'll just go with the next one here. I was going to say, if you want to touch on AI, you can. I know that's like a whole other. Maybe that'll be a station. Yeah. I was like, we've we've done some stuff in AI and you know, we talk about the importance of being careful with it. But is there anything else though that you would recommend to students, young professionals that are preparing for their next steps and how they might use? Because almost all of them have to take some sort of English class, you know, how can how can they best communicate that to employers or just, you know, I don't know. Any last advice? Yeah. So if there are listeners that already identify as, you know, an English major, then that's great. You're on the right track to something, even if you or we or I don't know what exactly. But again, because of the skills that you're developing, you can pivot. You can be the thing that some company or NGO needs or whatever. Right, right. If you are on a different academic track, also cool. But think about English as a minor because again, it gives you that additional skill set where you learn the technical knowledge that you need for your academic field, but then you've also developed these really fundamental effective communication, creativity, problem solving, all those skills. And even if your particular path, your degree doesn't just doesn't have room for a minor. Again, don't discount English as a class that you might take a semester here, a semester there, just to expose you again to some of those important skills of communication of, you know, research, of taking that research and telling a compelling story with it. So maybe English never really shows up as your major or your minor, but it can still really influence how how marketable you are. Sounds sort of crass, but here we are. I mean, that's sort of what it comes down. That's what people care about. Yeah. And truthfully, one of the things that I would say to any student is don't forget that at some point you will have to pitch yourself elevator pitch yourself to a potential employer. So don't wait until you have the degree in hand to do that at the desk in the room on the zoom call. Be thinking from day one, okay? How can I turn these skills into a compelling story that I'm going to tell this person who wants to hire me, or this person who wants to hire me? That should be top of mind throughout. Not at the last minute. I was you know, when you start thinking about your resume, you should be thinking about it your first year and you should be thinking about what do I want us to look like at the end? What do I need to do from now until I'm graduate, that I can fill this with something that it's gonna be like? And I think you make a great point. If it's if it's me with my engineering degree and and my English minor and somebody else with an engineering degree with no English minor, you think of the competitive edge that that is, you know, and I just to kind of connect it back. We we recently did an interview with Doctor Siddiqui, the president of College Page. And he talked about, you know, we talked about the degree being the floor not the ceiling. Right. And how, you know, getting that great foundation just propels you to the future. And I think when it comes to those technical skills, that's all going to change, right. Like there's going to be the next best software or the next best, you know. So not to say that you shouldn't learn what's what's happening now, but the skills you learn in a class like the English classes are going to stay with you forever, no matter what technology changes, right? You know, it's always going to be there. Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if as AI becomes more prevalent and more powerful and and harder to suss out as a thing versus a authentic human voice, I think there will, if there's not already starting to be a backlash like on the part of students who just whether it sounds good or looks good on paper, if it's machine generated, it's just not that interesting or compelling, and people will start to seek out that which is human created. And so, again, it's a longer discussion to have about how that impacts English departments. But that cultivation of the authentic voice English is where it happens. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, last question is just if we have students listening to this and they would like to learn more about the English program at Cod, whether it's for a certificate or just for classes, what can they do? Where can they go? Yeah, it's as simple as going to our website. Pretty simple. You'll find tons of program information stuff about our again film screening series. Our writers read series. List of classes to take. So from the nuts and bolts to all of some of the icing on the cake. There's also a sort of a contact us button that you can click and get more info, and that will likely put you in touch with me. So yeah, there you go. Well, I was going to say that's always I think sometimes for us in the career services office, you know, we always tell students or prospective students like, no, actually you can actually go talk to the faculty. They want to talk to you. They want to they want to help you better understand their program. So that's what they're there for. And that's why we have the contact us. So yeah. All right. Great. Well, thanks to all of our listeners. And special thanks again to Jason for being here today on the podcast. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks. Great. So we hope you enjoyed hearing about careers and using a degree in English. And remember, if you have a question for us, you can submit it to Career Podcast at Cadet Edu or on social media at Career Center and you may hear the answer in a future episode.
