University of Virginia Library

Sees New Goals

Director Reforms Placement

By Bill Pollak

More than 2,000 students face the
problem of what to do after graduation
this year. The University's Director of
Placement, Lawrence A. Simpson, has
been in charge of dealing with these
problems since August of 1968, when he
came to Charlottesville from the Pennsylvania
State University, where he received
his D.Ed. and served as a graduate
assistant in Penn State's placement
service.

In an interview with The Cavalier
Daily, Mr. Simpson stated that his goal is
to make this university's placement
program one of the best in the country.
To do this the Office of Placement hopes
to compensate for what has not been
done in the past. Mr. Simpson is striving
to change a previously "passive" placement
program into an "active" one, one
in which the Placement Office has close
involvement with students and their
program.

'Bridge The Gap'

One way in which Mr. Simpson hopes
to help students "bridge the gap" from
undergraduate life to life after graduation
is to provide them with career counseling
by specially trained graduate assistants.
For this purpose, the Esso Educational
Foundation has given the University's Office of
Placement a $15,000 grant. The Demonstration
Project, as it is called, will entail work with
small groups of students and will rely heavily
on the use of $4,000 worth of video-tape
recorders, provided by G.E., and other
audio-visual equipment.

This experimental project will last two years
and will involve approximately sixty students
and two graduate assistants. It, hopefully, will
make the Placement Office more than simply a
place for employers and interested students to
meet, and it could set a precedent for
universities across the country. In the Demonstration
Project, Mr. Simpson sees "a lot of
potential in an area where little research has
been done."

To create even greater personal involvement
with undergraduates, the Placement Office has
initiated a Pre-law Advisory Program which
supplies information concerning selection of
and admission criteria for various law schools.
As a part of this program three second-year law
students at the University, Meade Whitaker,
Marshall Biddle, and Dan Mulcahy, are serving
as pre-law advisors.

Confidential File

The Office of Placement will maintain a
confidential file for all law school candidates
which will include the student's Standard Law
School Recommendation Form and other
information necessary for applications.

According to Mr. Simpson, the university
students themselves are often partly responsible
for the lack of personal involvement with the
Placement Office. "It takes about three-quarters
of a year to interest college students in
what is offered in this office," he said. He urged
students to make an early effort to consider
what they are going to do and where they are
going to go.

Undergraduates who fall to do this often
forfeit opportunities to meet with corporation
representatives and therefore compete less
effectively with college graduates across the
country. Mr. Simpson added that students who
have several faculty recommendations on file

by the time they graduate are at a definite
advantage.

The Director of Placement pointed out that
this year there is a "relatively tight employment
market." A recession in our national economy
and a cut back in military spending have
resulted in fewer job opportunities, and the
return of soldiers from overseas has created
increased competition.

'Aggressive Approach'

To combat the constricted employment
market Mr. Simpson advocates an "aggressive
approach" to career and college placement.
This entails talking with business representatives,
and making the College Placement Manual
and other volumes of information available to
students.

Graduates in the United States face more
than an increasingly competitive world; they
face the draft. The Placement Office offers
counseling about the draft and realizes the great
impact that the draft can have on post-graduate
decisions. Last year, for example, 27% of the
graduating class went on to graduate school, a
drop from the previous year. Mr. Simpson
accredited the drop to the draft. He claimed
that many students are afraid to go to graduate
school, knowing well that on any given day
they can be called up for military service.
Instead, they seek jobs which offer draft
deferment, like teaching.

Understaffed Office

The Placement Officer feels that, with all its
concerns, his office is understaffed and has a
poor operating budget. He said, "This is the
chronic ill of all placement offices." He noted,
however, that the situation was recently
improved by a doubling of the Placement
Office's operating budget.

Clearly the Placement Office faces a large
number of problems: student procrastination, a
previously passive policy, a tight employment
market, the draft, and a restrictive budget. But,
surprisingly, protests against Dow Chemical
Corporation and other businesses are not
problems.

Dow Protests

Mr. Simpson slated that "Dow's interview
schedule has never been better." He said that
the protests give great publicity to Dow and
attract many technically oriented students who
often are either reacting against the protests or
are not concerned with the political situation.

Mr. Simpson made it clear that he did not
believe that all students should be influenced
by protesters. "We want students to decide for
themselves who they want to see."