Tag Archives: scsu

“When in doubt, be an English major!”

Posted on by
Reply

Did you know that St. Cloud State University has an exceptionally high employment placement rate?

From the 2017-2018 graduates, 97.5% of students were employed in a related field within one year of graduation! For the English department, that number is slightly higher at 98.6%!

Why is this the case?

  1. The Career Center – The Career Center is always there to help current and graduated students with career needs. Right now, during the middle of COVID, appointments to meet with career counselors have gone virtual, so current and past students can explore career options from the comfort of their own home! Check out SCSU’s Career Center here!
  2. Professors and other connections – When you attend SCSU, you don’t just walk away with a degree; you also walk away with lifelong resources and in many cases, friends. Find an advisor you really jive with and you’ve just found yourself a lifelong resource! If you are in need of career assistance after graduation, reach out to your advisor! Not only are they happy to help, but our professors love hearing from past graduates!
  3. St. Cloud – Our location acts in your favor when it comes to finding a career. There are so many career options in and around the area, and if you can’t seem to find something in St. Cloud, the Twin Cities are just a short drive away!

Check this out! Here are some of the locations of employment of the 2017-2018 English graduates. Notice how many of them are in and around St. Cloud!

When you’re looking through this list, also notice the wide variety of employers! The English degree is so versatile and opens up the doors for many career opportunities! We in the English department like to say,

“When in doubt, be an English major!”

Anoka-Hennepin School District

American Creativity Academy

CentraCareHealth

College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University

Comfort Autism Center

DaVinci Academy of Arts and Sciences

Eden Valley-Watkins School District

Illinois State University

Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University

Immersion Magazine

Independent School District 196

Interamerican University of Puerto Rico

Ivy Tech Community College

Japan Exchange and Teaching Program

Joy English

Kimball Area public schools

Little Falls Community schools

Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe

Mokpo Bukkyo Elementary School

Mora Public School district

North Dakota State University

No-Strings Attached School of Music

Osseo Area School District

Peace Corps

Saint Paul Public Schools

St. Cloud Area School District

St. Cloud Technical and Community College

St. Francis Area Schools

US Department of Veterans Affairs

University of Wyoming

Willmar Public Schools

As you can tell, many of these employers are near Central Minnesota! Finding a career close to SCSU is very possible, especially because of the connections you will make through your time here.

If you were an English major, we’d love to hear what you are doing for a career! How versatile can our degree really be?? Drop us a comment and let us know!

Visiting Scholar from China Researches Sinclair Lewis at St. Cloud State

Posted on by
Reply

Dr. Chen in front of SCSU huskyCentral Minnesota’s literary claim to fame again attracted international attention this Spring. The author of the book Sinclair Lewis and American Popular Culture, Professor Ying Chen, came from the University of Inner Mongolia, China, to spend six months as a visiting scholar in the English Department in order to work with the Sinclair Lewis Papers in University Archives.

You won’t easily find her book on Amazon.com since it is written in Chinese, but Dr. Chen is an authority in, among other things, the reception of Nobel Laureate Lewis in China after the country’s turning to the outside world during the 1980s.

Despite disruptions to her library access during Spring 2020 from COVID-19, Dr. Chen forged ahead with three articles and her first Zoom presentation to the Sinclair Lewis Society of America. Her current research focuses on comparing the Lewis’s novel and play production versions of Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. But she has made efficient use of archive time to collect electronic copies of all the documents our library holds relating to Lewis. Encountering these original papers has transformed her understanding of the novelist and enabled to discover many Sinclair Lewises in this one writer. “Before coming here, I thought of him as a hero – and now I see him as we are, ordinary people…You would think from his novels that he was very serious and skeptical, criticizing everything, but when you read his letters you find him like a kid looking for attention from others,” she added. She sees this youthful characteristic as admirable, as a driver of his open and exploring mind.

Dr. Chen in front of Ruby Cora Webster HallThe half year here, which included sitting in on TESL classes and Monica Pelaez’s advanced Literary Theory and Criticism course was a “very difficult but rewarding experience” during an era that showed both “the best and the worst of America in an important year in American history.” Dr. Chen expressed her thanks for all the support from English and from Tom Steman of Archives. The Center for International Studies assisted her with all the unexpected COVID paperwork.

 

When at her home university in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, Dr. Chen teaches the extremely popular course, Introduction to Contemporary Writers in Foreign Cultures.

If you’d like to read more about Sinclair Lewis, a native to Sauk Centre, Minnesota (roughly 45 miles from SCSU), click here!