Upper School Girls Explore Their Futures Through Career Exploration and Shadow Day

Upper school girls watched veterinarians in action at a pet hospital, spoke with legal professionals in the courtroom and at a law firm, created rooms at an interior design firm, and experienced additional career paths during Career Exploration and Career Shadow Day. Through the Institute for Responsible Citizenship, our freshmen and sophomores explored a wide variety of career paths by hearing from professionals and participating in hands-on activities.

Throughout the year, we invite professionals to campus, and Career Exploration and Career Shadow Day allow our girls to connect with experts outside the classroom and see learning come to life across Memphis. The 9th graders split up into nine cohorts based on their interests, such as engineering, medicine, and the arts, and they visited multiple sites and organizations. The 10th graders shadowed a variety of professionals in Memphis.

“As part of the animal science group, I expected to only learn about veterinarians, but was surprised to find out that there are so many more important roles in the animal science field that we learned about,” Caroline Jefferies ’29 said. “Career Exploration Day helped open my eyes to new perspectives and possibilities I would have never explored if it weren’t for Hutchison.”

We are grateful to the businesses and organizations that helped our girls gain invaluable insights into their futures. Thank you to our alumnae—Annie Tauer Christoff ’96, Cecile Shoemaker ’00, Martha Campbell Robertson ’05, Lee Smith Yates ’02, Sarah Rose Sutton Watkins ’94, Anna Burch Wunderlich ’96, Mollie Speer Baird ’99, Taylor Kinard Nelson ’14, Susannah Herring ’96, and Kendra Powers ’10—for welcoming our 9th grade groups into their workplaces and those who hosted 10th graders for Career Shadow Day.

“Each of our ninth-grade groups got to spend time with representatives of at least three companies and had some incredible behind-the-scenes experiences that most people never get the chance to participate in,” said Kristen Davis ’99, director of the Institute for Responsible Citizenship. “I hope this day connects what they are learning in the classroom to what is happening across the city and that it inspires them to dream about where the future might take them. The community showed up big time for our girls as hosts, and I believe the students felt it. It is so important for our girls to be welcomed to places like board rooms, flight simulators, and hospitals because it reaffirms that they can go anywhere they can imagine.”