Maryville College Career Center wraps up academic year with Spring Opportunities Fair
March 28, 2025
Valis Ethriel ’27 probably wasn’t the typical Scot in attendance at the recent Maryville College Spring Opportunities Fair, but he had the right idea.
Organized by the MC Career Center to give seniors an opportunity to connect with local nonprofits, businesses and graduate programs before Commencement on May 3, the fair took place March 20 in the Clayton Center for the Arts. According to Dr. Niklas Trzaskowski, director of the Career Center, nearly 40 organizations attended the event, which drew more than 200 students.
And while 30% of them were seniors, undergrads like Ethriel, a Political Science major, took advantage of getting a head start on future planning.
“I wanted to find potential careers and internships, as well as speak to professionals about the things my major could lead to,” Ethriel said. “This wasn’t the first time I’ve been to a Career Center event, and I’ve found each and every one so far to be totally worth the attendance. Even though some of the guests didn’t have anything for me, I still gained practice and knowledge by going.
“And a lot of them provided resources worth looking into or networks for future use. Others are potential internships, jobs or even career paths that I may have never considered before.”
One of them — Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) — had “a crazy number of options for everyone,” Ethriel added, including several internships opening soon that he felt would be a perfect fit. That was good news for Stephanie Faust Collins ’05 and Sarah Taylor Yeaple ’08, two alumnae who also happen to be former staff members of the MC Career Center.
“One thing that I’ve learned about KUB is our employees have to be versatile and agile, and I feel like Maryville College students and graduates are,” said Yeaple, a team lead for Learning & Development and Strategic Initiatives in KUB’s human resources department. “They have that liberal arts base, so they have widespread exposure to a lot of different skills already, and I feel like they can navigate the potential intersectionality of various fields because of that background.
“There’s not a single department that operates in a silo, and there are many departments that collaborate constantly, whether it’s a big project or the implementation of new equipment in a community, or a marketing campaign or so many other things. I think that Maryville College does a really good job in sort of building that muscle in their students, and that skill and that muscle will serve them really well at KUB.”
Collins, a human resources analyst at KUB, added that the utility company was recruiting for student positions in accounting, marketing and general business, and that MC students make ideal target candidates because the nature of the KUB workforce is structured much like the liberal arts approach to education at Maryville College.
“When you work at a utility company, especially one that has five utilities, you learn something new every day, and it takes a while to really understand what that means and what goes into providing five utilities for our customers,” Collins said.
“That lifelong learning that’s instilled in students at Maryville College, we live and breathe that every day,” Yeaple added. “We’re learning something new about our operation or a specific utility or a different group of employees or whatever, every single day.”
Collins represented KUB last November at the Career Center’s Fall Career and Internship Fair, the largest of his organization’s three keystone events, Trzaskowski said. The academic year kicks off with the Graduate School and Continuing Education Fair, and already, Trzaskowski and his team are beginning plans for the 2025-26 academic year.
“Our campus community and Maryville College’s focus on career preparation makes it possible to hold these events, and we are beyond grateful for all the support we receive,” he said. “We are spending roughly the next month very focused on providing individualized support to our graduating seniors. We are looking forward to working with the ones who are still undecided about their futures and helping them take that first step and providing the ones who already know what’s next with practical advice on how to maximize their next opportunity.”
Sometimes, that opportunity has been available all along: Taylor Thomas ’24, who graduated last year, was at the fair representing NASCAR SpeedPark in Pigeon Forge, where he first found employment in high school. It was his Management degree from Maryville College, however, that turned a part-time position into a career … and he still gets to help test the go-karts every morning, if he wants.
“I’m an operations supervisor now, and I do all the training for all the track attendants outside,” he said. “Honestly, the Management degree here sets you up for success. It gives you all the tools to actually start managing people effectively. I knew the job itself and what it entailed, but I didn’t know how to effectively manage people until I learned that here. It gave me the tools and some resources to move up through the ranks.”
While some Scots will have similar experiences, others, Trzaskowski acknowledged, may have no idea what comes next. The Spring Opportunities Fair provided those students with opportunities to focus on service and doing “good on the largest possible scale,” as MC founder Rev. Isaac Anderson urged: Emma Christensen with the Appalachian Service Project, a nonprofit home repair organization that provides free home repair and replacement to families living in substandard housing or those affected by a disaster, was on the lookout from students from any background or major, she said.
“We would love to have more students just because we are looking to hire folks who are from this area, who are from Appalachia and want to give back to their communities,” she said. “We’re just looking to talk to students to hear about what they are looking for during this upcoming summer and see if we could be the right fit.”
Seniors who missed out on the Spring Opportunities Fair (as well as organizations that want to get a jump on taking part in Career Center events during the next academic year) can always contact him via email, he said. Scots who are headed toward graduation with no plans for what happens next need not panic, he added, because the Career Center is standing by to offer assistance … and recognizes that it looks differently for everyone.
“We want students to pursue some kind of professional or educational experience and understand that careers are not linear,” Trzaskowski said. “We believe that it is about getting experience and not waiting to take the next steps. Build the momentum for your career journey by taking the first step now. Be open-minded and focus on all the skills that you have developed throughout your time here at Maryville College.
“It is unlikely that the first job you take after College will be your last one. I think all seniors who are scheduled to receive their diplomas in May should definitely see us in Bartlett Hall, because no matter where they are at in their journey, we can offer some kind of support.”
