WKU News

The demands on student-athletes often means they have little time for jobs, internships and other development opportunities to prepare them for life after sports.

A recent student-athlete career fair gave them some resources in this area as WKU’s Amy Bingham explains in this week’s View from the Hill.

The Hilltopper CLIMB program is an effort to empower 400 student-athletes to maximize their impact in whatever their passionate about.  A career fair just for them offered the chance to put their skills to work.

“Hi, my name is Katie Howard and I’m a physical education major at Western Kentucky and I’m on the volleyball team.”

“Just about every student went through an elevator pitch workshop, thirty seconds or less, tell me who you are, what you’re about and what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Sophomore Katie Howard took advantage of the inaugural student-athlete career fair to begin thinking about life after sports.

“I came here with a bunch of my teammates and teammates from other sports and things like that and we all connected through this and working through it together to find what we’re all interested in things like this.”

From professional headshots, to Name, Image and Likeness business cards, there was no shortage of resources for these student athletes interested in planning for the future.

“Whether it be internships in the summer, jobs after they finish or building just that kind of networking connection with the company, hopefully they build relationships once their time up on the hill is finished.”

Freshman golfer Averi Cline got information about how she may be able to spend some of her summer.

“I went to a church camp one. I’m super involved in Curbside and Crossland and FCA so any opportunity to work with kids, I absolutely love it.”

“We tried to find a wide variety of companies to meet our student athletes needs and understand they have so many different, diverse majors.”

Linebacker R.J. Evans says his time playing sports is also playing a big role in preparing him for the future.

“The standard they hold us to is making us ready for the real world so the only thing we don’t probably know how to do is work a job or something but we’re still gonna be great for the real world because some of the rules we follow for football is gonna help us in the real world.”

Hilltopper CLIMB is launching another initiative, the Overtime Program this summer.  It will provide student-athletes, who don’t have a traditional college summer off, the opportunity to capture work experience in any form or fashion. Any businesses wanting more information on the Hilltopper CLIMB program can call 270-745-4904.