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Andy:  Welcome to Meadows on the Mic, the official podcast of the SMU Meadows School of the Arts. I'm your host, Andy Draper, part of the Meadows marketing team and podcaster extraordinaire. On this show, I'll be bringing you in depth interviews with Meadows faculty, students and staff covering everything from events, special guests and anything else you need to know happening at SMU Meadows.

On this episode, I interviewed Timmie Hathorn, Assistant Dean of Alumni and Career Success. Her office is dedicated to helping Meadows students develop their careers through alumni networking, internships and more. Timmie encourages students to get involved early and start building relationships that will last a lifetime.  Let's get to know Timmie Hathorn!

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Andy: Timmie, thanks for coming on to the show.

Timmie: Thanks, Andy. Great to be here.

Andy: So, tell us exactly what is the office of alumni and career success.

Timmie: Yes, so this is a new initiative here at the Meadows School of the Arts, and this office is the first and only of its kind on campus. And with this project, we're trying to offer our students in the arts, communication, media and design, more robust career services.  And that's something that business schools like the Cox School of Business do very well, but art schools like Meadows really have a hard time achieving. So we decided to really focus in on this about five years ago when our students in the Division of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs sought to learn more about the experience of their peers, what it's like to study at Meadows. And they did research and conducted interviews and basically summarized their findings in a white paper that they called the Meadows mindset. And in that report, they told us, among many other things, two big takeaways. One, that our students really want to connect with alumni, but they don't feel confident in doing so. And two, that they want division level delivery of career development skills. They wanna know how to network, how to use a mentor, how to interview all within their chosen area of study. And as you know, Meadows is really unique in its composition as an art school. We've got not only the fine and performing and visual arts, but the communication arts all housed within Meadows. So we had to figure out a way to offer more robust career services to these nine different disparate areas of study. And actually that same year in 2019, when those students were doing their research, later that fall, the Meadows 2050 Council, which is our young alumni advisory group made up of graduates of the last two decades, told us the same thing. They said that the number one way for us to engage our alumni, no matter what they studied, is to get them connected to students for career networking purposes. They told us that they wanted to be the mentors that they wish they had while they were studying at Meadows. So this was a clear and consistent message that we were getting from both our students and alumni that they wanna be connected to one another for career networking purposes. So we had to make that happen. We couldn't realistically create a brand new career center from scratch that would serve these nine different areas. So we decided to be really economical in our approach and utilize the existing career center on campus, the Hegi Family Career Development Center, and hone in on building a symbiotic relationship, a more robust partnership with that career center in establishing this new office of alumni and career success at Meadows. So essentially, this is a partnership to work together with the Hegi team to offer our students events, programs, and resources that help them shape their careers while they're here at Meadows.

Andy: That's really exciting to hear. I know that career development is at the forefront of every student and even every high schooler looking to go to college as you know, you have your college experience and then it's like, well, what am I doing afterwards?  That's really exciting that Meadows has this new initiative. So tell us how can students get involved?

Timmie: So, the first thing I would recommend for a student who wants to get involved is create a profile on LinkedIn. We have an existing private network for the Meadows School of the Arts that is open only to alumni and students on LinkedIn. So you have to have administrative approval to join. You have to either studied at Meadows or be studying at Meadows. That is our mouthpiece for the Office of Alumni and Career Success. That's how we communicate with our students and our alumni. We post jobs there. We talk about internships. We talk about all the different ways that you can get connected to alumni as a student. So that's number one.  Number two, no matter what year you're graduating, so whether you're a freshman or a senior, you need to go and visit the Hegi Career Development Center and schedule what we're calling a Meadows Career Success appointment. So, this is a new career counseling appointment type that together with the Hegi Career Counselors, we've developed to serve Meadows’ majors and pre-majors, where you get a one-on-one conversation with a career counselor at Hegi, you get a networking tutorial, and most importantly, you get matched with a Meadows mentor. That's an alum who's identified themselves as willing to provide industry-specific career advice to students. So, through this program and this career counseling appointment type, we're trying to drive students to access the readily available resources at the Career Center, but also helping them build professional contacts while they're here, while they're studying at Meadows.

Andy: A lot of students don't start thinking about alumni and career stuff until they're like a junior or a senior or maybe even after graduation, but it seems like they should get involved earlier than that.

Timmie: Absolutely! The Career Center is there for you no matter what your class year is, and research shows that the more times you visit your campus Career Center as a student, the more likely it is that you're going to land a paid internship and full-time employment within your chosen area of study. So, we are intent on getting our students to access the Career Center early and often in their college careers so that they can ensure their future success.

Andy: You mentioned internships, and we know that those are a huge part to eventually getting into a career, paid or unpaid, or just getting into the contacts in the area of whatever specialty you're in. And that's a huge concern of a lot of students.  So can you tell me about what kind of internship opportunities are available through your office?

Timmie: Yes, internships are huge and particularly paid internships. Research also shows that it's almost more hurtful to your career to partake in an unpaid internship than it is to not have an internship at all. So getting paid for your work is essential even in this early stage where you're getting experience through an internship as a student. And that's that other piece of this pipeline that helps you eventually build to getting that full-time job.  We're first focusing on driving students to the Career Center to get career counseling through these meta's career success appointments. But with internships, we've developed a new program. Thanks in large part, actually in total part to the PMC Esping Foundation, who committed to offering and subsidizing five student internships that are gonna be reserved exclusively for meta's students at local arts and cultural organizations. So with this grant, we've been able to set up partnerships with these local organizations who are willing to let us pay to play, basically. And we pay the students wages with this funding so that they get that paid internship experience and the employer gets a high quality candidate from meta's, an undergraduate student to come in and serve as an intern for three months in the summer. So we're really pleased we've got basically commitments from Business Council for the Arts here in Dallas. The Dallas Film Society and Dallas International Film Festival. D Magazine, which is an editorial internship for journalism students. Larama Agency, which was named by Adweek recently is like one of the top fastest growing ad agencies of 2024. And then the Nasher Sculpture Center. So these are Art or Arts adjacent career internships where students can get that really ideal experience on their resumes so that when they graduate, they have some kind of professional experience to draw from in a plan for their first job. So, we're really thrilled about this program. We're gonna start taking student applications in February and we'll be able to continue subsidizing five internships per year for the next four years. So, it's a really big win for our students.

Andy: I wanted to ask a little bit more about, you named a number of arts organizations around Dallas that you're working with to develop these internships. How do employers get involved if they're not already?

Timmie: We actually have a landing page for employers. If you go to we've got information on all the different kinds of resources where employers can get involved. They can follow us on LinkedIn. They can submit a job posting or an internship posting for us to put forward to our LinkedIn network of students and alumni. And they can contact us directly if they'd like for us to help them identify a candidate for a job that they might have available. So, with this internship program though, we're kind of getting through this first iteration before we make an application available to employers. So, we, in collaboration with our faculty chairs, kind of handpicked this first cohort of employer partners, those five that I named. And, but we expect in future years to be able to open it up for an application process. So, other employers that might be interested in offering an internship exclusively to a Meadows’ student might apply and be selected for this program.

Andy: Right, so there's a lot of opportunity for growth in the program, both on the internship side and the arts organizations that you're working with to develop the internships.

Timmie: Absolutely. And what we love about this program is that we're building stronger ties within the community to these organizations. So that's a win for the school as well.

Andy: My last question is, do you have any other advice for students in general looking to get involved with the Office of Alumni and Career Success?

Timmie: I would say just reach out to us if you're really not sure about how to go about signing up for one of these opportunities or how to access the resources that are available through either our team or through the Career Center. You know, email me directly.  My email is listed on the Meadows website or you can email us at meadowscareer at smu.edu to reach our generic department inbox. But the big thing is to put yourself out there and get engaged early. You don't want to be the student who waits until spring semester of senior year and shows up at the Career Center with no job prospects and no leads and says, help me. That is like, that is not what we want for our students. We want our students to have full awareness starting their freshman year, really their first semester freshman year, of what career building resources are available to them and how they can access them. So you've also got at your disposal as a Meadows student, this incredible network of alumni who are willing to help. They have identified themselves as willing to offer you a 30 minute informational interview or to review your resume, real or portfolio over email or to just provide career advice. And you should take them up on that while you're a student so that you graduate with an active professional network, you know, ready to go and you can access that network at any time as you navigate your career path.

Andy: Right. So get involved early. Don't wait till you're a junior on the last semester of your senior year. And, you know, like you said, put yourself out there, try and get in contact with those alumni in your field or in your discipline as part of the networking process.

Timmie: Absolutely, those grads can tell you exactly how to tailor your application materials for today's market. So that's why we built this program.  We want to give you full access to that network. We want to teach you how to network and get you some practice at it so that you graduate more confident and prepared in pursuit of your career goals.

Andy: Well, Timmie, thank you so much for coming on to the show. It's been very informative about the Office of Alumni and Career Success. Thank you so much.

Timmie: You bet, Andy! Thank you!

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Andy: Thank you for tuning in to Meadows on the Mic, and a big thank you to Timmie Hathorn for coming on to the show. If you're interested in learning more about internship opportunities and alumni networking, please check out the Office of Alumni and Career Success at smu.edu slash meadows slash alumni, or email Timmie Hathorn directly at thathorn at smu.edu. This podcast is brought to you by the SMU Meadows Marketing Department and is available on all major podcast platforms. For questions and comments, email us at and follow us on socials at smu meadows on all major social media channels. I will chase the sky.