From professor to Career Development, Kelsey Bolton celebrates a year as Simpson College’s internship coordinator. Bolton received her undergraduate degree from Simpson and her master’s from Drake University. At Simpson, she majored in psychology with honors and sociology with a minor in concentration and got her master’s in Secondary School Counseling at Drake.

“It’s kind of a weird feeling since I feel like I’ve been at Simpson forever since I did my undergrad here, but being in this role specifically for one year has been really fun,” Bolton said. “It’s definitely been different. It’s been a little bit of a transition from teaching full-time.”

As internship coordinator, Bolton works with sophomores and juniors when they are ready to look for an internship. She assists them in the search and application process and meets with them one-on-one to understand their strengths, goals, and needs to help ensure that they find the best-fitting internship. She also helps with resumes, LinkedIn, and mock interviews.

“We [Career Development staff] all work as a team on career-related events for students, like networking events, as well as career education workshops, and things like that,” Bolton said. “Then I teach too, so I’m prepping and teaching an internship prep course once a week. I do that for three eight-week terms every year, and then this year will be my first year teaching career observation during May-Term.”

Bolton’s favorite part about being the internship coordinator is when students come back and tell her that they got an internship or an interview or that their resume looks great. Overall, it’s seeing students succeed.

“Whenever they have those positives, it’s really rewarding because I generally am proud of them and their hard work, and knowing that I played a small part in it, it brings me joy,” Bolton said.

Before Bolton worked in Career Development, she was a professor. She taught at Drake, Simpson and DMACC. She wanted to work with either high school or college students and believed her counseling background helped her make valuable connections with students. 

“I had a few experiences during my undergrad while here at Simpson. I was a tutor, I was a teaching assistant, I was a work-study student in the psych department, and I was just really able to observe and work with my own professors, but also work with students with different learning styles,” Bolton said. “And I found that seeing students when they finally got something after we worked on something together that it was really rewarding.”

Bolton started teaching at Drake in 2011 and held multiple roles there. She was a lab and adjunct instructor and taught in the Psychology department, specifically Intro to Psychology and Research Methods. She enjoyed being in the field of psychology because she was passionate about it. She also liked having smaller class sizes because she liked getting to know the students, how they learned and what they found enjoyable. This helped her create activities for them to learn the material. 

When Bolton saw the full-time position at Simpson, she got excited because the position allowed her to combine teaching and counseling. She also likes that Simpson has a home-type environment because of the connections between staff, faculty, and students.

Bolton feels like it has been a great first year and enjoys connecting with people, especially students, and helping them get their dream internships.

“I am super excited to still collaborate with students and other people on campus, just to make sure we’re providing great experiences all around to help prepare students for life after Simpson,” Bolton said.