
Belle Norman '22
Mental Health Specialist, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
Pathway to a CareerThe OWU Connection is our signature program that connects your classroom learning with real-world experience. Faculty mentors will work with you to build your own pathway of OWU Connection experiences, including internships, research, travel, creative projects, and service, all with a purpose: to prepare you for the causes, careers, and graduate school opportunities that you want to pursue.
Every Ohio Wesleyan student - in every major - participates in the OWU Connection. It is the foundational part of OWU's academic program that ensures every OWU student will graduate with hands-on experience and a global perspective.
You will work with professors and advisors to find and sharpen your interests and goals. And they will help you develop your own OWU Connection projects that will connect you with those goals.
You could take a travel class to the Galapagos Islands to walk in the footsteps of Darwin. Or spend a semester internship with an artist in New York City. Or intern in the financial or tech industry. Explore countless options with the OWU Connection Discovery Engine.
Real-world learning through the OWU Connection helps you develop the knowledge, skills, and experience that employers and grad schools value most: the ability to think critically, analyze complex problems, work in diverse teams, and communicate effectively. Every year, OWU graduates connect their jobs or grad school placements directly to their OWU Connection experiences.
You will be prepared to face complex challenges in real-world settings. You will be ready to make a difference.
The OWU Connection gives you the broad-based knowledge, global skills, and real-world experience that will help you tackle tomorrow's most important challenges. We have four goals for you - and many ways for you to fulfill them: You will Think Big. You will Do Good. You will Go Global. You will Get Real.
You will integrate knowledge across disciplines. Work closely with your professors to explore the connections that link the arts, sciences, and humanities in solving real-world challenges. OWU offers 70 majors, and about a third of OWU students graduate with multiple majors. You also can work with faculty mentors to explore research projects in one discipline or across diverse majors.
You will make the world a better, more caring place. Service has always been an OWU tradition and one of our highest values. Every year, OWU students devote thousands of hours to serving others. You might promote healthy cooking in our community, help repair homes damaged by hurricanes, or volunteer in urban schools. You will connect learning and purpose.
You will build a diverse and global perspective. Get your passport ready. You will have many opportunities to expand your classroom learning by immersing yourself in another culture. And on campus, you'll be living in a community that celebrates diversity and is enriched by students from around the world.
You will practice the application of knowledge. Every OWU student is guaranteed a variety of opportunities to put theory into practice—to take what you've learned in the classroom and put it to work in real-world settings. You can take on an internship. Or work with a professor to create a unique project—and get OWU funding to help carry it out.
OWU graduates leave with knowledge, experience, and a hunger to change the world—a combination that excites employers and graduate schools. Our graduates land in top graduate programs, get good jobs, and have the far-reaching perspectives to keep on learning and the broad-based skills to move up the ladder.
OWU Connection Experience: Internships at Vesco Medical in Columbus and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Pictured: Chase Dusek, Finance Economics
OWU Connection Experience: Summer cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine
Pictured: Davis Graham, Microbiology
OWU Connection Experiences: Three internships: Louisiana Department of Revenue; Worthington Industries in Columubus; and Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Pittsburgh.
Pictured: Jacob Dodds, Accounting & Finance Economics major: "“Several of the programs and resources OWU offers have been invaluable to my success in obtaining and succeeding in my internships."
OWU Connection Experience: Operations Intern at People in Need of Delaware County, recipient of Ohio's Charles J. Ping Student Service Award for her “outstanding leadership and contributions to community service or service-learning.”
Pictured: Anna Fender, Social Justice and Women's & Gender Studies
OWU Connection Experiences: Independent research
Pictured: Olivia Beauchamp, Microbiology
OWU Connection Experience: Received OWU Diversity, Equity and Inclusion grant to create a campus chapter of First Generation Investors, a nonprofit that teaches high school students in underserved communities the power of investing and provides them with real money to invest.
Pictured: Reese Little, Business Administration, Marketing
OWU Connection Experience: Summer Science Research searching for components of the gravity-sensing systems in plants.
Pictured: Regina Campbell, Psychology and Botany
OWU Connection Experiences: Summer research projects at University of Notre Dame Physics Department and at OWU
Pictured: Derek Shank, Astrophysics & Mathematics major
OWU Connection Experience: Software Engineer internships two summers at Facebook; departmental honors research project
Pictured: Lan Nguyen, computer science major, "“I just finish my departmental honors research project, and I am sure it will follow me to the rest of my career.”
OWU Connection Experiences: Internship at WebMD in New York City; semester studying entrepreneurship and international marketing in Seville, Spain.
Pictured: Charles Kottler, International Business major, “During my time at WebMD, I became fully immersed in the world of digital health and worked on a number of initiatives to utilize WebMD's consumer base in new ways.”
OWU Connection Experiences: Internships at Columbia University and Brown University; domestic exchange at Spelman College in Atlanta
Pictured: Courtney Carmichael, Politics & Government major, “Participating in workshops on-campus, such as the OWU Summit, as well as planning trips to conferences off-campus, namely the Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference, have allowed me to better prepare for life beyond the classroom.”
OWU Connection Experience: National Science Foundation research project
Pictured: Brian Jordan, Pre-Medicine, Neuroscience, and Psychology majors, “Not only did I gain tangible, observable skill sets that will benefit me as I move on to study medicine, but I was also allowed to network with numerous physicians that inevitably allowed me to gain even more shadowing experience.”
Mental Health Specialist, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
Pathway to a CareerPrinceton University, Ph.D. Program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Pathway to Graduate SchoolIn the past three years, OWU grads have enrolled at Harvard, Princeton, University of Chicago, NYU, Cornell, Michigan, and Notre Dame.
have entered the career field and/or graduate program of their choice.
are entering Ph.D. or Master's programs
secured a job, enrolled in graduate school, or participated in a year-long volunteer activity post-graduation, amidst the height of COVID-19.