Castleton University is hosting an event Oct. 18 featuring four alumni who will return to their alma mater to help health education and health science majors find out what jobs are available post-graduation.

“This is a premiere event, and it is student initiated,” career services director Renée Beaupré White said in a phone interview. “There’s a panel discussion and there’s also going to be an opportunity for students to network with the professionals who are on the panel.”

The student who started this event is health education major Rosa Wallace. She said the idea from this program stemmed from a conversation with White while working with her.

“Last year, I was at a nursing event in the nursing department,” Wallace said. “Rutland Regional was there. They were trying to recruit students to work at the hospital. I was talking to Renee, and she told me about how a student came up to her and broke down in tears.”

Wallace said that student was a senior health science major, who did not know her options when she graduated.

“I heard that story a few times from different students, kind of having that reaction, and feeling that way when they were about to graduate, which is obviously not good,” Wallace said.

She said that student’s story is what made her decide, with help from White and other faculty members, including her program’s coordinator Kathleen Culpo, to create this event for health education and health science majors.

“I’m a community health education major, and it’s a really small program,” she said. “It’s fairly new, and most of the health education students are school health, so they’re going to be licensed health educators.”

Wallace said her program only has two students who are seniors and that is part of the reason why this event is essential.

“We’re thinking this event will also be a good way to not recruit students from other majors, but to draw interest from students who might not know what they want to do,” Wallace said.

“Many associate health education with only teaching in schools,” Culpo said. “There’s so much more.”

According to Culpo, the goal of the event is to help students learn how to combine majors and minors that the program offers. Culpo said community health education focuses on health promotion.

The program will consist of four panelists, a substance abuse prevention consultant for the Vermont Department of Health, a clinical research coordinator at the University of Vermont and an education coordinator with the local hospital’s community health team.

There will also be a coordinator for tobacco treatment and a clinical scribe at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. The four panelists will spend the evening answering questions students may have and helping them network.

The event will take place in the 1787 room in the Campus Center at 7:00 p.m. Refreshments and prizes will be offered, and the event is open to all students who wish to attend and learn more about health education and health sciences.