UC’s human development program is world changing

Like many students, Lily Beane entered college with an idea of what she wanted to do with her life but uncertainty about how to achieve those goals.

“My college journey was not linear but rather took a few twists and turns before I decided upon the HDCE program,” she said.

Beane entered Wilmington College’s political science program as a freshman, seeking instruction in policymaking, but she surmised quickly that the program wouldn’t offer the kind of face-to-face community interaction she sought in her career. She transferred to UC to major in Early Childhood Education, which felt like a better educational fit but didn’t totally mesh with Beane’s aspirations, she said.

“I felt too pigeonholed and wasn’t sure that becoming a teacher was my end goal,” she said.

The timing of this realization coincided with the creation of UC’s Human Development and Community Engagement program, which Beane checked out and found to be “the perfect fit.”

“The program blended career possibilities of big-picture policy — something I was after with political science — and grassroots efforts, my goal with early childhood education,” she said.

“HDCE offered several paths for my post-graduation life, all focused around my passion of providing for the community.”

One standout experience of her college career was with the Transition & Access Pathways program, a course requirement that paired her with a UC student in the program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“This sparked my passion for collaborating with students with developmental disabilities,” she explained. “Now, I am a developmental specialist — early intervention through Hamilton County Developmental Disabilities — and I attribute my confidence in entering my chosen field to this opportunity.”

Beane looks back with satisfaction on her time in the program and what it provided for her career.

“After graduation, I felt a step above my competition due to having a degree that not many have,” she said. “This allowed me to stand apart and offer potential employers specific expertise on birth-death development and community engagement. Every course that was included within the HDCE program served a specific purpose that aligned with my career goals.

“I felt incredibly prepared to enter the workforce with my HDCE degree.”

“I was interested in undergraduate programs that had a nonprofit focus,” said Margaret Lee, a 2024 graduate of the program. “I saw it at a college fair, and there were very few schools that had an undergraduate degree for that.”

Lee recalls a college representative telling her in 11th grade that the program was in its third year. She ended up taking a tour in which she was able to sit in on a class and meet Jette.

“It was what I was looking for in a degree,” Lee said.

She applied for and was accepted into the program and she set about readying herself to enter college and learn about building a nonprofit career. And then COVID hit.

“My freshman year was asynchronous, so we just did it on our own because it was 2020 to 2021,” she explained. “Then I started getting back to class in person.”

Still, Lee came to appreciate the flexibility the program offered and estimates that she was only in the classroom for about one year of her four-year program’s courseload.

“It gave me time to do other things that I was passionate about,” she said.
She worked as a resident adviser for three years and formed a Circle K club, the college level of the Kiwanis Key Club. (Lee was involved with Key Club programs as a kid.) They empower students to make an impact locally and globally via service, leadership development and fellowship opportunities.

And as she progressed in her academic studies, she found what she learned in the Human Development and Community Engagement program was directly applicable to activities outside of the classroom.

“They talked about different research methods,” she says. “I was able to use those skills to do research in my club and gather data. That was impactful for me, using those skills while I was still in college.”

She also points to grant writing as one of the individual topics taught by the program that prepared her for future career work. Lee also mentions how working with the Transition & Access Pathways program let her apply coursework learnings as she collected data and delivered a report that helped program coordinators improve messaging around the scholarship program.

Upon graduation, Lee was hired as a program coordinator with the Boone County Alliance and recently accepted an executive services specialist position with Kiwanis, the parent organization of both Key Club and Circle K Club.

“I’m on more of the back-end work,” she says, “Supporting the international officers that are making decisions about how to improve membership and encourage service around the world.

“This where I've wanted to be at for a while.”

DaManuel Montgomery found himself at a crossroads during his time at UC. He had initially entered the university intending to study nursing but right away determined the career path wasn’t right for him. He knew he wanted to spend his life helping people, but with a health care career off the table, Montgomery wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“I was like, 'I think I want to do something in the nonprofit sector,'” he said. “What can I do in that?”

He put the question to his adviser, who had recently heard about the newly created Human Development and Community Engagement program.

“I read the program and met with the academic adviser who was over the program. I was like, 'This is something I want to do, advocating for folks that don't have rights or serving a community when times get hard.'”

The four-year bachelor of science program was a perfect fit, he said.

“I loved every class that I went through, from grant writing all the way to how you build an NGO.”

In addition to his time in the classroom, Montgomery recounts his internship and co-op experiences as being deeply impactful.

“I did an internship at this preschool working with their parent engagement specialist, trying to see how we could involve parents in their children's education,” he said. “I came up with different evening activities and brought parents in to read stories to their kids’ class.”

Ultimately, he realized working with kids was not for him — but he really liked engaging with the parents.

Montgomery completed a second internship, which again brought him to a crossroads of a different kind — Crossroads Church, to be exact. This was his place of worship, where he helped with the organization's community COVID-19 response.

It wasn’t his first time working with the church, which organized a 2017 Amigos for Christ service trip to Chinandega, Nicaragua, that he describes as being personally transformative.

“It just made me look at life really different and ask myself, what's my best avenue? Where am I going?” he said.

His Crossroads internship paired him with the church’s partnership team, facilitating the kind of missions work he cared so deeply about. The work experience led to post-graduation employment with the church, where he works today as the volunteer director at the Oakley campus. And he’s putting skills learned in the Human Development and Community Engagement program to good work.

“Everyone's asking, 'Oh, I want you. Can you help me write a grant?'” he laughs. “I'm like, okay, I haven't done that in a while, but I will try my best to help you do it.

“This is what I get to do, and I have the skills. So that's my career right now, and I'm in love with it.”

Like many first-year students entering college for the first time, Camryn Morrow wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with her life — and, by extension, her studies at UC.

A middle-school experience with Magnified Giving, a local nonprofit that empowers youth to engage with philanthropy, revealed a passion for impacting others’ lives in positive ways. But how that translated to the long list of programs offered by the university wasn’t immediately clear to Morrow.

“I struggled with choosing a major,” she said. “My interests spanned education, community service and the arts, but I couldn’t find a program that felt like the right fit.”

Morrow’s adviser steered her toward the recently introduced Human Development and Community Engagement program as a possible fit for her own passions and interests. Curious to learn more, Morrow contacted Jette.

“She responded with such kindness and enthusiasm, immediately setting up a phone call to learn more about me — my interests, my experiences at UC, the kinds of classes I enjoyed, and what I hoped to explore,” Morrow said. “She explained how flexible the program was and how it could be tailored to my specific academic and professional goals. From that first conversation, I was hooked.”

The program not only encouraged Morrow in her personal interests but also helped her develop professional goals.

“It introduced me to opportunities I hadn’t considered and helped me connect interests I hadn’t yet linked,” she said. “Taking courses in child development and school environments deepened my interest in values I already held, such as the arts and civic engagement. That led me to explore more of the program through classes in grant writing, action research, research methods, and student and family engagement.”

Ultimately, her experience in the program laid the foundation for graduate work at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. She graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree in Human Development and Education with a 4.0 GPA.

UC’s Human Development and Community Engagement program also provided Morrow with a handful of important experiential learning opportunities via internships at places such as Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Wyoming Fine Arts Center and The Grunin Foundation. These experiences prepared Morrow for her current role as a development professional, and to this day she counts Jette as an important mentor in her life.

“She is always invested in her students' academic, professional and personal success.”

When Xiara Quinn moved to Cincinnati, leaving behind human development studies in a California-school program, she did so with a plan to transfer into UC, where the Human Development and Community Engagement program caught her eye.

“I was looking for a way to learn about children in the context of their families and communities over their entire lifespan,” Quinn said.

“I was especially intrigued by the NGO component and the connection between the study of people and the practice of community building through nonprofit organization. It was so unique and unlike any HD program I had heard of before. It seemed like a program that could translate really well into the workforce.”

Quinn’s plans always revolved around teaching. She worked as an early childhood educator while attending UC and understood that earning a BS in the field would qualify her for a promotion. And while the classes supported her career aspirations, she’s confident the training she received made her a better educator in real-time as well. But even as it gave her the credentials to move forward with career plans, so too did the program reveal new and unconsidered opportunities.     

“The HDCE program opened up my mind and exposed me to so many other opportunities and possibilities for what my career could be,” she says. “I was able to see the connection between research, community engagement, public policy and how I can uniquely participate and contribute. The program helped me see how an early childhood educator—a role that is grossly underpaid, undervalued and dismissed — can truly make an impact in the community in tangible ways.”

Quinn points to grant writing classes, specifically, as providing a competitive advantage in the nonprofit workforce. Furthermore, she notes that the program helps teachers like her understand how their skills and expertise can translate outside of the classroom to enable service on local or national boards and policy influence.

“I truly felt that the entire HDCE program and every course was well thought out. Not a single course was wasted and everything was interconnected,” she says. “There's something from every class that I still use today, three years after graduation, in my career and community work.”

Featured image at top: Students from UC's HDCE and TAP programs laugh and pose on steps within the Teachers-Dyer Complex. Photo/CECH Marketing