Clara Santacruz left her position after eight successful years of encouraging students to grow and seize the opportunities at St. Thomas University.
Santacruz first came to STU as an international student from Ecuador in 2012 and graduated with an honours in Psychology.
In Sept. 2018 she started working for the new Experiential Learning and Career Development (ELCD) office. She started as an internship coordinator and eventually became the manager.
“My favourite moments span from being a student and taking a variety of courses and meeting people who would become my lifelong friends,” said Santacruz.
“It was really exciting for me to think about the possibility of building something almost from scratch and created in a way that I really hoped would create a snowball effect of opportunities for students,” she said.
The programs offered by the ELCD office are the STU Internship Program, the JOBS Program, the STUworks International and an on and off-campus list of jobs. The office also helps students get their certificate in experiential learning and certificate in digital and media literacy.
“I genuinely believe in the benefits of experiential learning in students and how career programs, global experiences and activities in the workplace setting can offer students sometimes a newfound confidence in themselves and a better understanding of how their degrees are applied outside of STU campus.”
She also mentioned her team who supported her while they developed the ELCD office during its first years. Her passion for helping students grow is what motivated her to work in the office.
“It was having that core belief that what I was doing was having a meaningful impact in students’ lives that really motivated me to do more when I started in the office of experiential learning.”
Ana Lucía Pavón, a third-year international student from Honduras, whose first job was in the ELCD office during her first year, shared how fulfilling her experience working with Santacruz was.
“She definitely had a lot of patience with me at the beginning,” said Pavón. “My job with her was my first time ever doing something because in my country, kids don’t usually work until the age of 18.”
Pavón said Santacruz taught her people can grow when they feel challenged.
“It’s good to feel uncomfortable and it’s good to leave that comfort zone you have so that you’re able to grow.”
Santacruz was a role model for many students on campus. Pavón said she was shocked when she learned that Santacruz was not going to continue working at STU.
However, Pavón admitted it was good for Santacruz to take the opportunity to work somewhere else and accept the next challenge for her to continue growing.
“I genuinely thought it was a joke,” she said. “It just really caught me off guard and I was very, very sad.”
Santacruz’s advice for students is to try things that may seem unattainable, but they might be surprised with the opportunities they’ll get once they take that leap of faith.
“I hired a lot of students in our office throughout the years and mentored these students that completed invaluable internships or graduated to study at world renowned grad schools or worked at organizations that they dream of,” said Santacruz.
Santacruz may not be working for STU anymore, but she has left her mark on the small university. She left the ELCD office knowing that the foundation of experiential learning she helped to set up can only grow.
“I will continue to cheer on STU’s continued success. With pride I am following, maybe from the outside, but I am still keeping an eye out on all the good things that come.”
