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What is the value of an education? How is this value measured? It is difficult to truly assess the long-term life impact of a high quality, liberal arts education, but there are a handful of significant and tangible indicators that illustrate this impact. Perhaps the most significant among these measures is where Eckerd College graduates go once
they've graduated.
- 33% of recent graduates found jobs within one month of graduation.
- 69% of recent graduates are employed full time
- 36% went on to graduate school.
Eckerd College graduates have gone on to become famous authors, professional athletes, teachers, lawyers, physicians and even circus performers!
Meet alumna Julie Huber. Dr. Huber graduated from Eckerd in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science degree in marine science and biology. Her current research assists in the understanding of how microbial populations function in and regulate the world's oceans. She was recently selected to receive a $40,000 fellowship as part of the L'Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science Program. Only five of these fellowships go to up-and-coming female scientists who are conducting innovative and groundbreaking research in the life and physical/material sciences, as well as mathematics, engineering and computer science. We're proud to call Dr. Huber one of our graduates.
Meet alumnus Dennis Lehane. An acclaimed author, Dennis is a 1988 graduate of Eckerd's creative writing program and a former student of novelist Sterling Watson and poet Peter Meinke. Mystic River earned rave reviews and several weeks on the New York Times best seller list and became an Oscar-winning film directed by Clint Eastwood. Shutter Island has been optioned by a film company and will become a major motion picture while Gone, Baby, Gone, a film starring Casey Affleck, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, will be released in November 2007. More than Dennis's success as a writer, we are most proud of Dennis's continuing commitment to the education of future creative writers and to Eckerd College. Dennis has been teaching fiction writing at renowned writing programs at University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA, Pine Manor College in Massachusetts, Tufts, Boston College and Harvard. In January 2005, Dennis came back to co-found and co-direct with Sterling Watson a wildly successful writers' workshop called Writers in Paradise and was a writer-in-resdience at Eckerd. In an interview with a St. Petersburg Times reporter, Dennis claimed, "Coming to Eckerd College was the best decision I ever made."
Recent Eckerd College graduates Sarah Sieloff '06 and Lauren Yeager '06 used Fulbright grants to study in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. This was the first time in the College's history that Fulbright scholarships were awarded to two students within the same year.
Grace Gair '08, a graduate with high honors and a double major in Anthropology and International Relations and Global Affairs (along with a minor in Spanish), was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Scholarship to South Korea to teach English as a foreign language. As a student, Grace served as a captain of the Eckerd College Ethics Bowl Team, a Resident Advisor and Assistant Residence Coordinator, President of the Eckerd College Organization of Students, played an important role in the implementation of the College's honor code system and helped initiate a program focused on academic integrity and community responsibility that was integrated into Eckerd's Autumn Term orientation program for the freshman class. Learn more about Grace.
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Eckerd is special not only because of the close relationships it nurtures, but also because of the amazing freedom to explore and do new things. For faculty it's the freedom to create new courses and teach in new ways. For students it can mean designing their own major program. 
