Task Force on Clinic and Corporate Partnerships

The Strategic Planning Task Force on Clinic and Corporate Partnerships is tasked with assessing the Clinic program and corporate partnerships to understand the programs’ strengths as well as identify areas of improvement, ensuring alignment with the College’s educational goals and mission, the needs of our students, and HMC’s emerging strategic plan. As part of its work, the Task Force is asked to engage with students, faculty, staff, trustees, alumni, and community members to understand a variety of viewpoints on the issues at hand.

In particular, the Task Force is asked to address the following:

Data Gathering

  • Conduct an analysis of trends with the Clinic program and the corporate partnerships over the past 10–20 years with respect to industry sectors and student participation or employment.
  • Examine successful industry-partnership and career service models at other higher education institutions. 
  • Partner with the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (OIRE) to undertake a survey of students, faculty, alumni and staff to better understand the opportunities and challenges of the Clinic program and the Office of Career Services. 
  • Conduct qualitative interviews with a range of stakeholders
  • Partner with the Office of Business Affairs and Office of College Advancement to understand how different scenarios on clinic fees would affect the ability to resource clinic projects, budgets at the department and college levels, and requirements for fundraising support.

Focus Questions

  • How tuned is the range of sponsors, projects and corporate recruiting opportunities on offer to the needs and desires of students?
  • Are there industries or disciplines that have not traditionally sponsored clinics or engaged with Career Services with which we should make efforts to partner?
  • Are there industries for which we should dial back our engagement around Clinic or Career Services?
  • How can the programs  handle situations in which students have objections to working with particular companies or in particular areas? 
  • Are there ways to draw in more nonprofits as sponsors or employment recruiters?
  • What are short-, medium-, and long-term initiatives that would improve the programs and the accountability mechanisms for implementation?

Communication

  • One of the task force’s goals is to ensure the input and thoughts from as many people as possible are considered as it develops the recommendations for any proposed changes to the Clinic program and Office of Career Services.  To that end, we have created an email—taskforce_ccp-l@g.hmc.edu—so any members of the HMC community can ask questions, offer suggestions or feedback.  Any communications to the email will be considered confidential to the extent permitted by law. If an HMC email address is not used to send the email, please identify your affiliation (Name and class year or group such as staff and BOT) so we may ensure the communication is from part of the HMC Community. 
  • Approximately every two weeks the task force directors will send an email to faculty, staff and students which will also be posted on this website to keep those interested in the progress informed.
  • An anonymous survey will be sent to alumni, faculty, staff and students in July to gain feedback from as big of a population as possible.
  • A series of meetings with each constituency will be held in mid-September to share preliminary results of the survey and solicit feedback.
  • A draft report with preliminary recommendations and survey results will be prepared by the task force and shared with the community in October for feedback.
  • A revised report incorporating feedback will be shared with the community in November for any additional feedback.
  • A final report with recommendations will be prepared and shared with the community in January.

Task Force Supports

Strategic Plan Pillar 2: The World Needs Harvey Mudd

Priority 4: Build high-impact partnerships

Principal Initiative 2: Expand Clinic partnerships with nonprofits and other entities to align Clinic more fully with its educational and mission-focused goals and to strengthen ties to companies and graduate programs in high-impact areas such as biotech and health informatics.

Task Force Membership

  • Karl Haushalter, Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Professor of Chemistry and Biology and Chair, Department of Chemistry, Co-chair of the Task Force
  • Talithia Williams, Professor of Mathematics and Mathematics Clinic Director, Co-chair of the Task Force
  • Avani Anne ’25
  • Shannon Braun, Director of Career Services
  • Doo Chung ’11, Member, Board of Trustees
  • Colleen Coxe, Assistant Vice President for Sponsored Research and Projects
  • Zach Dodds, Professor of Computer Science and Leonhard-Johnson-Rae Chair of Computer Science
  • Ivan Dudiak ’26
  • Erika Dyson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Willard W. Keith Jr. Fellow in the Humanities
  • Kathy French ’97, President, Alumni Association Board of Governors (AABOG)
  • Sarah Kavassalis, Assistant Professor of Climate and Chemistry
  • Mo Kyn ’24
  • McKenna McMurray ’26
  • Leah Mendelson, Associate Professor of Engineering
  • Sadhvi Narayanan ’27
  • Kim Nykanen, Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs/Dean of Students
  • Alina Scholz ’25
  • Michael Schubmehl ’02, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
  • Aabhas Senapati ’27

Events and Activities

FAQs

Questions

If you have a question, please email the task force at taskforce_ccp-l@g.hmc.edu.