Some Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) students, upon their graduation, transfer to other schools. Others choose to enter the workforce.
Faculty members are helping them prepare for whatever their next step will be.
Conducting mock interviews is one method they’re using.
A few students in the Cinema program participated in them at the NOVA Woodbridge campus on Friday morning.
Mock interviews were conducted at Northern Virginia Community College’s Woodbridge campus on Friday. Photo courtesy of Bryan Brown.
NOVAarts Dean David Epstein, NOVA Cinema Professor Chris Stallings and What’s Up Prince William Editor Erin Flynn served as the interviewers.
The mock interviews are part of the Portfolio 2 class NOVA Cinema Professor Bryan Brown is teaching this semester.
In addition to preparing for the interviews, the students edited demo reels, created resumes, and improved some assignments from their classes.
Prior to the Portfolio 2 course, students take an Orientation to the Arts class, where they begin researching colleges and universities they would like to transfer to.
More in-depth research is done during the Portfolio 1 class.
“We encourage them to reach out to their transfer institutions, to go visit them … so that they get a good feel of what that program’s actually like, not just that ‘It’s George Mason, it’s right here. I think it’s maybe good, I have no idea.’ Those kind of things,” Brown said. “We want them to have that real feel.”
NOVA students are also assigned an adviser.
“It always amazes me, because — as big as we are — it’s always just such a pleasure for me to see how close our faculty become to each one of our students, but — in particular — in the Cinema program and within the NOVAarts programs, as well,” Epstein said.
Stallings is one of the mentors at NOVA.
In this role, he has developed the Cinema program’s internship program, brought in professional equipment, and introduced students to those in the industry.
“He took students to South Dakota to do a full professional shoot with a full professional crew so that they would know what it’s like to be outside of this bubble of academia,” Brown explained.
