References to Trabon Solutions, a technology firm based in Kansas City, Mo., that creates specialty software and business solutions, have been removed from this story. The story contained incorrect information about the company and the reason for a source’s termination. The Kansan regrets the error.

Renee Whaley has a daily routine. She wakes up, takes a shower and sits down in front of the computer. She logs onto the Lawrence Journal-World Web site and looks for jobs in Lawrence. Then she skims CareerBuilder and Monster.

If a job looks promising, she edits her resume to fit the particular job. Then she’ll work on cover letters. Then she’ll fill out some applications.

The routine often wears her out.

“It really is exhausting toward the end of the day,” Whaley said. “I didn’t do anything, but it’s so mentally frustrating that toward the end of the day I’ll end up in tears. My husband will say, ‘You need to calm down.’”

That advice to Whaley, a 2008 graduate in philosophy, may be just as valuable to the more than 2,500 students who are set to graduate this month with their own liberal arts degrees.

With a tight job market, it may take several months or longer to find a job. Plus, average salaries for liberal arts degrees have fallen slightly in the past few months. Students graduating with liberal arts degrees in 2009 can expect to earn on average $36,445 annually, about $300 less than what it was for the class of 2008, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. By comparison, the average starting salary for all bachelor’s degree graduates is $49,353 per year.

“I get asked, ‘Will my kid be able to find a job with a history major?’ and the answer is yes,” said Joseph Steinmetz, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Somebody who has a more general, rounded background and is prepared for changes are those who are likely to find employment and are the ones likely to have the background to impress employers when they have to shift careers.”

Steinmetz and others believe questions about the value of a liberal arts degree should be focused on the long term and include concerns about whether the degree will help graduates do work they enjoy and pay career and financial rewards during their lives.

Recruiters say a liberal arts degree offers job possibilities in dozens of fields. A recent survey of business leaders by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 69 percent rated the skills gained through a liberal arts education as “very important.”

“They have analytical skills — the idea that a liberal arts graduate is going to have a well-rounded education, and is able to generalize — which makes them a good candidate for quite a few jobs,” said Liz Caldwell, University Career Center recruitment coordinator. “In talking to recruiters, these are things that they’re looking for.”

Thunder boomed and lightning crackled outside as students packed into a room in the Kansas Union on a stormy Thursday night in April wanting to discuss something they hoped would not be as ominous as the weather outside: their futures.

The students were English majors attending a Careers for English Majors Panel hosted by the department of English and the University Career Center. The nearly full house of students listened as three women with English degrees dispensed advice.

“Your degree does not entitle you to a job,” said Lindsey Rood, an event coordinator for Epic Entertainment, Inc. in Kansas City, Mo. “You still have to work after you get a degree to get a job.”

After she graduated from the University with her English degree in December 2006, it took five months before she started her first professional job.

“It doesn’t stop with getting your degree,” Rood said. “You have a great skill set from earning your degree, but you have to market yourself. You have to utilize the skills you’ve gained.”

Ashley Schulte graduated from the University in May 2008 and took a “very long road” to finding her first professional job six months after graduation.

“I know no one’s dying to live in their parents’ basement, but it’s possible,” Schulte said.

She interviewed for about 10 jobs before becoming a relationship specialist at Farmer’s Insurance in Olathe. Looking back, she said, she wished she had been more aggressive and had focused her job search to one region, but she was glad that she marketed her English degree the best she could.

“English majors have such an advantage in this world, you have no idea,” Schulte said. “You have a better understanding in general of how to communicate.”

Chris McKitterick, a lecturer in English who received undergraduate and graduate degrees in creative writing before spending years working in the tech industry, told the audience in the Union to assume there would be twists and turns in any career. He said he initially thought he was over his head in the tech industry — he hated computers, after all — but because he had a good background in communications, he was able to ask good questions and figure it out.

“The skills you’ve gotten as an English major are respected by the tech field, because you’re able to do things they can’t do,” McKitterick said. “Becoming a tech something-or-other does not mean that you’re giving up who you are.”

Caldwell, of the University Career Center, said some liberal arts graduates think their degrees are inferior though they shouldn’t.

“Oftentimes they’ll go in with the attitude of ‘Well, I’m sorry I don’t have a business degree’ or ‘I’m sorry I don’t have a journalism degree’ when they may in fact have skills equal to or better than someone else but they haven’t quite learned how to package it, how to translate those skills and experience and education into a skill set that the employer is looking for,” Caldwell said.

Megan Hill, UCC associate director, said that because students in liberal arts were not focused on one subject but rather many, they made themselves more marketable to employers.

“With specialized training, they are so focused on one topic,” Hill said. “Students with that background may be really, really good at one thing but may not have developed their skills as well as a liberal arts graduate.”

But this puts more pressure on a liberal arts student than a professional student, said Ann Hartley, UCC associate director.

“They have to learn how to sell it,” Hartley said. “There’s a lot more personal responsibility put on them to market themselves to employers. An accounting major can say ‘Hey, I have an accounting degree.’”

Caldwell said that when job searching, it was important to look at the skills an employer is looking for rather than the degree listed as preferred. She said a struggling economy requires students to use creativity and flexibility in their search process.

“There are so many positions in so many degree areas, whether it be language, English, history or whatever,” Caldwell said. “Those skills can be brought to bear in occupations that run such a wide range. There really is a whole world of possibilities out there.”

Chris Wenske, Overland Park senior, is enrolled in Hartley’s “Job Search Strategies” class, which is taught through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Although Wenske said he liked what was being taught in the class, it opened his eyes to a stark reality that he didn’t like.

“It’s kind of messed with my whole mindset,” Wenske said. “This class teaches you how to write resumes, search for jobs, interview for jobs, but the underlying tone is this is how you kiss ass, this is how you fall in line, this is how you work for a major corporation. You have to know people, you have to do this and that. It’s nothing about desire and passion and glory. It’s nothing about that. It’s all about trying to work your way up through the ranks of the corporate ladder, and I don’t necessarily agree with that.”

So Wenske has already started his own company, a record label called Jondo Records.

“My lifelong goal is to have a big company like Warner Brothers,” he said. “I want to have a company like that, based on real morals and values. I think my purpose in life is to use what I know and the knowledge I’ve attained to really help people and to better the environment around me.”

Jondo’s first event is a benefit concert at the Record Bar in Kansas City, Mo., on May 17, the same day Wenske will walk down the hill for commencement.

“I’ll walk down the hill and go straight to my event,” he said. “When May 17 comes, I know everything I’ve done — every effort I’ve put into it — will help me move on to my next goal.”

His liberal arts degree, he said, has taught him more than he could have imagined about running his own business. He said he never thought he would use skills from the math classes he was required to take to graduate, but math has actually helped him the most when he has completed business deals for Jondo. His liberal arts degree taught him to plan more for what is to come, he said.

“My liberal arts degree allowed me to think in a different way,” Wenske said. “Instead of focusing on one subject, I could expand on many subjects, and I apply that to my decision making now.”

As the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Steinmetz said a goal of the curriculum was to prepare students for change and how to handle that change, especially because employment agencies predict people will have as many as nine different jobs in their lifetimes.

“I think we’ve developed the liberal arts curriculum such that students are exposed to a wide variety of topics and subjects and majors and minors and all kinds of things students can take,” Steinmetz said. “The idea is, really, the careers students choose are probably going to change many, many times over a person’s working life.”

Steinmetz said the college develops graduates who have enhanced creativity and great problem-solving skills.

“That’s the best approach to a college education,” he said.

A liberal arts education is also a good stepping-stone for graduate studies, Steinmetz said.

He called liberal arts students more inquisitive and risk-takers, and that, with 5,000 classes in 53 departments offered through the college, liberal arts students are given a wide variety of options. But this can be a problem for some students, Steinmetz said, as it can lead to a lack of focus if not handled correctly.

“The old adage is ‘a jack of all trades and a master of none,’ and there’s a problem in that,” Steinmetz said. “You have to have depth.”

Jennifer Jordan, director of Business Career Services for the School of Business, was once a liberal arts student. She now works for a school that, despite being a professional school, still has a heavy concentration in the college.

“Even our business graduates have a strong liberal arts basis in their degree requirements, which I think employers value,” Jordan said.

She said that students in professional schools have the advantage of a specifically defined career path and there is usually a very intact and structured recruiting process. She said liberal arts students might have to put forth more effort in their job searches, but in some ways, a liberal arts student’s job search process can be very similar to a professional school student’s.

“In all instances, the job seeker must know themselves, know the type of position they are seeking and how they as a candidate align with that role, know the organization, and have a polished manner in which they are presenting themselves,” Jordan said.

Lisa Moore, who graduated in May 2008 from the School of Fine Arts with a degree in textile design, said having a specialized degree does not guarantee a job. She said she is becoming more aware of this every day as her year-long appointment with AmeriCorps in New York City nears its end in June. She expects to be right back where she started when she began job hunting last year.

“I’ll probably have just as much difficulty as everyone graduating,” Moore said. “It’s been kind of rough. If I knew what I knew now I would have gone straight into work. I could have easily gotten a job in textile design. I just chose to do AmeriCorps because I thought it would be very beneficial for me as a person.”

Now, she said, she is back in the difficult situation of finding a job — except she is not in Kansas anymore. She wants to continue working for nonprofit organizations and would like to work with LGBT youth, she said.

Moore said her professional degree set her apart from liberal arts students because the work she was doing for classes would be exactly the work she would have done for a designer had she chosen to pursue textile design. She said that liberal arts students had more freedom than the specialized curriculum of the School of Fine Arts — but it was how that freedom was used that mattered.

“It is really tough right now, but people need to learn their strengths,” Moore said. “They need to play up their strengths a lot. If you can play off the one part of your studies that you really excelled at, then eventually you probably will get a job. Just find what you’re good at and really try to focus in on that.”

Patrick Alderdice, a former liberal arts student at Ball State University where he studied political science, is now the president and CEO of Pennington & Company, a full-service fundraising, consulting and public relations firm based in Lawrence. Alderdice leads a staff of 48 who work for up to 200 clients. When hiring for his staff, he said it doesn’t matter what degree potential employees have. It just matters that they have a degree, he said.

“We’re very unique from the standpoint that we’ve hired people from kinesiology majors to chemistry majors to a master’s degree in higher education,” Alderdice said. “As long as you have passion and are able to sell and meet people well, we’ll give you the opportunity regardless of your major and what you focused on in college.”

Alderdice attributes his own success to relationships, not his degree in political science.

“I probably got to where I’m at today because it really is who you know,” Alderdice said. “Everything I’ve done is not based on what my degree was in, but who I’ve known, who I’ve met, and relationships. I credit more my success to my extracurricular activities in college than I necessarily do to my degree.”

His liberal arts degree provides a variety of experiences for him to bring to the table when interacting with people for his job.

“My liberal arts education gave me a well-rounded education to sit toe-to-toe with successful individuals rather than if I specialized in law or in engineering,” Alderdice said. “My family is all pretty much engineering majors. I look at my liberal arts education and it gave me a better, more well-rounded education that allows me to be more flexible in the type of situations I encounter as the owner of a company.”

— — Edited by Luke Morris