Whoever says English majors have poor job prospects hasn’t met Josh Goldsmith. Less than one year out from graduation, he’s part of a team that’s won both the judges' and people's choice Webby awards for work promoting the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.

Last spring, the English major, business minor landed a job with Big Spaceship, an innovative and award-winning digital marketing firm based in Brooklyn. With other job prospects in California and Colorado, Goldsmith says the New York gig was an obvious choice. “I’d be working with Google at Big Spaceship, so I had to take it,” he explains. “It was an easy decision.”

Google Play, Google’s online store for purchasing and downloading apps, music, books, movies and other entertainment, is one of Big Spaceship's clients. Using content exclusives and curated content related to Intersellar, the Big Spaceship team created an immersive website experience that’s winner of the Webby, an award the New York Times has called “the Internet’s highest honor.”

Goldsmith’s role on the Google Play team is producer of social media content. “I worked with an incredibly talented multidisciplinary team of writers, designers and strategists to produce the Interstellar posts promoting the site and the majority of our daily content," he says. That's content served up to a collective audience of 13.85 million. "Its been an incredible opportunity being one of the youngest full-time employees at the 'Ship, working with such tremendous talent and experience. I've learned a ton."

Thanks to a summer internship he landed as a junior through recruiting efforts at UVM, Goldsmith wasn’t new to managing the social content of high-profile brands. At FCB Chicago, one of the oldest and most storied advertising agencies, Goldsmith worked on social campaigns for brands like KFC, Cox Communications, Discover and K-Mart. “That was a huge stepping stone for my career,” he says.

And it’s clear it’s a career that’s just beginning. Goldsmith has answered the call of the west coast and will begin a new job, this time focused in broadcast advertising and video production, at another top agency, Deutsch, in Los Angeles next month.

He isn’t alone among the Class of 2014 in going on to interesting new adventures — whether in the world of work, service, or graduate school. Take a look at a sampling:

• Daniel Allman, physics major, is pursuing a doctorate in quantum information theory at Dartmouth College.

• Carson Casey, a natural resources major, is a community organizer for SunCommon, a renewable energy company in Chittenden County, Vt.  

• Maya Curtis, community entrepreneurship major, has served as a City Year corps member in a Baton Rouge, La., third grade classroom. She’s also turned an internship with a public art organization, The Walls Project, into a full-time job. When her City Year service is up, she’ll begin the artist liaison position, managing artists and installations on behalf of the organization.

• Mary Conroy, a double major in geology and history, who during her UVM years worked as a summer intern for National Geographic, stayed on at UVM as a research assistant following graduation. Her work investigated which public data sources about the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing are viable for comparison, research that’s critical to better understanding the controversial practice. Earlier this year, she accepted a position as a private client associate at the wealth management company AllianceBernstein in Philadelphia.

• Jonathan Desabris, a business major, is working with action sports media company Teton Gravity Research, famed for the visceral thrill of their ski films. Working as an intern for TGR last summer, Desabris proved himself on the job and was hired on full-time as content coordinator. During his undergraduate years, Desabris was active as an Outing Club leader and vice president of the student group.

• Ryan Dix, an athletic training major, is pursuing a master's in sports medicine at the University of Utah while working as an athletic trainer at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City.

• Hannah Doughty, a double major in Russian and anthropology and winner of a national Critical Language Scholarship during her time at UVM, has joined the Air Force. After basic training, she will work as an airborne cryptologic linguist, whose duties include evaluating and reporting on messages and other in-flight intelligence received in foreign languages. Doughty hopes to one day work as a special agent linguist for the FBI.

• Naomi Druy, a mechanical engineering major, is a digital product development engineer at DENTSPLY, a leading manufacturer and distributor of dental and other consumable healthcare products.

• Michael Edmondson, a classics major, has continued his internship at the State Department, a position he’s held since 2012. Concurrently, he’s pursuing a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia.

• Hilary Hickingbotham, a mechanical engineering major, is working at UTC Aerospace in Vergennes, Vt., a position she landed after a paid internship her senior year with the manufacturer of components for airplanes, helicopters and military systems.

• Sidney Healey, global and regional studies major, is serving a Fulbright English teaching assistantship in Brazil during the 2015 academic year. Healy was one of seven UVM students who won Fulbrights this past year.

• Ben Hershey, an animal science major, enrolled in the inaugural offering of the UVM course, “Elephant Care, Handling, and Management,” after graduation and went on to  participate in the Center for Elephant Conservation’s eight-week elephant care training program. He is currently an animal health technician at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center  of New York, the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service Foreign Animal Disease Research Facility.

• Elizabeth Kane, political science major, is executive assistant to the Vermont secretary of state.

• Sam Kazman, an economics major and Honors College student, parlayed an internship at Citizens Financial Group in New York City into a full-time position as quantitative analyst for the financial services institution.

• Anna Lidofsky, a microbiology and immunology major and Honors College student, is a predoctoral research fellow working on HIV-related projects at Massachusetts General Hospital.

• Thomas Renner, a public communications major who interned for U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy as a student, is now working as a staff assistant in the office, coordinating federal grant letters of support, service academy nominations and other duties.

• Robyn Bath Rosenfeld, an environmental studies major, is working as a Princeton in Latin America Fellow, a program that matches outstanding recent college graduates with non-governmental organizations engaged in socially responsible development projects throughout the region. Rosenfeld is serving a one-year fellowship at the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad.

• Logan Russell, an elementary education major, is teaching fourth grade at Johnson Elementary in Johnson, Vt.

• Elizabeth Rutila, an environmental science major who worked on EPSCoR-funded Lake Champlain research as a UVM student, is pursuing a master’s degree in oceanography at Oregon State, where she'll continue working on stable isotopes as trackers of environmental change.

• Natalie Slack, a double major in English and music, as well as an Integrated Humanities Program alumna, is now an editor for Carnegie Hall programs in New York City.

• Hannah Scott, global and regional studies major, is a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana where she focuses on maternal health.


• Jameson Voll, a math major, is an actuarial analyst at Liberty Mutual in Boston, where he had worked as a summer intern prior to graduating.

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