Onward is John Carroll University's distinctive promise to every student: accompanied by a coordinated team of mentors and advisors, you'll design your plan, discern your calling, make an impact, and launch into your career, joining one of this country's most connected and supportive alumni networks. We'll show you a method to make sense of what you're learning in your Onward experience and accompany you every step of the way. Onward will launch in Fall 2026.
Innovative education. Exceptional outcomes. Long-term return.
You'll be surrounded by peers, professors, mentors, and alumni who take the time to understand you — and who work together to keep you moving forward. They coordinate behind the scenes so every next step builds on the one before it.
Guided by mentors who believed in her, Ella Whalen '28 discovered a new direction and published her own children's book.
Click on each role to learn more about how they'll support your journey.
You'll meet your advisor before Orientation, and they'll guide your academic planning from your very first semester. As the lead of your Onward Team, they'll get to know your goals, help you assess your strengths, and make sure you're building an academic plan that supports your future. They coordinate with the rest of your Onward Team to ensure everyone is working in unison.
Your Navigator is an upper-division student leader who supports you throughout your first year.
You'll first engage with a Faculty Mentor who will help you explore possibilities in your academic area of interest. After you declare your major, you'll transition to a Faculty Advisor who will work with you through graduation.
Your Career Specialist joins your team as you define your professional direction.
You'll be paired with a dedicated JCU alum — part of a powerful, engaged network.
You can add other supporters to your Onward Team. These team members collaborate with your core team to deliver seamless, personalized support. Examples could include:
You'll meet your advisor before Orientation, and they'll guide your academic planning from your very first semester. As the lead of your Onward Team, they'll get to know your goals, help you assess your strengths, and make sure you're building an academic plan that supports your future. They coordinate with the rest of your Onward Team to ensure everyone is working in unison.
Your Navigator is an upper-division student leader who supports you throughout your first year.
You'll first engage with a Faculty Mentor who will help you explore possibilities in your academic area of interest. After you declare your major, you'll transition to a Faculty Advisor who will work with you through graduation.
Your Career Specialist joins your team as you define your professional direction.
You'll be paired with a dedicated JCU alum — part of a powerful, engaged network.
You can add other supporters to your Onward Team. These team members collaborate with your core team to deliver seamless, personalized support. Examples could include:
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Mary Oliver — an excerpt from her poem “The Summer Day,” painted as a mural in the D.J. Lombardo Student Center
Your Onward Plan helps you answer that question with intention.
Your Onward Plan is a living, shared roadmap owned by you and visible to your Onward Team. Track your goals, plan your experiences, and keep everything organized in one place.
Explore the comprehensive catalog of experiences available to you. Use the filter below to find opportunities that match your interests.
Build the skills today's workplaces expect—critical thinking, problem-solving, ethical leadership, and clear communication. Through the Linked Pair, you'll explore one theme across two disciplines, and with Core courses built into your major, including writing, presentations, and a Capstone, you'll graduate ready to lead.
Choose from 70+ majors and minors to shape a path that fits you. Mix programs across our three colleges—or design your own major, like SNL's Marcello Hernandez '19. And taking on more won't slow you down: 94% of students graduate in four years or less, and two-thirds finish with two majors or a major and a minor.
Work with faculty on research in Cleveland and abroad, including projects with NASA or the Cleveland Clinic. Through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), gain funding, mentorship, and summer for original work, then present at DISCOVER.
Build ethical leadership through Leadership Scholars, the Leadership Development Minor, or the Leadership Formation Series, and lead through residence life, orientation, student government, athletics, campus ministry, CSSA, or one of 100+ student organizations.
Gain real-world experience through internships, co-ops, clinicals, or student teaching. With JCU's industry connections, you're guaranteed at least one paid or for-credit opportunity before graduation.
Find mentors, build work experience, and earn money working on campus. Each year, JCU employs more than 700 students.
Connect directly to those most in need through partnerships with community organizations in Cleveland and beyond, or apply to the selective Arrupe Social Justice Scholars program.
Practice ethical decision making at a JCU-sponsored event in which an industry leader presents a real ethical dilemma from their work.
Understand social structures and community dynamics directly through domestic and international immersions focused on justice – in Cleveland, at the US/Mexico border, or in Honduras.
Pause, reflect, and explore your purpose. Experiences like Manresa and other retreats invite you to step away from campus and find your calling.
Build global awareness in classes with 10-day international travel, semester-long study abroad with a JCU professor, or study abroad at one of 45+ partner institutions.
Your Onward Launch starts long before graduation—it’s built throughout your entire time at JCU. With your team helping you explore options early and plan backward from your goals, every choice you make moves you toward what’s next.
Whichever Launch you choose, and even if you change your mind along the way, you’ll be supported through your Onward Experience, and welcomed into JCU’s connected, proud alumni network.
Embedded into each of the three colleges, Professional Development programs are unique and comprehensive four-year experiences designed to help you prepare for Launch. All JCU students engage in a series of career events, workshops, networking and skill-building experiences, with each college offering distinctive components and curricular requirements.
Your Career Specialist from your Onward Team will coordinate and facilitate the Career Community that connects you with people, opportunities, and resources in the field or fields that interest you. Career Interest Communities cut across majors and sometimes even colleges and unite students on particular professional pathways.
Take your career exploration on the road – across Cleveland and to major cities nationwide. These trips connect you with alumni, employers, and industry leaders, giving you behind-the-scenes access to offices, labs, studios, and startups. You'll see how careers take shape and build your network long before graduation.
You'll meet Experts-in-Residence through JCU's Career Communities, where they share hard-earned insight with students exploring their fields. Each has reached the highest level in their profession – and some are even nationally known, like retired NBC News correspondent and JCU Journalist-in-Residence Pete Williams. During their time on campus, these experts lead workshops, give talks, join events, and advise students directly.
JCU's accelerated graduate pathways let you earn a bachelor's and master's degree in as little as five years, saving time and money while deepening your expertise. With options in business, exercise physiology, counseling, biology, and more, you can start graduate coursework as an undergraduate and move seamlessly into advanced study. Your Onward Team helps you build the Plan and stay on track, so you Launch into the workforce with an extra degree – and a competitive edge.
Through JCU's Early Assurance Partnerships, qualified students can secure conditional acceptance – typically by sophomore year – into graduate programs in medicine, dentistry, physical therapy, or law. These pathways reduce uncertainty in the admission process and can shorten the time needed to earn both degrees by up to a full year.
At John Carroll, pre-health and pre-law advisors accompany students every step of the way towards admission to medical, dental, physical therapy, and law school, just to name a few. These advisors become core members of your Onward Team when you declare an interest in attending professional school.
Expert guidance and resources for students who want to start their own venture or non-profit. LaunchNET provides mentorship, workspace, and funding opportunities to help turn your ideas into reality.
JCU supports graduate school test preparation through a mix of advising, programming, and targeted resources. Members of your Onward Team will help you determine which exams (GRE, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc.) are needed for your Plan and map out timelines for preparation, offer specialized guidance, study strategies, and access to practice materials, as well as connections to external test-prep programs and partner organizations in Cleveland.
A senior-led John Carroll tradition where students share short, reflective speeches about the people and experiences that shaped them. Seniors invite mentors, friends, and community members to join them in a space of gratitude. The series celebrates how students have grown as people "for and with others" and offers a final moment of Ignatian reflection before commencement.
Through Onward, you'll learn how to tell your professional story – on your résumé, in writing, on LinkedIn, and in-person. Your Onward Team and your Professional Development experience will help you connect what you've done to what employers and graduate programs want. By Launch, you'll have real accomplishments to show, the skills to talk about them confidently, and present them credibly.
With support from your Onward Team, you'll find hands-on roles that match your interests, build real experience, and grow your professional network. From Cleveland's thriving industries to opportunities across the country, internships help you test career paths, develop in-demand skills, and make meaningful contributions long before Launch.
Every student starts with a core circle of support — faculty, staff, and peers — and expands it as they explore new interests and opportunities along the way. Planning to go straight into the workforce? Interested in graduate or professional school? We add people with the right experience to your corner.
These examples show the kinds of people who can become part of your Onward Team throughout your time at JCU. Your team will be unique to you, and it will change as you discover new interests and opportunities.
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