This semester, CNTR is starting a new project called the Career Atlas, and we’re really excited to bring students into the process from the beginning.

When we hear people talk about careers, they can sometimes make it sound like everything happens in a straight line: you choose a major, graduate, and find a job that perfectly matches what you studied. But that’s not how most careers actually happen. People change their minds, discover new interests, learn skills in unexpected places, switch fields, and take opportunities they never originally planned for. Unexpected life circumstances can also interrupt or redirect a career path, and not every change happens because of a positive opportunity.

That’s what inspired the Career Atlas.

The idea is to turn real career journeys into visual pathways that students can explore. Instead of only seeing someone’s current job title or reading a resumé, you could see the bigger story, including what they studied, the roles and projects they took on, the skills they developed, and the moments when their career changed direction.

Eventually, the Career Atlas could include a library of pathways from people working across different domains. Students could explore the journeys of people who studied the same subject as them, work outside their original field, changed careers, or found their way into a role through a less traditional path.

We hope the Career Atlas can make thinking about the future feel a little less limiting. There isn’t one “right” route to a meaningful career, and seeing how other people found their way can open up possibilities we may not have considered before.

We’re still in the early stages of the project, which means this is the perfect time for students to have a say in what the Career Atlas becomes. Instead of guessing what would be helpful, we want to hear directly from you. What questions do you have about careers? What parts of someone’s journey would you want to explore? What would make the Career Atlas feel useful and trustworthy?

We put together a short survey that should only take a couple of minutes. Your feedback will help shape what we prioritize and how the first prototype works. We’re creating this tool for students, and we want students to be part of creating it.