Grace Hilbelink ’19

Grace says the group projects that were part of her organizational communication degree taught her how to collaborate—especially useful because she often works with a partner in her office.

Like a lot of students, Grace Hilbelink was not a big fan of doing group projects in her college classes. But getting through them turned out to be good training: These days, she uses teamwork techniques every day in her job as a digital marketing specialist at Fettig, a Grand Rapids employment agency.

Hilbelink graduated in 2019 with a degree in Organizational Communication. She said the group projects in college taught her how to collaborate, which is useful now that she often works with a partner in her office.

“We have to brainstorm and figure out new ways to target our market,” she said. “I feel like having that experience collaborating with others, having multiple brains thinking about the same thing and having different perspectives, has helped me be a good teammate on my marketing team.”

Hilbelink’s job involves coming up with creative text blasts to go out to job applicants, thinking about the best ways to word Fettig’s job descriptions to get more clicks on their posts, and brainstorming with her team to come up with persuasive social media posts to draw in applicants for their jobs.

She said she’s thankful for the encouragement she got from her classmates and professors in the Communication Department.

“I feel like Calvin really shaped me to be the person I am today,” she said. “I was able to figure out what I love to do through the classes I took, and now I can use what I learned in my job every day.”