Career counselor enjoys advising MU students

HUNTINGTON -- Sue Wright can't go into many businesses in the area without seeing someone she knows.

Most of that is due to the fact that she helped put them there.

"It's great to walk into a business and have someone come up to you and say 'Mrs. Wright, I got the job,' or 'Mrs. Wright, I got the promotion.'"

Wright is a senior career counselor at the Marshall University Career Services department.

In fact, she used to run the place, serving as director for about 10 years before retiring in 2005 because of family health problems.

Wright started as a counselor at the center more than two decades ago, and she likes to say she's sat in every chair in the department. Now she's glad to be back in one, even if it isn't the big chair.

"I missed the students," Wright said of retirement. "You can only bake so many cookies and plant so many flowers."

Wright is Huntington through and through, graduating from Huntington High School, and getting her bachelor's and master's degrees from Marshall.

She didn't go to work right away, saying she was "fortunate enough" to get to stay at home and raise her children.

"When my youngest child was in middle school, I started thinking that I had this college degree, and maybe I should go out and get a job," she said.

Her career with the university started when she took a job finding other jobs for students as part of what she called "a federal stay-in-school program." It involved finding work for students that tied them to the area and helped them afford tuition.

"We just called it Jobs for Students," she said. "I loved being at Marshall and I loved the idea of being a part of creating a new program."

Eventually that would transition into her jobs as a career counselor, then assistant director of career services, then director, and now back to being a counselor.

Wright works with students from the time they are freshman through their senior years, trying to help them plot out a course for their future after they leave the university.

"Seeing the light bulb go on is very satisfying," she said. "Marshall has a lot of first-generation college students, and a lot of them are naive about how to present themselves to employers, or about how the process works.

"To be able to work with them and help them develop is great."