Early Career Days

While putting herself through a doctoral program in counseling psychology Kathryn (Kathy) Dardeck began her career in academia with an eight year run as the Eastern Massachusetts Internship Program Coodinator at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In this position she was an expert with regard to Boston area field placement opportunities for all participating majors at the university, established excellent working relationships with agency supervisors, was knowledgeable about the requirements for field placements in all participating majors at the university, guided students in qualifying to receive academic credit for their internship experience, supervised eight different teams of internship counselors, and at the request of her superiors shared her ideas to build stellar internship programs with the executive program director.

Subsequent to the position at University of Massachusetts, Kathryn Dardeck joined the Amherst College administrative staff as Assistant Dean of Students and Assistant Director of Career Counseling. Her responsibilities in this joint position included career and personal counseling, graduate school advising, coordinating internship resources and presenting a wide variety of career exploration workshops. She actively participated in the Dean’s Office weekly staff meetings and served as the “dean on call” to deal with any campus after hours crises or emergencies several weeks a semester. She was assigned by the Dean of Students to write the first handbook on sexual harassment ever complied at Amherst College.

Dean Dardeck loved working at Amherst College and was a sought after Dean by her colleagues and students alike, but Kathryn Dardeck resigned her position at Amherst College in order to fulfill her required one year, post-doctoral clinical internship to qualify to become a psychologist.