Lake Michigan College has been recognized for its efforts to help place students into jobs upon graduation.

The college has received the 2025 Handshake Career Spark Award from college job placement service, Handshake. LMC spokesperson Jennifer Shoemaker tells us out of more than 1,500 educational institutions using Handshake, only 40 career centers received the honor, putting LMC in the top 2% of career centers nationwide.

Shoemaker says the college has several programs to help graduates find jobs, including the many career fairs it holds.

“And this is good for students who are about to graduate and go into a career,” Shoemaker said. “This is good for community members looking for a job. But it’s also good for our students who are early in their education to kind of get an idea of what jobs are out there, what types of positions they might want to have.”

The college also connects students with paid internships and holds Employer Spotlight days, when an employer will set up a table on campus and be featured for the day. Shoemaker says it’s a point of pride for LMC to help graduates start out their careers.

“A lot of us at LMC, anytime that we go into the hospital or healthcare centers in the region, it’s fun to ask, especially the nurses, phlebotomists, rad tech, all of them, where they got their training. We love to hear that they got their training at Lake Michigan College.”

The Career Spark Awards evaluate career centers across three categories. They are student engagement, employer engagement and curation, and reporting and analytics.

Since implementing Handshake in 2023, nearly 1,400 employers in Southwest Michigan have connected with Lake Michigan College students on the platform.