The Liberal Arts, in Our Own Words

One word on a résumé can be the difference between landing a dream job or a rejection letter.

Trinity University's liberal arts are helping students land jobs in fields like medicine, finance, and private banking.

"The liberal arts give our students the creative flair and critical thinking needed to make compelling pitches in C-suites across the country," says Raquel Alexander, Ph.D., dean of the Michael Neidorff School of Business, "and we're placing our grads in incredibly selective positions as a result."

We interviewed Trinity students whose resilience and liberal arts backgrounds are giving them a competitive edge in today's job market. One rethought the way they pitched their diverse experiences. Another manages millions in stock portfolios by learning how to ask better questions, and a third fought through the tears of tough midterms to keep their med school dreams alive.

"The sciences are great at Trinity, but the act of combining them with the arts and humanities is a true differentiator for our students," says David Ribble '82, Ph.D., dean of the D. R. Semmes School of Science. "Graduate deans and employers tell me constantly that our graduates not only know their science, but they communicate well, and they're interesting."

Each student picked one word that defines how Trinity's approach to the liberal arts bolsters the human story behind the résumé. Hear why those words are making a difference.

Diversification

Josiah Kusnadi '26 is heading to San Francisco this fall to join consulting giant Bain & Company, where he'll be pitching creative concepts to Fortune 500 CEOs.

But pitching himself for the role took two attempts.

The first application, an unsuccessful bid for an internship, showcased Kusnadi as a sharp problem solver with strong quantitative skills who needed to show more creative range. The second, successful bid for a full-time position, revealed something different: a well-rounded candidate with confidence shaped by Trinity's liberal arts.

Kusnadi grew up in San Jose, homeschooled by his mother for most of his life while his father worked in big tech. A homeschooled student, he found a passion for extracurriculars like playing piano and gravitated toward smaller schools that emphasized breadth and exploration as a result.

"I was really looking for a liberal arts college that gave me an opportunity to explore anything that I wanted to do," he says.

Kusnadi was drawn to the University's rising national profile and earned a piano scholarship that paved his way to campus. Yet, the range of his academic, experiential, and personal experiences ended up making the biggest impact on his success.

For his first two years out of high school, Kusnadi worked as an analyst, taught public speech and debate, and served as a data conversion analyst for the IRS.

He figured he was well-prepared for Bain's interview process.

Bain's rejection hit hard, but Kusnadi learned from the experience that he needed to round out his experience, to be someone with technical know-how and the personality to present to CEOs in a boardroom.

Kusnadi reinvented his approach. He took a chance on Trinity's Arts, Letters, and Enterprise program, which connects students with nonprofits and helps them translate liberal arts skills into a professional context.

He analyzed environmental data collected from Texas preserves, including the Bracken Bat Caves, for The Nature Conservancy-an experience unique to San Antonio that gave him a new appreciation for conservation.

The result: "My mindset was totally different the second time around," Kusnadi says. "I took more time to prepare for the case interview, but I also saw how my whole story, my whole set of skills, gave me the confidence to really communicate what I brought to the table."

This time, Bain said yes. And Kusnadi credits the word "diversification" with helping him stand out. "I've had so many types of experiences, and now I know how they all fit together."

Curiosity

As a kid selling poinsettias for Boy Scouts or fidget spinners he made from bike chains, John Ferretti '26 displayed an instinct to look past the obvious, to ask what else is possible.

At Trinity, a hands-on series of opportunities within a liberal arts environment has given Ferretti the chance to get so good at asking questions that banking giant J.P. Morgan is about to employ him to do it as a financial analyst.

"One of the things I feel Trinity taught me was to be able to ask, 'Why do we do certain things this way?'" Ferretti says.

At Trinity, senior finance majors like Ferretti get the chance to make real-world financial decisions through a special resource called the Student Managed Fund (SMF). At $18 million of Trinity's endowment, Dean Alexander says this represents "the largest on-campus, undergraduate-managed fund of its kind in the entire United States."

Ferretti says he and his SMF team make weekly moves that are driven by asking the right questions. Why is buying this stock a risky move? Why is this the right move? How do I get my teammates on board with the same confidence I have?

That last one is important, Ferretti says, because the group acts as a team to make decisions.

"We all have a vote and say in managing a portion of the endowment," Ferretti says. "All of our experience matters, and we're all finance majors, but we all have this super varied set of perspectives that we get to explore through the liberal arts."

Ferretti, for his part, has enjoyed building out his Trinity résumé with experiences beyond the SMF. He's developed confidence through classes outside his finance major, such as a first-year public speaking class that he says helped him to better communicate his ideas. That confidence helped him approach one of his toughest questions yet: Can I tag along on an intensive biology excursion to Costa Rica despite not having taken any high-level biology courses?

"I went to Dr. Ribble and just basically said, 'Hey, I'm not a bio or a chem major, but I do love the outdoors. I'm an Eagle Scout. I'm someone who loves hiking and would love to be a part of this course," Ferretti says. And Ribble said yes.

Ferretti channeled this same confidence-and his ability to turn questions into informed decisions-into his sophomore-junior internship with J.P. Morgan. Now, he's got a full-time offer.

"I think probably the biggest thing that helped me was that I just stayed curious the whole time. I felt like I asked a lot of questions over my internship," he says.

That, Ferretti says, is the return on investment of Trinity's liberal arts education.

"Our education is phenomenal for learning financial systems, but it's really more than that. You learn the ability to question," Ferretti says. "Joe Smith at 'insert bigger school here' is going to be a cog in the wheel, and he's not going to be able to ask those questions."

Gratitude

David Padron '20 is preparing to be a family physician by harnessing the power of gratitude to stay hungry for knowledge.

"I would have taken 20 credit hours a semester at Trinity if I could have," Padron says. "Your job (as a student) is to ask questions, to think creatively, to keep learning your whole life. That's what made a difference for me at Trinity."

Padron has never stopped being grateful for the first person who inspired him to become a doctor: his own childhood physician. Padron is from Pharr, Texas, and is the oldest of three Trinity brothers (Rob '22 and Cesar '28), all from a family deeply embedded in the South Texas area. Padron says Pharr, near the U.S.-Mexico border, can be a challenging type of place to practice medicine.

Padron saw how doctors helped members of his community, his family, learn to prioritize their own health, even with limited resources. "We were blessed with a primary care physician who told us, 'Hey, you don't have money, but come over anyway. We'll see what we can do for you.' I'm still inspired by that approach to medicine."

Padron needed a place to transform into that same type of lifesaver. "Basically, everyone I talked to about Trinity said, 'Hey, this place is tough, but get out of here on the pre-med track, and you're guaranteed to have a higher level of thinking."

Padron majored in biology, but says the power of the liberal arts was variety. "I took philosophy, I took music, I took PE classes, I took art classes, I took economics. And so honestly, I just really fell in love with being able to take a bite out of all of the fields that I was interested in," he says.

Not every step of Padron's journey was joyful. From genes and phenotypes to organic chemistry, he stressed about his grades to the point of almost giving up on his dream. "There were entire semesters I cried," he says.

Struggling, Padron turned to Biology Professor Jonathan King, Ph.D. (now head of Trinity's pre-med track). "I told him, 'There's geniuses here, and they're doing way better than me,'" Padron recalls. "But Dr. King told me, 'Hey, you have a story. Everybody's different. If this is something you really want to do, you pursue it to the fullest because failure only comes from you giving up.' And so his words really carried deeply with me, and that was what really pushed me to keep pursuing medicine."

Padron went on to attend Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, a private medical school in Mexico. After two years there, plus a clinical rotation in Las Vegas, where he rotated through pediatrics, surgery, internal medicine, family, OB-GYN, psychology, and emergency, he's now preparing for residency.

Padron is carrying one word with him: gratitude.

Gratitude for his first doctor. For the lessons he learned from struggling. For the chance to keep learning-and to one day offer the same care to others. Thanks to the liberal arts, Padron says he'll be able to create the same type of connection that inspired him as a young kid in Pharr.

"What Trinity gave me through the liberal arts was the ability to talk to anyone."

In family medicine, he says, "that's everything."

Liberal Arts for the 21st Century

Students like Padron, Ferretti, and Kusnadi are part of a larger success story for Trinity and the liberal arts. The numbers speak for themselves:

More than 20% of our graduates are emerging with two or more majors. In the Class of 2025, 68% of students participated in at least one research or internship opportunity. These experiences are creating well-rounded people employers are eager to hire.

That's why Trinity's positive outcomes rate has remained stellar for five straight years. From the Class of 2021 through the Class of 2025, outcomes have consistently hovered around 97% to 98%.

And Tigers are using their liberal arts skills to make a difference in their fields. TIME magazine recognized Trinity in 2025 as one of the best colleges for producing future leaders by cultivating critical thinkers.

"Trinity students are leaving campus as resourceful, experienced leaders, truly ready to change the world, not just to react to it," says Megan Mustain, Ph.D., provost and vice president for Academic Affairs. "And that's because Trinity-and the liberal arts-lets you expand your world."