Kevin Wall guidance counselor from Rochester, New York, earned his B.S. in Communication Studies from Cazenovia College. It’s the kind of degree people ask about at career fairs. “So, what do you do with that?”
The answer, in Wall’s case, is almost everything.
The Misunderstood Degree
Communication studies is sometimes dismissed as a soft major. That dismissal usually comes from people who have never tried to manage a crisis conversation with a parent, negotiate a partnership with a college admissions office, and present a program proposal to a school board all in the same week.
Wall has done all of those things. The foundational skills came from Cazenovia. How to listen before responding. How to structure a message for a specific audience. How to read a room and adjust in real time.
Kevin Wall guidance counselor built his career on those skills. Not because they were the flashiest tools in his toolkit, but because they were the most consistently useful.
In the Counselor’s Office
School counseling is a communication job, full stop. The content varies. Sometimes you’re helping a student plan a course schedule. Sometimes you’re having the kind of conversation where you need to ask the right questions without pushing too hard.
Wall’s training in communication gave him a framework for those interactions. He knew how to create space for a student to talk without filling every silence. He knew how to convey bad news — like a college rejection or a schedule conflict — without making it feel catastrophic.
In Worcester, where his caseload exceeded 250 students, those skills were tested constantly. Every student brought a different communication style, a different set of needs, a different level of trust. Wall met each one where they were.
Beyond the School Building
Communication studies prepared Wall for more than one-on-one counseling. It prepared him for the organizational and community-facing aspects of his career that most people don’t associate with the degree.
Building partnerships requires pitch skills. Running events requires coordination across multiple stakeholders. Managing departments at a senior living facility in New Hampshire required the ability to communicate across generational and professional lines.
Kevin Wall guidance counselor used the same degree in a Baltimore recruitment office, a Worcester high school, and a New Hampshire residential community. The settings changed. The core competency didn’t.
Paired With an M.Ed.
Wall added a Master of Education from Loyola University Maryland to his credentials. The combination of communication training and education theory gave him a dual perspective that shows up in his work.
The M.Ed. taught him how educational systems are designed and where they break down. The communication degree taught him how to operate within those systems effectively. One is the map. The other is the ability to navigate.
So, what do you do with a communication studies degree? If you’re Kevin Wall guidance counselor from Rochester, you build a career around it — recognizing that every role requires the ability to connect with people, organize information, and deliver it clearly. That’s not a soft skill. It’s the skill that makes everything else work.