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What can you do with an Integral degree? Anything! 

Our graduates are successful in a broad spectrum of occupations, including business, medicine, education, law, and any other vocation that values careful thinking and powerful discourse. Integral students have the ability and the confidence to think clearly, incisively, and creatively; work independently; read carefully and analytically; and express themselves coherently. The program's unique educational experience results in a strong foundation for graduate work and professional careers. 

Internships

Integral students take advantage of internship opportunities with a wide variety of organizations in different sectors. Current Integral students have completed internships in tech (Cisco Systems), cultural institutions (the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose and Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland), and international business (the Institute for the International Education of Students in Rome). 

Careers

Integral alumni are versed in a wide range of literary and technical topics, and they are at home in fields involving language, mathematics, science, and more. The Integral Program's unique educational experience results in a strong foundation for graduate work and professional careers. Our graduates are successful in a broad spectrum of occupations, including business, medicine, education, law, and any other vocation that values careful thinking and powerful discourse. Explore this page for the stories of just a few of our remarkable alums.

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Marielle Gardner ’19

Postbaccalaureate Mathematics Student

At graduation, Marielle received three awards for her achievements at Saint Mary's. She received the De La Salle Award, the College's top honor for a graduating senior with the highest record in scholarship and academic excellence. She also received the James L. Hagerty Award, the top School of Liberal Arts (SOLA) award for her record of outstanding academic achievement. The award was named in honor of the 1919 alum and professor of philosophy at Saint Mary’s for 37 years. In addition, Marielle was named the recipient of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Award for her work in the Integral Program. She continued education in the mathematics department at Iowa State University, and she is interested in creating opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students to enter the mathematics field in the future.

“Integral showed me a new side of mathematics and reignited my love for math. Looking back at the foundations of why we learn Geometry and Calculus the way we do gave me another perspective to appreciate math from. As I continue on as a budding mathematician, I take the skills from Integral such as how to question and critically analyze difficult texts with me.”

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John Zabala ’06

School Psychologist

During his time as an Integral student, John was one of the program’s most devoted and successful recruiters of new Integral-ites, and he retains that love for the program to this day. When interviewed for a San Francisco Chronicle article about Integral, he said, "It takes a good 20 minutes to explain my major to people, but I don't care." After graduating from Saint Mary’s, John used his bilingual abilities, first as a media analyst in New York City, and then as a support specialist for bilingual education back in the Bay Area. From there he took a master's in School Psychology, his current field. He now serves in the School District of Philadelphia.

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George Emmons ’12

Attorney at Law

After graduation from Saint Mary's College, George (a native of San Ramon) worked in the Bay Area as an account executive for Comcast Spotlight (2012–16), then entered Golden Gate University Law School, where he was elected to the Law Review and graduated among the top 5% of his class. George is now a member of the Oregon and California Bar Associations.

George's 2019 Schulman Essay in Criminal Law, "Domestic Violence Laws & the INA: How Domestic Violence Perpetrators Attain Immigration Benefits," for the California Lawyers Association was an award winner (one of five state-wide). That essay joins his "The Unseen Harm: U.S.-Indian Relations and Tribal Sovereignty" (48 Golden Gate University Law Review 185 [2018]), as an earnest example of George's intention to make authorship intrinsic to his legal career.

From his days in the Integral curriculum, George has been an avid student of comparative politics (his Senior Essay treated Tocqueville's Democracy in America, assessing Tocqueville's analysis of 19th century "administration" against the "No Child Left Behind" Act). George professes himself regularly amazed at the capacity of regimes to evolve against theorists' expectations.

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Noah Friedman-Biglin ’05

Philosophy Professor, San Jose State University

Noah completed a PhD in philosophy at the Arché Philosophical Research Center at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He now teaches philosophy at San Jose State University and has also returned ‘home’ on a part-time basis to teach in Integral, much to his and everyone’s delight. His areas of study and research are in the philosophy of logic and mathematics and the history of philosophy in the early 20th century. 

Reflecting on his experience in Integral, Noah said, "My Integral senior thesis was a long time ago, but I think there's a real way in which I've never quite moved on. In a sense, I'm still asking the same question—What is mathematics?—though I use some more complicated words now. There was something in Apollonius that grabbed me in the second year Math Tutorial and has never let go. So, in this rather narrow sense, I certainly wouldn't be thinking about the things I am thinking about these days without my studying in Integral (for example, I imagine that I might not have gone this way if I'd studied philosophy at SMC instead of Integral).”

"In a bigger way, though, there are two things I think Integral taught me that have proven invaluable as I've gone on in the academy.  The first is to read slowly and sympathetically. That is, to try and really see what an author is getting at before coming to any judgements about it. The second, is to be comfortable with confusion. If I don't understand something immediately, I find it interesting. If something initially strikes me as silly or implausible, I want to get to grips with it, and to see why other people might find it interesting or true."

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June Williams ’06

Policy Advisor, Google

June Williams completed a Master's in Public Policy at American University, and her JD at Howard University. After clerking for a Maryland 7th-circuit judge, she was in a stable position in a firm in Washington, D.C. she decided to take a risk, and headed to California to work on Kamala Harris’ senatorial campaign. Williams was eventually asked to run Harris’ San Francisco office and ended up building a mentorship relationship with Harris. Williams said she “does not know anyone who has gotten to where they are today without one good solid relationship.” She is currently a policy advisor at Google.