Hannah Solberg

Hannah Solberg's fieldwork placement put her across the table from real clients before she'd finished her coursework on disability law — something she says felt terrifying at the time and turned out to be the most useful part of the program. "You can read about informed choice in a textbook all day. It's a different thing to sit with someone who's been out of work for two years and realize the whole session lives or dies on whether they trust you enough to actually tell you what they need."

She's now a licensed vocational rehabilitation counselor carrying an active caseload of about forty clients, and returns to Porter most falls to guest-lecture in the same fieldwork practicum that placed her. "I tell students the same thing every year: your job isn't to have the answer. It's to ask the question that gets your client to their own answer faster than they'd get there alone."