Visiting VCU and UR's Career Offices

University of Richmond Career Development Center

1/15
Lin Koch – Resource & Operations Manager

Vision Statement

The Career Development Center (CDC) partners with students to explore their passions, navigate challenges, and achieve their success.

Mission Statement

Recognizing and valuing diverse backgrounds and experiences, the Career Development Center develops innovative approaches to connect student’s academic and career goals, identifies and promotes opportunities, and facilitates a network of partnerships.

Analysis

The CDC attempts to alert students of its office during the freshmen year. They are very active within the school and considering it is a smaller, private school (est. 3,000) they have easier access to the entire student body. The CDC is active in recruiting businesses to come to their campus and they work aside the Alumni Association in hosting networking sessions between current students and alumni. The CDC has a detailed website and has existing partnerships with numerous businesses.

The CDC has plenty of handouts in regards to resume writing, interviewing tips, and networking tips. Many of these helpful how-to guides seem like one-way communication pieces and I am not sure students benefit as much as they could. There are student advisors who act as peers and it seems like they have more of an effect than the other staff. They have the Myers-Brigg test and others available.

I was able to get the CDC’s annual report. They are affiliated with: NACE: http://www.naceweb.org/; SACE: http://soace.org/; EACE: http://www.eace.org/; MACCA: http://www.macca.net/index.php; NASPA: http://www.naspa.org/;VACE: http://www.vace.org/. In the report, I noticed that over half of the student body was reached through its partnership with orientation.

CDC Resources

• Over 500 print volumes of career information including 78 new purchases last year
• Career Search Link - http://beta.careersearch.net/signup.tt2?_referral=
• Wet Feet Link - http://www.crs.wetfeet.com/schools/richmond/Default.aspx?dpid=175
• What can I do with my major? Link - http://cdc.richmond.edu/studentsalumni/majors/jobs/default.html
• Updated Library Place for student career research
• Reassessment of resources to become more up to date and cutting edge

Virginia Commonwealth University Career Center

1/16
Sue Story - Director

Mission Statement

The University Career Center is committed to providing support to our students and recent alumni in the life-long career development process.

We will accomplish this by:

• Facilitating career and self-exploration
• Helping students identify and participate in experiential learning opportunities
• Engaging students in the decision-making process
• Educating students and recent alumni on the professional job search process
• Developing and maintaining collaborations with alumni, faculty, the university community and employers
• Creating a learner-centered environment by making services and resources available through technology

Analysis

VCU’s career center differed greatly from University of Richmond’s. Being the largest school in Virginia with a population of just over 30,000, the office deals with a much larger campus than its makeup allows. Unfortunately, being a state school, it does not have the necessary budget for its size and actually had its budget decrease over the last year.

The office does maintain an open door policy and tries to reach students as freshmen. It actually provides a career development plan for undergraduates teaching the necessary steps students should being taking as freshmen. According to Sue, students don’t visit the office until their junior or senior years – often late in the process.

Sue was extremely open to the idea of using Path 101’s services as long as they didn’t replace what the career counselors do. While she isn’t up to date with technology, she understands that
in order to help students these days, the offices need to be brought in the 21^s century and Path 101 may be able to help.

The office believes that resume writing skills and interviewing tips are better left for counselors but they don’t have the ability or the time to share with each student what others with similar interests and experiences are doing. Sue was really interested in that aspect…and that Path 101 is free to use.

VCU Resources

• A library full of print material
• Partnership with Career Connections - http://vcu.erecruiting.com/er/security/login.jsp (related to cbcampus.com)
• Partnership with Interview Stream - http://campus.interviewstream.com/login/?schoolid=35