The Career Resource Center’s Career Conference in the Science Center last Saturday featured alumni speakers and CRC staff presentations. The all-day event included sessions on education, performing arts, finance, health professions, public interest law, science, public service and communications industries. Students were able to ask the alumni questions at the panels and during the alumni lunch.
The conference was divided into five sessions. Session I consisted of three workshops that dealt with life after graduation, with panels covering topics such as “Making Ends Meet: Surviving on an Entry-Level Salary”, “Life as a Graduate Student” and “Work Visa 101.” Alumna Tabitha Williams ’97, a chief financial recruiter for Merrill Lynch, was the speaker for the first panel about living on a shoestring post-college budget. The “Life as a Graduate Student” panel was larger, and featured speakers such as David Phillips, Associate Dean of the College and Dean for the class of 2006. Phillips was joined by two alumni, one of whom is a fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism and another who is currently a law student at Yale.
Session II included the “Public Service: Pathways to Leadership,” “Careers in Business,” and “Communications Careers: Telling It Like It Is” workshops. Alumni who spoke at these panels represented organizations such as ESPN, Random House, ISA Consulting, Foote, Cone & Belding, and the Mentoring Partnership of New York.
“The biggest thing [the students] get is assurance that people have done it before,” said Louis Bodero ’97 an advertising account executive from Foote, Cone & Belding. “It lets people know that they are not alone. A lot of people don’t use the CRC as much as they could. I always thought it was great when I was here.”
Session III dealt with “Buying a Car without Losing Your Shirt,” performing arts career panels and an interview attire workshop. Session IV covered “Staying Alive and Well: Reflections on Clinical Practice.” It featured an acupuncturist and a dentist.
The conference ended with Session V, which covered science and education careers, and “Home Sweet Apartment,” a workshop on finding a place to live after graduation.
Associate Director for Employer Relations Marlisa Simonson said that the conference had been more successful than a similar career conference the CRC organized two years ago, and had also attracted a healthy representation of students from all four class years.
“Attendance is significantly higher [than two years ago]. We expected lots of junior and seniors, which we got, but also have a nice assortment of first and second year students,” Simonson said.
She suggested that CRC’s different approach to how the conference was set up this time might explain the higher attendance. The previous conference had been promoted as an all day affair, which discouraged students from spending an entire Saturday at the Science Center. At last week’s conference however, students were free to choose which workshops to attend and to leave whenever they wanted in between workshops.
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