The trend in college career services is for more partnerships and collaborative efforts with the entire network of students, alumni, faculty, student service partners, employers, and families.  Our proposed plan includes subsequent goals, and initiatives that are a reflection of this shift.   We anticipate engaging in a number of strategic outreach efforts to increase visibility and customized connections with our students, academic departments, and student service offices.

Career readiness of college graduates continues to be of major concern to the employer community and underscores the importance of connecting students early on with the Office of Career & Internship Services.  During the 17/18 academic year we envision the creation of a career readiness curriculum that will highlight the competencies needed for successful transition into the workplace.  In addition we plan to review our current workshop presentations and materials and update them as needed.

Advances in technology continue to change the landscape of service delivery and student engagement and have emerged to compliment the connectivity efforts of career services.  Big Interview is one of the software applications we have used during the past year, a program which allows students to practice interviewing skills online.  In order to demonstrate the program to the students and to have them utilize it in Career Services, we are looking to create a private computer station with a laptop computer with webcam capabilities.  Career Coach, a software application program, which provides the most current local data on wages, employment, job postings and the associated education and training is another program we would like to retain. This program makes the connection between majors and local employment opportunities and can be used by both current and prospective students.

Social media continues to be the #1 medium through which students obtain information. We recognize the need to increase our presence on the various social media platforms and with the help of our college auxiliary worker we want to establish a Facebook and Twitter account which will enable us to provide up-to-date, timely and current information to students.

We would like to increase our presence in Newburgh, where we currently are represented one day per week.  In addition we would like to dedicate more time to employer service and to the task of building ongoing relationships with employers and workforce development partners.  The ability to increase smaller, department- specific activities, such as career fairs is stymied by our limited staffing. With the loss of our grant-funded, part-time Internship Coordinator current staff is stretched even further.  The ability to hire one additional professional staff could make a substantial difference.