ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

Nearly every current Fordham University student is familiar with Career Services, even if only because of their frequent “Job Blast” emails informing students about job, internship and volunteer opportunities.

The office provides resources to students such as career counseling, workshops and alumni and employer connections. The Career Services office’s efforts, however, have not always been well received by students.

“I think there was a lot of bad words about Career Services a couple years ago, and people don’t really trust it to help them with their internships,” Brittany Tobin, GSB ’15, said. “But especially for me it has been [great]…I’ve gotten so many opportunities out of it …through networking events. I feel like career services has all the stuff, they have all the tools. People just don’t utilize it.”

Fairly recently, Career Services created yet another tool to help students find good jobs after college. Two years ago the Fordham Career Ambassadors (FCA) organization was formed as a way to establish a student liaison between Career Services and the student body.

The club, which became official last year, works to give students career assistance that Career Services cannot do alone.

“We’re a student organization committed to bettering Career Services through programs and other events,” Tobin, the programming chair of the FCA, said. “Also as a group ourselves, we want to better ourselves professionally.”

This weekend, the FCA held its first event of the year. The students involved in the club took a trip to Manhattan to visit the national headquarters of Teach For America, an organization that provides top quality education for children living in poverty.

“This was a career view…so we went to their site, we got to see where they work,” Elizabeth Hughes, GSB ’15 and FCA’s alumni relations committee chair, said.

The group was able to get firsthand insight into the work done at Teach For America. “We talked to three men, [one of whom] taught students where it was their last chance, like [they] had to do well otherwise they would be sent back to prison. It’s about doing the greater good. They teach because they want to help people,” Hughes said.

“But they [Teach For America] also do a lot of loan repayment,” Tobin added. “There are a lot of benefits…I think what’s cool about it is that a lot of people think that it’s just for people who are aspiring to be teachers, but it’s really not.”

The group spoke to Paul Ortega, national director of training & organizational development at international company Swiss Post.

“We had both listened to him before; he’s a positive speaker,” Tobin said. “We did a few exercises with him about always being positive. He said that you don’t really have to know your career path. He’s had like eight different jobs and he’s around, what? 55? He talked about how everything happens for a reason…he was pretty motivational.”

A large part of the FCA’s mission at Fordham is to spread wisdom like Ortega’s to the student body, as well as offer practical skills that students can take with them to the workplace.

Student ambassadors are in a unique position to help their peers, because they are going or have recently gone through the same processes as many of the students they help.

“Our motive is to have students connect with alumni to learn more about getting a job after school, internships, things like that, but have fun while doing it,” Hughes said.

Currently, there are 40 students at Rose Hill who are serving as career ambassadors, and there is also a sister organization at Lincoln Center.

Though the club is still fairly new, it is growing both in popularity and visibility on campus.

“What we’re trying to achieve with training as well as anything for the FCA is to build a community. Ideally, we want practically the whole school to be ambassadors, and in doing so we want them to be, basically, well rounded, professionally adept…and able to effectively communicate their aspirations to people,” Alexander Reynolds, FCRH ’14 and president of the FCA said. “Having ambassadors that uphold these ideals can do [a great deal] for the rest of the students, so hopefully we can keep on growing.”

Categories: News

Tags: KATIE MEYER, News