The ٺƵ Career Center has changed its name as part of its efforts to improve accessibility for students. Executive Director Marcie Kirk Holland explained that the Career Center’s name change from the Internship and Career Center was prompted by student feedback and data from Student Affairs Marketing and Communication, or SAMC.
Students in focus groups hosted by SAMC felt that the word “internship” was implicit to “career” and therefore redundant. Furthermore, the resulting abbreviation was confusing to many students.
“SAMC found that the ICC acronym meant nothing to incoming students,” Kirk Holland said. “When people said, ‘Go to the ICC,’ students didn’t know what they meant.”
The Career Center’s name will no longer be abbreviated.
Accompanying the name change are changes to the Career Center’s website, which include reducing the number of acronyms on the page and using more straightforward names for services and activities. These changes are designed to meet the needs of individual students at every stage of their career, combating the misperception that students need a baseline level of knowledge or experience to access the Career Center’s services.
An example of a change made for clarity and accessibility includes the activity “Resume Review with the Career Center,” previously known as Resume Boost. The new name makes clear the purpose and content of the activity, whereas the former name sounded catchy but required some decoding. In keeping with the goal to increase student access, Resume Review with the Career Center will be held at multiple locations across campus, including each of the colleges.
These changes to the Career Center’s name, website and service delivery are ultimately geared towards making its services more direct and easily understood by students who could benefit from them.
“We are committed to paying attention to the feedback that we get,” Kirk Holland said. “Equity and accessibility are a cornerstone of our work.”
Julie Huang, a second-year student majoring in English, is the news writing and emergency communications intern in News and Media Relations.