By Heather Monahan
Assistant Features Editor
The community atmosphere and the approachable, caring faculty and staff are clear examples of how Bonaventure goes above and beyond its call to prepare students for life outside the Bona Bubble.
The Career and Professional Readiness Center (CPRC) offers students a variety of services to help prepare them for life after college. Whether freshmen need help building their résumés or graduate students need help preparing for interviews, the CPRC is designed to help students with whatever they need concerning jobs and internships.
“We have what’s called a professional development action plan for all students,” Connie Whitcomb, director of the CPRC, said. “It’s a developmental program that has recommended activities and services. It guides the student to say ‘here’s where we really want you to be in your professional development at this point in your college career.’”
The program begins during a student’s freshman year in University 101, a required first year course. Freshmen have the opportunity to learn about the CPRC and its services through passport events throughout their first semester. This year, the curriculum for University 101 has been altered to include résumé development.
“I think it’s pretty distinctive to say that every first year student, in completion of that course, is going to have their first college résumé,” Whitcomb said.
Whitcomb said the new requirement in University 101 will help students better acquaint themselves with their academic career possibilities.
“It carries a greater mandate of getting students, right out of the gate, involved in some of these professional development programs,” she said.
In addition to résumé building, the CPRC also places an emphasis on internships and internship preparation after the résumé development process.
“Our hope is that from the University 101 promotion, services and requirements, students come to know about us,” Whitcomb said. “And then they roll naturally and developmentally into phase two in their sophomore and junior years.”
The CPRC has also decided to focus their attention on undecided students to help them stay on track with the professional development action plan.
“We have a counselor dedicated and committed to working with undecided students through the 101 classes,” she said. “We’re going to be administering an assessment and one-on-one consultation to really help those students start to formulate those career goals and major decisions.”
The CPRC has multiple events coming up this semester to assist students in their action plans and develop professionally.
“We’re about to launch our second annual internship summit Nov. 8,” Whitcomb said. “That’s a campus-wide program for students, of all majors (and) of all class years, with a target market for those students who are going to be getting intern ready.”
The CPRC is also sponsoring “The Dream Project” Oct. 1 from 4-6 p.m. in the Murphy Auditorium. The presentation, given by a group of college graduates, discusses finding and following your dream. The group consists of individuals who started working right out of college, instead of seeking other opportunities. Dissatisfied with their career choices, the graduates went on a year-long trip around the country to meet different kinds of people and talk about their goals.
“They have a wonderful story to tell,” Whitcomb said. “Not only about how they’ve evolved as a result of that experience, but they also have some of the powerful messages they learned and the people that they met.”
The CPRC, along with cooperation of each academic school and the rest of campus, works hard to make these kinds of events on campus possible.
Whitcomb said what makes St. Bonaventure’s CPRC unique is the community it serves.
“I think the Bonaventure culture and campus is such that nobody’s a number, everybody’s a name,” Whitcomb said. “It’s all about building those relationships and then working with those students and walking through the professional development journey with the student and seeing that growth from first year up until gradation.”
