UIC Newsletter

• Sep. 2018 (Vol. 3 No. 2)
• Mar. 2018 (Vol. 3 No. 1)
• Sep. 2017 (Vol. 2 No. 2)
• Mar. 2017 (Vol. 2 No. 1)
• Sep. 2016 (Vol. 1 No. 1)

NEWS AND ACTIVITIES

Career Development Center Integrates with YSCEC

CDC Notices Online: A Pilot Project with the Global Career Society

All UIC students noticed something peculiar during the first week of classes last March when they logged into YSCEC, Yonsei’s course management platform. Next to their enrolled classes, students saw an icon titled “UIC Career Development,” illustrated with a cartoon of a cat standing in front of Underwood Hall. Worried that they had accidentally enrolled in the class, they quickly clicked on the cat and read that all UIC students had been added to this site, which had been created by Professor Chad Denton, director of the Career Development Center (CDC). The point of the site was to share career-related information and advice within the UIC community. Starting on March 9, job, internship, and UIC event announcements began appearing regularly in students’ YSCEC Notices feed.

The UIC Career Development page on YSCEC was a joint CDC and GCS (Global Career Society) project designed both to increase awareness of career resources at UIC and to gather information about the career interests and needs of UIC students. The page was active as a pilot project from March to August 2017 and will hopefully continue, in some form, this following semester.

The key reason to launch this page was to remedy the problem that though most UIC students have heard of the CDC (if only during freshman orientation), few have readily attended CDC workshops, guest lectures, or stopped by the CDC offices in Sinchon or Songdo for one-on-one advising. Though attendance has been increasing at the most important CDC-sponsored event, the annual UIC Alumni Career Fair, UIC students are busy and it is often difficult to find time to attend these events.

By integrating CDC content into YSCEC, UIC students last spring had a constant, even daily, reminder of the opportunities available to them. Though the site was launched with little promotion, it quickly found a core group of users. By the end of the pilot project in August, 56% of UIC’s student body had interacted with this CDC content in some fashion. What kind of content was the most popular? For the most part, UIC students primarily used this YSCEC page to access the job and internship notices, which accounted for 97% of the 24,822 total views. Unsurprisingly, the oldest students were the most active users, with those from the classes of 2014, 2013, and 2012 viewing an average of 24 to 30 posts, while first-years had the least engagement. The most-viewed posts were those endorsed by the CDC, such as the “seriously cool opportunity” to attend a field trip with Professor Kleinman from Harvard Medical School, or the “important scholarship opportunity” announcing the Schwarzman Scholars program.

For the most part, the notice board advertised internship opportunities in Korea. A word cloud of the 225 notices posted between March and August 2017 showed a strong need for assistants or analysts, for work in consulting, investment, securities, marketing and embassies, with a focus on international experience and research skills. A snapshot of the internship opportunities most viewed by UIC students shows a strong preference for multinationals and international organizations.

Besides the Notice board, the rest of the UIC Career Development pages consisted of a series of forums where students could post questions or download content. The most popular of these forums were those devoted to internship and part-time jobs, resume and CVs, law school, and alumni. Yet, few students took the opportunity to post questions. This coming semester, the CDC and members of GCS will continue to work in cooperation with the UIC office, the UIC Alumni Association, the Social Innovation Center, and the UIC Student Council, to improve this YSCEC page and to make even more career resources available to UIC students.

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