Spring 2013 - The CCI Connection

THE CCI CONNECTION College of Communication & Information at The Florida State University

Experiences to launch a career

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s we help our students lay the foundations for successful careers, we must also prepare our students for their first job experiences. Our overall strategy Dean Larry Dennis is to make sure each student gets realworld, professional experiences. Some of these —  s uch as company visits, career days or research — t ake place outside the classroom. Others — s uch as clinical experiences, the production of sports broadcasts or supervised internships —  a re integrated into coursework. Over the past year, we provided our students with more than 500 internship, service learning and clinical experiences. This professional focus is impacting our students, who are getting rave reviews from employers. As examples: ESPN signed a contract with FSU so our students now produce ESPNU broadcasts. And General Motors, who has been searching the country for 10,000 IT staff, told us that they were tremendously impressed by FSU students and that they have identified FSU as one of the two best universities in the country for hiring IT employees. Our students are also developing their entrepreneurial skills through activities such as Three-Day Startup competitions, the Practical Apprenticeship Center, Arrowhead Advertising and Seminole Night Live. In the following pages, you’ll see stories about career experiences that our students are receiving. We will continue to seek opportunities to expand relationships with companies, to integrate career experiences into every student’s program and to increase the support that we give our students in developing entrepreneurship.

Spring 2013

PAC helping students to land jobs

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asically, I got my job at GM because of my experience at PAC,” said alumnus Diego Corzo (Information Technology, 2012) referring to his work at the Practical Apprenticeship Center (PAC). “The recruiters told me that my experience there was unique; that they rarely met a graduating student who had that kind of outside-of-the-classroom experience.” Corzo was hired for his current position as a software developer at General Motors in Austin, Texas, a month before his graduation last December. “Through PAC, students are engaged in every aspect of our work at The Children’s Campaign  —   c ommunications, public policy, social media, technology, website development and database management,” said Linda Alexionok, executive director of the organization, who also serves on the CCI Leadership Advisory Board and is leading PAC’s service learning efforts in partnership with CCI. Alexionok, a former bank president,

Get ready for The Great Give

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ast year, FSU held its first Great Give—a 36 hour virtual fundraiser open to alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents and friends of Florida State. Donors were able to make online gifts of any size to any specific fund and CCI tied for second with the College of Business for the number of gifts. This year our goal is to raise $5,000 with gifts from at least 125 donors. These funds will go to our students to attend conferences to receive awards or give presentations, to participate in competitions and to find opportunities for employment. Join us in breaking last year’s record on April 18–19 by linking to give.cci.fsu.edu/great-give.

JOB PREP. Linda Alexionok watches over Practical Apprenticeship Center interns Justin Lee and Gerard Massey as they prepare final edits for their PORTAL presentation in Washington, DC.

has years of data showing that the PAC approach to career preparation is working. Students apply what they are learning in classes as they receive on-the-job training from seasoned volunteers and retirees, all the while servicing the needs of non-profits. They also learn the value of leadership and community service. Like many students in PAC, Corzo spent one semester in a junior internship position followed by one in a senior role. Students are usually unpaid for the first semester and receive pay or a stipend for the second. Corzo was later hired by PAC to work with a student development team for the highly successful PORTAL (“Power of Relationships to Achieve Leverage”) website linking more than 60 member organizations of Voices for America’s Children, the nation’s largest network of child advocacy organizations. “That’s where I got the experience that I needed to work for a Fortune 500 company,” said Corzo. “Really good realworld experience, not just hard skills but soft skills —  m anaging people, preparing agendas and leading meetings. I learned how to manage an undertaking from an idea to a finished project.”

To find complete stories, photo galleries and videos, visit our extended online version at http://cci.fsu.edu/Newsletter