Undergraduate Career Management Center kicks up career planning
The success of the BBA Career Management Center’s (CMC) mid-January “Career Trek” to New York City was an added bonus for Associate Director Douglas Cooper, who was
celebrating six months on the job.
Shortly after Cooper joined the CMC, he traveled to New York on his first Career Trek. It was a homecoming of sorts; Cooper graduated from City University of New York and worked for IBM and Prudential in Manhattan before moving to Atlanta. He spent seven years as director of career placement at Atlanta University Center prior to joining Goizueta.
One of his first goals was to build a network of alumni and increase BBA career opportunities. During the summer trek to New York, Cooper received such overwhelming alumni support and assistance that he determined there to be a sufficient number of corporate hosts to offer two separate tracks during the winter event: one in marketing and the other in finance. More than fifty students participated, attending sessions at some of New York’s leading firms. For the most part, the news was good: Companies are starting to hire again and many have listed Goizueta BBA Program as a target school.
In addition to the bi-annual New York event, treks to Chicago, the Washington, D.C., area, and Los Angeles are all in the works. “The Career Treks are an excellent way to expand the presence of BBA students and to augment the school’s exposure in a number of regions and industries, including solidifying relationships on Wall Street,” Cooper says. The CMC conducts Atlanta Treks as well, knocking on doors to make sure Emory remains on the minds of recruiters in its own hometown.
Cooper’s efforts are complemented by those of Stephanie Poleski ’01C, an Emory College graduate and the program’s assistant director. Stephanie has been at the school for only nine months, but already has forged lasting relationships with the students she counsels. The intention of the CMC is to work with each undergraduate business school student individually to forge a career plan. “One of our goals is to have a strategy for 100 percent of the students in the program,” Cooper explains. “We want to know the students’ desires and ambitions, or to help them figure them out.” After all, each student’s success creates another opportunity for the BBAs who will follow.—Allison Shirreffs