May/June 2011

by Janet Mangano

 

Who we are
We are friends and alumni of Baruch who seek to evaluate, enhance, and improve the undergraduate and graduate mentoring programs of the Executives on Campus (EOC). Our committee, 19 strong, consists of volunteers in the Executive Student Partnership, Entrepreneurship, FWA, School of Public Affairs, SEEK, Mentor for a Morning, and Corporate Communications mentoring programs. Each of us has a minimum of five years of post-graduate and professional experience in our fields.

What we do
We meet on the fourth Tuesday evening of each month and brainstorm! With the assistance of our esteemed EOC founders, Norm Brust, Paul Koren, and Dick Merians, as well as our director Jacqueline “J.” McLoughlin, we defined our mandates at the onset of our efforts in January 2011. Our primary focus is the sustainability of EOC mentoring activities, through volunteer resources of time, talent, and treasure. Our recruitment efforts have paid off, with 61 mentors added year-to-date. We are also developing a mentor directory using social media to facilitate ease of communications between mentors, and materials for mentors that cover topics such as resources, ethics, and training.

The critical importance of fundraising emerged at the onset of our discussions. Due to the budgetary crisis facing the state, funding for the EOC program was frozen. We are taking practical steps to increase the participation of our volunteers in fundraising, as direct contacts to corporations and other philanthropies, and also as donors themselves. As the springtime thaw continues, let’s all focus on a warmer climate for funding the program!

by Carol Gamm

Congratulations to Moheeta Tamrakar, Baruch’s newly-elected Graduate Student Assembly-Club Liaison for the 2011-2012 academic year. Moheeta is one of the many EOC students who contribute so much to the Baruch community, and I’m proud to be her mentor.

 

Like many other Baruch students, Moheeta does an amazing job of juggling a number of roles and responsibilities. Moheeta is a second-year MBA student, an intern for the digital marketing firm The Red Rooster Group, VP of Marketing for the Zicklin Women in Business, and VP of Marketing for the Zicklin Project Management Club. In addition, she has worked both as a graduate assistant at Baruch and as a research assistant at the Columbia University Institute for Tele-Information. However, Moheeta’s personal story, the story of her journey from her home in Kathmandu, Nepal to Idaho State University, to New York City and Baruch, is even more impressive.

When Moheeta decided to leave her family and come to the US to go to college, the family agreed on Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, because Pocatello seemed like a safe, small-town community. Although Pocatello offers a somewhat limited range of opportunities, Moheeta succeeded in making the most of them. She was elected to the business honor society Beta Gamma Sigma, worked as an intern for the College of Business PC Support office, served as Finance Chair for the 2008 Idaho Business Leader of the Year program, and was VP of Information and VP of Finance for Alpha Kappa Psi, the professional business fraternity. After graduating with a BBA in Computer Systems and Management, Moheeta worked for an international foods trade association in Wisconsin while deciding on her next professional move. Moheeta decided that her greatest career interests were in international business and digital marketing, so she applied to Baruch, traveled to New York (again on her own), and began the MBA program in 2010. I can only imagine the initiative and resourcefulness necessary for making this journey, and for making the most of every available opportunity.

Students like Moheeta make being an EOC mentor an exciting and rewarding experience. Moheeta may have received some internship help and career advice, but I received an even greater gift. This year, the world came to me.

by Sharon Belden Castonguay, EdD

Recently, an MBA student at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business wrote:

“I have had an incredible experience working with the Graduate Career Management Center (GCMC) and the various programs and resources offered by them.”

The Graduate Career Management Center is an educational department dedicated to providing Zicklin graduate students and alumni with the tools and resources necessary to successfully manage their careers while building relationships between employers and the Baruch community to help develop talent pipelines. With only five full-time professional staff, we serve over 2,500 graduate students to provide individual career counseling, facilitate job search groups, and give access to electronic resources to help with industry research. All of our services are available to alumni without charge.

We partner with the EOC to administrate the Executive Student Partnership and Mentor for a Morning programs, serving over 100 students and 100 mentors a year. The student quoted above was an active participant.

“On starting the MBA program in Fall ’09 I was accepted into the Executive Student Partnership (ESP) program offered by the EOC. Working with my mentor (Ms. JoAnn Ryan) helped me bridge the cultural differences between my work experience in India and the job markets here in the United States. She also connected me to several professionals in the management consulting industry, which ultimately led to an interview with Deloitte Consulting. Once again, the GCMC offered several mock interviews and very valuable feedback which helped me prepare better for my interviews and ultimately land an offer with the firm.”

Through our cultivation of employer relationships we facilitate, on average, over 400 job and internship applications a month via our online jobs portal, Zicklin CareerLink. To learn more about how your organization can tap into the talent pool available at the Zicklin School of Business, contact Sharon Belden Castonguay, Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at: [email protected].

“I believe the services offered by the GCMC and EOC are a very valuable asset to the graduate students at school. It has certainly helped me make a successful transition from a pure technical background to one of the most challenging careers in business.” —George Urumpipara, MBA ‘11

by Patricia Imbimbo, Ph.D. & Jennifer Rodgers, M.S. Ed.

The Starr Career Development Center (SCDC) provides numerous career-related resources, services and events every year for Baruch’s 13,000 undergraduate students and to alumni. In addition to basic job search workshops in resume writing and interviewing, there are workshops on small talk, dining etiquette, personal branding, and the use of social media in the job search. These “soft skills” workshops are important in helping students obtain the networking, business etiquette, and other non-technical skills they will need throughout their careers to meet and influence their colleagues and future employers. These are the skills that will help them continue to achieve high marks and promotions once they are on the job.

Each year, the SCDC invites hundreds of employers to come on campus to provide information and interview students for internships and jobs. They interact with students through workshops, office visits, and both on- and off-campus interviews. They post thousands of internship and job opportunities on our online career service management system called STARRSearch and students submit resumes, apply for jobs, and sign up for events online.

The SCDC also houses four special training programs for students including: Peers for Careers; the Financial Leadership Program (FLP); the Max Berger Pre-law Program; and the Rising Starr Sophomore Program. Peers are trained undergraduates who perform resume reviews and mock interviews. The FLP provides intense training to finance majors for front office positions in investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and risk analysis. The Max Berger Pre-law Program brings practicing attorneys to campus, and provides counseling and valuable LSAT preparation for a selected cohort of students. The Rising Starr Sophomore Program trains underclass students in how to choose a major and prepares them to be good candidates for internship opportunities.

The alumni coordinator in the SCDC plans seminars and provides career counseling for alumni. Every year, alumni make appointments to meet with career counselors for one-on-one career advisement and strategy sessions. Once a week, alumni can walk into the SCDC for free brief counseling sessions to review a resume, discuss an upcoming interview or their job search.

In addition to the fantastic workshops available to our students, the SCDC hosts, on average, 12 career seminars per year that are designed for the experienced professional. These workshops are available to Baruch alumni and executives in the New York area. Seminar topics range from finding one’s professional passion to networking and interviewing. Alumni may also obtain access to our career management system, where hundreds of alumni-specific job opportunities are posted for the Baruch College community. Weekly emails keep alumni up to date on career-related events and opportunities that are occurring on campus and throughout the NYC metro area.

Those who are interested in giving back may want to join the SCDC’s Online Mentor program. Through this program, alumni provide professional, industry, company and academic advice, guidance and information to students (and other alumni). Online Mentors decide the extent to how much time they wish to volunteer and to do so on or off campus.

Check out our website for career resources and information about our program. For more information about alumni career services contact Jennifer Rodgers.

by EOC Founders, Norm Brust, Paul Koren & Dick Merians

1. Friendships with mentees that have lasted a decade.
2. Helping mentees through the interview process, and feeling their joy when they are offered a position.
3. Learning about mentees’ lives, their struggles and successes, and unbelievable will to succeed; trying to understand how mentees work full-time, carry a full class load and maintain high grade point averages.
4. The energy generated by the EOC mentors that flows through the entire organization.
5. Learning about today’s business environment from the perspective of a younger generation. Learning about new technologies and web-surfing opportunities from mentees along with being motivated to research many industries in order to provide sound advice to our mentees.
6. Friendships formed with other EOC members and renewing friendships with former colleagues in order to set up advice interviews with mentees.
7. The satisfaction of “giving back” to the school that provided me with a tuition-free education many years ago and truly transformed my life.
8. We can readily see the impact we have on the College’s students and we are energized by working with the student body.
9. We learn about the many cultures that study in this College of diversity and we get to work with a wonderful professional College faculty and staff.
10. We maintain the tradition, so many of us were mentored, so now we mentor.