Welcome Back Fellow Students!

By The Starrlights Committee: Jason Ioffe, Yahya Khan, Nadya Semenova, David Tsui, Ruixiang Wu, Camille Hall, Adia Tucker and Ellen Stein

Hello Baruch Students,

Welcome to a new and exciting academic year at Baruch College! We are thrilled that you are continuing your higher education or transitioning to Baruch College for the first time this year. We understand that your primary goal as college students is to establish a strong academic foundation that will lead towards a career.

Peers for Careers, a group of student leaders in the Starr Career Development Center, provides a variety of comprehensive career readiness services. Peers provide resume reviews, cover letter critiques and mock interviews. In addition, Peers write a weekly Career Corner column in the Ticker school newspaper and facilitate a variety of career-related workshops and presentations.

Last fall, we successfully launched our blog, Starrlights: Peers Speak Careers. This blog provides career advice from a student perspective. We are pleased to share that Starrlights won the first-place prize in the 2013 Alva C. Cooper Awards for Best Practices in Career Development from the Metropolitan New York College Career Planning Officers Association.

As Starrlights enters its second year, we are offering an invitation to Baruch students to submit their own stories, interview a fellow student/alum or review a career-related event for our blog. If you are interested in writing a blog post for Starrlights, please contact the Starrlights Blog Team at [email protected].

To kick off the school year, as a committee, we have listed some tips that you may find helpful in your career endeavors.

Make a positive connection with a professor. He or she can provide you with professional guidance, act as a reference during job and internship searches, and share with you vital information about your careers of interest.
Grades matter when it comes to landing internships and jobs. So get off to a good start academically. Practice good study habits and don’t wait until you are really having trouble to seek help. Take initiative to meet with your professor, get tutoring from SAAC (Student Academic Consulting Center), or see consultants in The Writing Center.
Talk to your peers. Introduce yourself to the people who sit next to you at classes and make connections. You never know where those relationships might get you. Maybe there is a new Bill Gates or Jamie Dimon among them.
As a student this is the perfect time to work on your professional image, public speaking skills and build your support network. Participating in a variety of student life activities will not only enhance your leadership skills; you will also gain a variety of mentors that can help you pursue your future career goals.

Become involved with any of the over 200 clubs and organizations on-campus. These can help strengthen your network and brighten your college experience. Just be careful not to become overwhelmed; extra-curricular activities are great, as long as they do not pull your focus away from academic success and professional development.

Choosing a major or a career may be much more overwhelming than you think, especially for First Generation College students. We may be able to get advice from professors, fellow students or a simple Google search. However, there is another way to access our strengths and interests. The Starr Career Development Center specializes in assisting students who need help with choosing a major or career. Come to our Center, talk to our counselors and you get can professional advice. Start early and know yourself better.

The blog committee looks forward to sharing ideas, publicizing events, and inspiring students to reach their full professional and personal potential. Best wishes for a great year!

Starrlights Summer Update

It has been a pleasure to share career tips, student stories, career fair reviews, and alumni interviews with not only the Baruch community but to the wider online audience using Starrlights.

In just about ten months we managed to launch this outlet to share the voices of Peers for Careers—student leaders at Baruch College helping students with their careers while embarking on the same journey themselves.

This summer, we hope you continue to re-visit our blog. Though we will be updating less frequently due to the summer season, please continue to tune in for some new posts.

We look forward to extending our readership and enhancing our content to help all student career seekers in the Fall of 2013.

Thank you for reading and we hope to hear from you soon. Feel free to leave a comment or suggestion in your feedback section below.

Sincerely,

Kamelia Kilawan, Peer for Career

Congratulations 2013 Peer for Career Graduates!

Peers for Careers 2013 Graduates with Peers for Careers Coordinator, Dr. Ellen Stein — Peers for Careers 2013 Graduates with Dr. Ellen Stein

A message from SCDC Deputy Director, Dr. Ellen Stein:

On behalf of the Starr Career Development Center (SCDC) and Peers for Careers program we would like to congratulate the Class of 2013 graduates! Special thanks to the following Peers for Careers graduates who have served between one and three years at the SCDC (from left to right): Robert Smith, Farzana Ghanie, Katherine Bedoya, Harshita Parikh, Liz De La Cruz Ramos, Amanda Ramkissoon, Paul Rosario, Shirely Cheung, Stephen Violago, Cheng (Kevin) Chen, Sam Wong. Congratulations and thank you, too, to Carmen Cortez and Carolina Pena who are not pictured above. We are grateful for your many contributions to the SCDC, Peers for Careers Program and Baruch Community. We wish you much happiness and success in your future endeavors!

Starrlights Wins First-Place Award for Best Practices in Career Development

We are pleased to announce that Starrlights has been selected by the Metropolitan New York College Career Planning Officers Association (MNYCCPOA) for the first-place prize in the 2013 Alva C. Cooper Awards for Best Practices in Career Development.

After being launched in Fall 2012, we have posted nearly fifty pieces of content including alumni interviews, career tips, student stories, career fair reviews, and SCDC announcements as well as re-published Ticker articles from our column “Career Corner.”

Starrlights has become a platform to share student voices to a larger audience outside of the Starr Career Development Center—which serves a school population of over 17,000 students.

photo-6 — From left: Editor and Peer for Career Kamelia Kilawan, SCDC Deputy Director Dr. Ellen Stein, Webmaster and Peer for Career Jason Ioffe, and Student/Staff Liaison Jillian DiBlasi pose at Google after receiving Alva C. Cooper award.

The Blog Team, Dr. Ellen Stein, Kamelia Kilawan, Jason Ioffe, and Jillian DiBlasi presented at Google’s headquarters in New York on May 3, 2013 to highlight ways the blog has amplified the voices of Peers online.

Starrlights is just one innovation stemming from The Peers for Careers program made up of a highly trained group of student leaders who provide resume reviews, cover letter critiques, and mock interviews. In addition to writing Starrlights, Peers also write a weekly Career Corner column in the Ticker school newspaper, and facilitate a variety of career-related workshops and presentations.

We would like to sincerely thank MNYCCPOA for selecting our blog for this prestigious award along with Deputy Director Dr. Ellen Stein for her guidance and genuine support for this project and the Peers for Careers program.