CUNY’s Career and Work Centers

By Marcus Ayala

On Thursday, the New York City Council held a hearing with representatives from CUNY on Career Services and Job Placements.

The hearing started with Christopher Rosa, who is the Interim CUNY’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.

He believes that CUNY is still the best choice for low-income youngsters and first-generation college students. “CUNY has 27 career centers on 24 campuses,” Rosa said.

Baruch has the most centers, with four, and the other campuses have only one. According to Rosa, each CUNY college president has the ultimate say in how funding the college receives.

Another speaker was Zina Richardson, who is CUNY’s Director of Career Services & Professional Development.

Richardson believes, “No career center is successful without key partnerships.” CUNY partners with the colleges and employers to provide valuable information and resources for all CUNY students.

The centers offer individualized career training through networking and mock interviews, as well as the posting of information about thousands of jobs and internships.

The CUNY centers have an average of four full-time staff members, with students being able to use resources also from other campuses.

In the 2017-2018 academic year, for the senior colleges, there were 2,083 internships. For the community colleges there were 312.

Lisanette Rosario, Director of Career Services at Hostos Community College, believes that community colleges are more hands-on in dealing with referrals, even though senior colleges have over 4,000 job postings compared with 1,000-plus at the two-year colleges.

The last speaker was Angie Kamath, who is the University’s Dean for Continuing Education and Workforce Development. She believes internships are very helpful in gaining employment. “We hope we can work together to help more and more New Yorkers,” she said.