7 - Community in the CDC

As a career assistant in the College of Human Ecology’s Career Development Center, one of my communities on campus is the group of students and advisors who work at the Center. My job involves working at the Career Development Center (CDC) 6-8 hours per week where I critique resumes, assist students with searching for internships and externships, and help with career workshops and events. My specialist role is internships and professional development.

Haythornwaite describes a community as having a social network aspect, common ground, and reciprocity. In relation to the social network aspect, networks are made up of ties and actors. As a career assistant, my strongest ties are with the group of 8 other student career assistants I work with and the advisors of the Center. We have group meetings once a week, I see them every day at work, and collaborate closely with them on group projects. We have access to the same resources and information. In addition to these strong ties, I also have ties with other faculty and staff members within Human Ecology to whom we refer students to. While these ties are not as strong as my ties with the other career assistants, I still consider them to be on the stronger spectrum of the scale. I have met and gotten to know many of these people and while I do not see them constantly, I have frequent contact with them. I think that some of the weaker ties would be people who work in the main Career Center on campus, and the people who work in the career development centers in the different colleges. I am not usually in contact with these people, but our paths do sometimes cross through campus wide events and programs.

In terms of common ground, the other career assistants and I work together to promote career development and continue to make our career center as useful as possible to students. We are committed to the same values – we all want to help the students who come in as best as we can and are always re-evaluating and assessing students’ needs and thinking of ways we can meet this needs. Reciprocity is also an important aspect of this community. We are constantly re-enforcing one another – helping each other when we do not know answers to specific questions, giving each other suggestions, and supporting one other. At our meetings, we bring up situations or questions we had trouble with in the past week and try to help each other find solutions to these issues.

CMC affects this community. We use email a lot to communicate with one another and let each other know about new information about a program or upcoming events so that we are all aware of what is going on. Through email, we send out the minutes to our meetings and any questions or group reminders. CMC also relates to the social network aspect, in particular the strong ties. All of the career assistants are friends on Facebook and we all know a lot about what is going on in each other’s lives. I think that Facebook makes our ties stronger because it builds on and enhances our working relationships, making us a stronger and more cohesive group both inside and outside the CDC.

http://www.human.cornell.edu/che/Academics/Career-Services/Resources/CDC.cfm