ACC is helping more students find jobs and gain professional skills while they’re in college. This semester, the college launched two new programs designed to connect students with on-campus jobs and provide mentoring and professional development to prepare them for their careers after college. The programs are called ACC Works and ACC GROW, respectively. Faculty and staff also benefit, with more opportunities to hire student employees for positions in their departments.
ACC Works will serve as a job agency to help enrolled students find job opportunities on campus that match their area of study to help them gain real-world experience.
“The college had individual units providing specific experiential opportunities, but no collegewide earn-and-learn system for hiring students into ACC hourly jobs. The mission of ACC Works is to make hiring students easy for departments by recruiting, matching, and walking students through the hiring process, so you don’t have to,” says David Borden, Special Projects director. “For example, your department has a position you’d like to fill with a student, but you don’t have the bandwidth. You select a student from our pool, and we do everything else”.
ACC GROW (Guided Reflection on Work) is the career development arm to ensure students gain skills throughout their journey. The program is focused on making student employment a “high-impact activity” — one that requires students to reflect on their learning and connect their learning within and beyond the classroom using brief, structured conversations between student employees and their supervisors.
“Employment during college helps contribute to student success when meaningful connections between learning in the classroom and learning on the job are made evident,” says Trish Welch, Career Services director. “Once students are hired and working, ACC GROW provides supervisor training to help ensure students gain core competencies. Career Services Specialists work with students throughout their employment to provide ongoing coaching and support, including resume and interview skills development.”
These student programs are part of the college’s Career Services program and are a cross-functional effort by Instruction (ACC Works) and Student Affairs (ACC GROW) to better support students in their pursuit of ‘earn-and-learn’ opportunities. This initiative is a retention strategy for the college and an effort to engage in upward mobility of students.
For more information on ACC Works, contact David Borden at [email protected].
For more information on ACC GROW, contact Shantelle Harper, Career Services Outreach and Special Programs manager, at [email protected].
Visit the ACC Career Services website at austincc.edu/career to learn more.