By Michele D’Altorio
A new Facebook account and more focus on individual students are just two of the new services the University’s Career Center now offers. The center is under new direction and will soon undergo changes to better serve the needs of students.
Fred Burke, executive director of the Career Center, hopes these changes will draw students in and help them realize everything the program has to offer.
After working as the associate director of Career Developmentat Vassar College in Poughkeepsie for seven years, Burke said he is happy to now be working at the University, where he was welcomed on Jan. 2. He said he was impressed with the University, and plans to take advantage of its proximity to New York City, the home of many job and internship opportunities. “I think the Career Center is really the most extraordinary place to work on a college campus,” Burke said, adding that he feels the Career Center has plenty of potential that has not been tapped into yet.
Burke said one of his main goals for the Career Center is to increase outreach to students, which will help students make a connection with the school and employers, whether they are looking for a job, internship, graduate school or mentor. Burke said the Career Center appears very business-oriented to students, and he hopes to change this by collaborating with individual academic departments to cater more to students’ individual needs. He said there are not enough students utilizing the Career Center, primarily because they simply do not know what the center has to offer.
Students can now find out what the Career Center offers by visiting the Career Center’s Facebook group profile, which Burke created his first week at Hofstra.
“Student culture changes, and we need to be responsive to that,” Burke said, adding that he feels Facebook and podcasts are a better way of reaching out to today’s students than e-mail and postal mail. Burke also said technology is the way to go, and hopes to soon have online counselors, instant-message sessions with students and online resources students will be able to access from the my.Hofstra.edu Portal.
Burke said he also hopes to re-establish Hofstra’s alumni database because not nearly enough students use it. He said alumni are excellent resources for students who have questions or are seeking advice about a specific career. Students can communicate with alumni by using the Career Alumni Advising Network.
In Burke’s opinion, the most important service the Career Center offers students is a robust online database, which lists approximately 3,500 jobs and internships that students can access right from the Hofstra portal. Burke said many companies that do not visit campus for job fairs and onsite recruitment will post jobs on the Portal.

Staff members of the Career Center, including Executive Director Fred Burke, have created Facebook profiles to better connect with students.