For many seniors at SUNY Oswego, graduation day is a day of excitement and uncertainty: Excitement for earning a degree, but uncertainty about what comes next.

For the students involved in the New York City Career Connections program, this transition from college to the work force may come a bit easier, as two December graduates recently found out. Through this award-winning program, Oswego students are given a chance to meet and network with alumni. In January, students toured worksites such as Madison Square Garden to explore future career options.

“I think that New York City Career Connections is an amazing program for anyone interested in working in the city after college,” says Stephanie Mondella ’09, who is now employed as a sales representative at A&E Television Networks in Manhattan. “The alumni are very helpful and always want the best for an Oswego graduate.”

The networking fair gives students a chance to speak with alumni in professions that interest them. While it may not be a recruiting opportunity, alumni answer students’ questions about resumes, interviewing skills, how to search for a job, and how to successfully move to the New York City area.

Sarah Rabideau ’09, now a national broadcast assistant buyer at MPG in New York City, was also in attendance and says that all her questions about life after college were answered. Alumni were overflowing with helpful tips and advice about the best housing areas, companies and fields to start out in after graduation.

Rabideau also participated in the Alumni Sharing Knowledge, or ASK, program. Through ASK, students connect with alumni mentors working in a field of interest.

With both of these programs, Mondella and Rabideau made an important connection with the same alumnus, Paul Brennan ’93.

“I have kept in contact with the alumni I met through the ASK program as well as several other of the professionals I met that day [in New York City],” said Rabideau, who was matched up to Brennan, a mentor in ASK, for four years.

Brennan, the vice president of advertising sales at Sony Pictures Television, says these experiences are “invaluable” because new graduates can “use the time to establish relationships which will help propel them into their first step of their professional careers.”

He adds that alumni benefit as well because they get a chance to give back to the college that gave so much to them. Brennan is proud of recent grads Mondella and Rabideau for “beating out the rest of a very competitive pack for much desired entry-level jobs in media.”

Oswego Alumni Association, Inc.
King Alumni Hall • SUNY Oswego • Oswego, NY 13126
315-312-2258 • 315-312-5570 (fax)
Email: alumni@oswego.edu
Web site: www.oswego.edu/alumni