Before the dot-com era, eager job applicants would print their resume, tuck them safely into a portfolio and shake hands with a prospective employer at a career fair.
Virtualization changed it all ”“ what students are studying, the manner in which they earn credits and how they interact with headhunters.
“The time of the career fair when people come and sit behind a table is changing,” said Kimberly Cline, president of the private Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry. “With technology, it”™s different. We”™re developing with our students the ability to have e-portfolios, and with the click of an email, they can send information to employers.”
Technology changed more than the way in which boss-employee relationship began.
Twenty years ago, before robotic surgery and a little something known as health care reform, degree programs were highly different.
“We”™re an aging population, so there”™s so much more need for health care,” Cline said of the college”™s expanding physician assistant program. “If you talk about many of the careers we have today, 20 years ago they didn”™t exist. Today, people say, ”˜Gosh, I had physical therapy done and it really helped me a lot”™ and you”™re seeing these fields really, really grow.”
Mercy College had offered students a speech degree program; today it is classified under communications disorders.
“We have physical therapy and occupational therapy programs with master”™s and doctoral programs on the weekends so the people who actually work in the fields can come and get that next level of expertise,” Cline said.
In her short three-and-one-half years as 10th president of the private institution, the former vice chancellor and chief financial officer for the State University of New York has helped grow student enrollment numbers to more than 11,000.
The college was the recipient of nearly $10 million in grants over the course of two years to focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) areas, Cline said.
Of a federal Race to the Top grant, the college received $2.3 million to “start working with the Yonkers School District in the math area to bring in teachers who will really be able to help students in the STEM area.”
The college has also introduced a program in international relations and diplomacy.
“We”™re a nongovernmental organization with the UN, so we”™ve developed that in concert with the Center for Global Studies,” Cline said. “We”™re really focused on how to make what we do relevant here and across the world.”
