By Kassondra Granata

Whether an individual is sliding blue chip cards for guest meals or for access to the Beecher Hall gym, it is uncommon to question how one recieves a job on campus.

Ken Poppe, Director of CACE, is a key sponsor in the effort to help undergraduate students find on-campus jobs.

“This office got involved a number of years ago before we became CACE, just being ‘Career Services,'” says Poppe. “There didn’t seem to be one place that students can go to find jobs on campus.”

The Central Connections website and online database was started by CACE in order for students to access an account and view available job listings for students and interviews free of charge. When a student accesses an account, they can visit the site to see what jobs are available.

“At first, you did have to go knock on doors to see what jobs were available at each department, there’s not a whole lot of advertisements with jobs,” says Poppe.  “What we did years ago was collaborate undergrad jobs along with our listings on the Central Connections database.”

Before each new semester starts, each department would reach out to CACE in order to present the available jobs that needed to be filled. However this year, less departments came through, thus leaving the listings on Central Connections short.

“We’re only as good as the information that the department shares with us,” says Poppe. “This year we haven’t recieved any responses.”

Poppe is concerned with the little response that they have recieved in order to help undergraduate students get jobs.

“My question is,” Poppe says, “Are the departments now finding their students their own way? And if they are, are all students getting jobs? It’s been a question on all our minds for some time now.”

Lori James, Director of Business Services, states there are more undergraduate students with on-campus jobs than there were last year.

In President Miller’s strategic plan to increase opportunity for on-campus jobs for students, it is stated that in the Student-Employee Academic Roster that for the year 2009-10 year there were 953 students with jobs on campus. For the 2010-11 academic year, there was an average of 1,017 students with on campus jobs.

Poppe, aware of this, is unsure about how the jobs are being found.

“It makes me wonder how departments are getting out their jobs without CACE’s assistance,” says Poppe. “In the end, we provide a service that departments can use when finding students to fill their jobs. In any matter, everybody wins.”

The Central Connections website can be found on the Central Pipeline. The CACE office is located in Willard, suite 103.