Go west ...

Students from seven eastern liberal arts colleges, including Dartmouth, went west during spring break but in search of jobs, not the ski slopes or beaches of spring-break lore.

Dartmouth's Career and Employment Services (CES) office coordinated the first western recruiting trip for an eastern college consortium also including Princeton, Tufts, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Mount Holyoke, and Smith. The innovative program brought interested seniors together with employers in Chicago and San Francisco.

Burton Nadler, associate director of CES at Dartmouth, initiated the Chicago and San Francisco career days to supplement traditional on-campus recruiting, particularly as budget cuts force many firms to cut back or eliminate their recruiting programs. "This way, companies can talk to students from seven schools in two days, without ever leaving town," explained Nadler. About 100 students from the seven schools talked with representatives of 17 Chicago firms, and 75 students interviewed with 11 San Francisco companies.

The western trip was modeled on the Eastern College Career Day held annually in New York City during spring break. For that program, nine north-eastern schools, including Dartmouth, pool resources to bring together 35 New York-based employers with job-hunting students.

The western trip assumed a new dimension, however, both in terms of the distances students traveled for the interviews and because of special evening sessions on job-search techniques planned with alumni of the participating colleges.

Although Dartmouth oversaw the administrative arrangements for the trip, the other participating schools shared in the task of lining up companies for student interviews. In many cases, alumni from the schools were instrumental in making contacts.

The program was carefully organized, with each school having two interview slots per company in each city. The participating firms were asked to pay a small fee to cover administrative expenses, and students paid for their own travel and lodging. "In fact," said Nadler, "a big selling point for the companies is that students are willing to pay their own way to interview with them. If a student is that interested in being in Chicago instead of Fort Lauderdale over spring break, then they are making a commitment."

San Francisco and Chicago were selected as the sites for the first consortium trip to the West because students often cite those cities as choice locations for work, yet have little opportunity to interview with companies based there, explained Nadler.

The participating firms represented a broad range of fields finance, retail, law, advertising, public relations, sales, and marketing.

Nadler's hope is that the program can be expanded in future years to attract more companies and to cover more cities.

The 50-member Dartmouth Gospel Choir and its director, J.C. White, spent spring break as"singing ambassadors" for Dartmouth. The group, which has more than doubled in size sinceWhite assumed the directorship in 1979, performed for alumni and prospective students in theBoston area. White commutes from Connecticut to work with the Dartmouth students. He hasproduced over 20 albums and for 20 years directed the Institutional Radio Choir in New York.