Campus jobs lead to real-world career placements

As a student worker in media services, Elissa Nadworny ’10 learned not just how to set up recording gear and use video software but how to teach those skills to others. That led to a video job with an advertising agency, and today, with a master’s in journalism, she’s a digital producer and editor for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.

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  Nadworny
  Many student jobs at Skidmore resemble internships, with faculty or staff mentors sharing inside information and teaching professional skills. For Nadworny, contacting Professor Tom Lewis about his film-writing course before she even arrived as a freshman gave her an early start on her self-determined major in documentary film, and she took Lewis’s advice to seek work in the media services office. There, along with her technical and video-making chops, Nadworny practiced problem-solving the way she saw the pros do it. She learned that “being able to ‘figure it out’ goes a long way!”

  She also says the campus job honed “skills that were highly sought-after in the working world.” Now in love with her NPR work (“I pinch myself every time the elevators open to the newsroom”), she enjoys planning and executing stories in words or images or audio, via the web or social media or airwaves. “Being capable of doing so many different jobs? Much of that developed at Skidmore’s media services,” says Nadworny.

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  Meczywor
  For music and Spanish major Ryan Meczywor ’15, using the Vendini ticketing system in his job at Skidmore’s Zankel Music Center included a few calls to its customer service, for which he developed “the utmost respect.” As graduation loomed, he figured “working for them seemed to me a positive decision,” and he’s now a Vendini customer success associate in Boston. His Zankel supervisor Shelley Curran promoted him from usher to house manager to summer events coordinator, thanks to his growing capacity to “anticipate potential problems and create solutions in a fast-paced environment.” And he cites his “hands-on experience with ticketing software as well as customer service, both of which have helped me immensely at Vendini.”
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  Montilla
  Psychology major Altagracia Montilla ’12 was a tour guide and a student blogger—posting, tweeting, and video-chatting to field questions from prospective students and parents about life at Skidmore. After graduating, she joined AmeriCorps to coach underserved students in social development and college prep. Now she is director of education and social programming at Chicago’s Beyond Sports Foundation, mentoring urban student-athletes to build social, cultural, and academic competencies for college readiness.
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  Fisher-Cox
  Adam Fisher-Cox ’15 used his major in art and an intensive paid apprenticeship in the information technology office to land a web design job at Night Owl Interactive in New York City. IT apprentices are encouraged to focus on projects in their own areas of interest, so Fisher-Cox did web design for a range of Skidmore pages, including a ProfCamp event homepage.
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  Pollacchi
  Business major and Thoroughbreds baseball star Leejay Pollacchi ’13 helped with operations in the arts-administration program. He sees Saratoga as an art-friendly and pro-development community, but he knows it relies on locally owned businesses to keep its winning character and appeal. So after teaming up with business owners in a customer-incentive campaign to help local shops compete against mega-retailers, he recently founded the Be Local initiative to pursue that cause.