The Invitational is Friday!

This is the one time in your life when employers are going to come in large numbers looking for you.  We bring them straight to campus.  Eighty of them will be here to meet you this Friday, Sept. 23, when we host The Invitational: An Event for Internships, Externships & Jobs at The Venue. This invite-only College of Business career fair features jobs, internships, co-ops and volunteer opportunities and is open to select business students. This Invitational is shaping up to be our biggest yet, so don’t miss out on your chance to meet employers and make valuable career connections.

Many students who have attended past Invitationals have landed internships and then gone on to get full-time opportunities with some of the area’s top employers.

The college provides a lot of opportunities for students to get out of their comfort zones, build their networks, expand their horizons and gain career experience. The Invitational just might be the most important one of all.

If you want more advice on how to make The Invitational your thing, check out our podcast by clicking here:  https://business.ucf.edu/is-the-invitational-your-thing/

I look forward to seeing you there.

So You Fancy Yourself an Entrepreneur

Perhaps the biggest change in business schools and universities generally over the last 20 years is how many students want to be entrepreneurs. When I went to school, I didn’t know a single person who wanted to do this. In fact, college was a choice not to do this. It was seen as the best way to get yourself a nice safe professional career working for a big company with good pay and lifetime benefits.

Things change. I have no doubt that the internet has something to do with this as the barriers to entry in many businesses and industries have been greatly reduced by technological innovation.

Schools like ours have responded by offering many courses, co-curricular activities and resources for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Thursday, the Center For Entrepreneurial Leadership hosts Startup Fest in the student union. The event showcases UCF student startups, campus resources, and community partners that help students connect to entrepreneurial mentors, money, and credentials. It is open to any student on campus. Whether you are a freelancer, side-hustler, innovator, or future founder, Cameron Ford and his team look forward to sharing the resources and opportunities available to help ALL UCF students learn entrepreneurial skills and achieve career success.

No need to RSVP. Come as you are. You can learn more about the event by clicking here.

Made in Detroit

I try to go to Michigan every Labor Day weekend. This year I had three good reasons to do it. I’m only going to focus on two here. One was about the future, the other was about remembering the past. I grew up in Upper Michigan. My parents were working-class people. My mom was a bookkeeper by day and a caterer by night. My dad painted houses. They managed to put enough money together to send me to the University of Michigan. I was the first person in my family to go to college.

The U.P. was a great place to be a kid, but I was made in Detroit. Southeastern Michigan from Ann Arbor to Detroit transformed me. I go to remember where I came from and what I can do for my students. The University of Michigan showed me worlds I didn’t know existed, helped me make good choices about my life and gave me a serious lesson in the importance of greatness. Being pretty good or kind of good, wasn’t good enough there… not for the faculty, not for the students, not for the football team. It still isn’t. Every game at the Big House starts with a proclamation that you are on the campus of the best public university in the world. It’s an arguable point, but it’s one everyone there believes. Belief makes it so in Ann Arbor.

College also gave me the opportunity to explore Detroit and study its people. Detroit is a lesson in resiliency. The working-class people of that city won World War Two. They were the arsenal of democracy, and by 1950, they had the richest city in America. What followed was a series of storms: the race riots of 1967, the Japanese car invasion, the gas crisis, the flight of auto production and people from the city, and urban decay to name just a few. By the early 21st Century, Detroit hit rock bottom.

Throughout it all, the city maintained its sense of working-class purpose. It built a Renaissance Center in the middle of the city, hunkered down and waited for a few of its favorite families (The Fords, Illitches and Gilberts) and an influx of young entrepreneurs to invest in its revival. Walking the streets of downtown Detroit this weekend gave me a sense that the city is coming back strong and the people there couldn’t be more proud. It reminded me about the power of hope.

College is great. It gave me a life I wouldn’t otherwise have had. But it is a different life, not a better life than my parents had. The working people of America built this place. We live in their world, and they gave us the opportunity to dream big by providing for all of us. We still need them today. College isn’t for everyone. There are plenty of things that need to be done and plenty of paths to a rewarding life. Today it’s good to remember, we were all made in Detroit.