The CCLD is here to help students from day one of their MGA experience. Students who use career services early and often in college are more likely to enter a professional career or graduate school upon graduation. Even students who know exactly what they want to do will be more successful when using our resources to navigate the job, internship, and graduate school search.
We serve students and alumni through individualized in-person and virtual appointments, student organization and classroom presentations, employer networking activities, and campus-wide career, leadership, and professional development programs. We assist students with resumes and cover letters, job and internship searches, graduate school planning and application preparation, employer connections, interviewing skills, exploring career options, professionalism, and much more. Unique to MGA, we also offer the Student Leadership Programs to help students build the soft skills employers are seeking.
Partner with the Center for Career & Leadership Development (CCLD)
Our office can come and speak to your class to give a quick, 10-minute overview of our office, which will include discussing the importance of students doing an internship. If interested in the CCLD coming to speak to your staff, reach out to us at careerservices@mga.edu.
Our office can also do an extended, more tailored presentation on internships, lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. We will discuss what an internship is, the difference between an internship vs. a co-op, best places to look for one, search strategies, as well as how to report an internship to the CCLD.
If interested in someone from the CCLD coming to do a longer internship-specific presentation, please reach out to Dr. Heather McIntosh, Assistant Director for Internships & Career Readiness, at heather.mcintosh@mga.edu.
Whether it is to help a student find an internship for academic credit, or just to provide meaningful hands-on experiences in the field, our office is here to help! If a student reaches out to a faculty member to ask for help looking for internships, faculty can refer these students to the CCLD to get individualized help.
Additionally, our office can provide previous internship sites MGA students have reported completing. Students can make an appointment with anyone in our office via Handshake.
For any MGA program that offers academic credit for students, our office can help centralize your students’ internship reporting through our “Experiences” portal in Handshake. MGA faculty and instructors can work with the CCLD to have all students doing internships for academic credit report them together for a specific degree program. Or, faculty can provide all necessary information to the CCLD for us to input.
Directions for how to have a student report their internship can be found on the Experiences Reporting page.
If an organization contacts you about setting up an internship and you’re not sure how to begin, the Career Development team in the CCLD are available to help. We can help faculty make sure employers are providing intentionally developed learning experiences for students. Although students can be compensated for an internship, employers are still expected to provide the training, feedback, and mentoring characteristic of a transformative or high-impact internship experience. These expectations also align with the Fair Labor Standards act in regards to laws and expectations surrounding unpaid internships, which is also an area the CCLD can provide guidance and expertise.
The CCLD also maintains the centralized internship database which helps employers connect with a variety of majors and develop a strong, on-going relationship with the university. Our Handshake database makes it easy for employers to post their internships each semester and to register for on campus recruitment activities.
Appointment Referral
Students can schedule appointments online through Handshake. Students can schedule in-person appointments in Macon, Cochran, and Eastman. When you request your Handshake appointment, you can also request a virtual appointment that we'll conduct via Microsoft Teams.
Add the Career Planning Toolkit Widget on D2L
If you are teaching courses and using D2L, you can add the widget to help students know how to schedule an appointment with a career advisor, explore career options with our career assessment tools, develop a resume, build leadership skills with the Student Leadership Programs, and prepare for the internship and job search. The widget links to key areas of our website to help students get started connecting their studies with their future careers.
Bringing Career & Leadership to the Classroom
We are also here to help you bring career and leadership to the classroom. In recent years, we see that students are more likely to use our services when encouraged by a faculty member. In addition to making class announcements about our services and programs, you can also incorporate our resources into your courses. We have created a menu of options below that you can use in your courses. Contact Dr. Heather McIntosh, the Assistant Director for Internships & Career Readiness, to let us know your semester plans for including the CCLD.
Schedule an appointment with a career advisor for a resume review, mock interview, or career planning discussion. If you add this assignment, please work with us ahead of time to set appropriate deadlines for your students.
Log in to Stepping Blocks and research career options, employers, and salary information for their major.
Activate their Handshake account and engage in at least one career or leadership program during the semester.
Participate in the Student Leadership Conference, offered in the spring. Email for details.
Ask upper-level students to attend an on-campus career fair if they live locally and are not already working in their professional careers.
Require your students to participate in the All Majors Virtual Mock Interview Day. To offer this opportunity, you must contact us prior to the beginning of the semester.
Partner with our staff to offer a required networking event for your students. To offer this opportunity, Please contact us at least one semester before to discuss options.
If you plan to require students to schedule appointments during the semester, please email our Assistant Director, Heather McIntosh, so that we can plan for your students.
Our career advisors are available to present to your students either in person or through virtual means. We recommend requesting your presentations at the beginning of the semester so that we accommodate requests at all five campuses. You are still welcome to request a presentation after the semester has started, but we ask that you please give us at least 4-6 weeks to ensure we have a staff member available for the date you need your presentation. If you know that you'll be out of town for a conference or other obligation, you can also consider having us present that day instead of canceling class.
Presentations can encompass a variety of commonly requested topics such as major and career selection, career planning, resume writing, developing leadership and other career competencies, internship search strategies, graduate and job search planning, and interviewing skills. We can also do 15-minute presentations to introduce your students to our career development and/or student leadership programs.
MGA uses Handshake to post all jobs and internships for our students and alumni. Our goal is to create a centralized location for students on all five campuses to access information about employers who want to hire them. Our career development staff can also conduct presentations to academic departments on Handshake so that you can better encourage students and employers to use the system.
internships
We are the centralized location on campus that helps students learn about and prepare for internships. We believe all students should complete an internship, even if they are not going to do one for academic credit. We maintain a database of internships that students have completed and reported to us through the Handshake Experiences Portal. If you coordinate internships for your academic department, we would love to partner with you on having your students report through experiences.
Visit our Career Planning Resources page to give students a quick introduction to resources for exploring career options. Focus 2, What Can I Do with this Major?, Stepping Blocks, and GoinGlobal for International Students are available on this page.
We have a variety of handouts that we have created that we can share with faculty and staff. Contact us at or check the " documents" section of our website for updated information. If you are teaching resume writing in your courses, check our website or contact us for electronic copies of resume samples for your discipline. We use current workforce information and suggestions from employers to create these samples.
As students ask about job and internship search resources, our MGA Handshake platform and LinkedIn are two of the best resources you can recommend. The career development staff can meet individually with students to develop a plan for using these resources in addition to others specific to their field.
The Center for Career & Leadership Development (CCLD) is excited to announce the third year of our Knights LEAD freshman student leadership program. Students continue to tell us that they greatly benefited from the relationships they formed with faculty and staff who served as facilitators and mentors in the program. We can always use your help to ensure that we have enough mentors for all students in the program this year.
The main goals of this program are:
1. To increase retention and success rates of MGA students.
2. To develop student leadership and soft skills, preparing them for campus, civic, and professional life.
3. To provide additional support to ensure that students adjust well to college life
If you would like to facilitate one, 1-hour session, we already have a curriculum based on the NACE 8 core competencies. At this time, sessions will be in-person in Macon and Cochran. Faculty and staff members may use the curriculum provided to facilitate the sessions, work with me to revise and or add to the curriculum, and use additional resources as well as your professional and personal experiences that are relevant to competency being taught. The Coordinator for Student Leadership Programs will be present at all meetings and will assist as needed. We simply need your experience, assistance, and expertise to maximize this program’s success.
If you would like to serve as a mentor, a mentor guide is provided. Your interaction with the students will be personalized, based on your schedule, and flexible. We simply ask that you connect with the student at least once a month. For this Fall 2021, we encourage mentors to use a mix of in-person and virtual interactions. While in-person provides meaningful connections, we know that this type of meeting isn't always possible. Using Microsoft Teams can make it much easier to connect when schedules are tight.
Click HERE to complete the Knights LEAD Volunteer Interest Form and our Coordinator for Student Leadership Programs will contact you directly. If you have specific questions, please contact us at
WHAT DO MENTORS DO?
Communicate monthly with student to check on progress during fall and spring
Encourage student use of campus resources
Serve as a point-of-contact for student navigating a new environment
Listen and offer advice when student needs extra motivation
Provide that extra push that a student may need in order to get involved on campus
The Professional Closet is located in our Macon and Cochran offices and is open to students by appointment on Handshake. Appointments ensure that we have staff available to assist them when they visit the office. Appointments are generally offered Monday - Thursday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. We accept donations of lightly used professional interview attire during regular office hours.
We offer professional Linkedin headshots to MGA students and alumni who pre-schedule their appointments via Handshake. The purpose of this service is to help students understand the importance of using a professional photo when interacting virtually with other professionals.
Students can use these photos for LinkedIn, Handshake, Zoom, Teams, Google, and other platforms they might encounter at work. We are unable to take photos of faculty and staff who are not MGA alumni.
