For some students, the first class meeting of the semester might mean a review of the syllabus or icebreaker activities. But UCF’s College of Business Administration is shaking it up for its new students this fall, challenging them to stand out and capitalize on what makes them unique. This will be the largest single class gathering in the history of UCF.
About 1,200 business students will spend their first class meeting networking and learning about the professional, leadership and service opportunities available to them through the college and UCF. They’ll also hear from a business alumnus who now works at Twitter about how he differentiated himself from his peers throughout college and landed his dream job.
The idea behind the inaugural Welcome to the Majors event, which is sponsored by Wells Fargo, is that students should start building their resume on day one so that by the time graduation comes, they have high-quality, well-rounded experience that makes them impossible for employers to pass up.
“We are bending the culture here at the college to provide students with opportunities in and out of the classroom that prepare them for today’s marketplace,” said College of Business Administration Dean Paul Jarley. “Our goal is that our students become the one. The one that employers hire, the one that makes the sale, the one that starts something big and makes a difference. To do this, they must be great communicators and collaborators—people who are comfortable getting outside their comfort zones and taking risks. They must also understand how to access, review, digest and make good decisions using real-time data, and to become problem solvers. If we achieve that, they will thrive in whatever they pursue following graduation.”
The Welcome to the Majors program will start in the Pegasus Ballroom of the Student Union at 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 22. Activities, including lunch and an expo of student organizations, will move to Business Administration 1 around 11 a.m.
The students, who are mostly juniors, are enrolled in “Career Professionalism,” a new 4-credit-hour course for incoming business students that will introduce them to professional development.
The course is an introduction to the culture of the College of Business Administration, where programming is focused on preparing students to thrive in the job market and empowering them to create their own opportunities.
About the College of Business Administration: Established in 1968, the UCF College of Business Administration offers degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and executive levels. All programs, as well as the Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting are accredited by AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The college provides high-quality academic programs designed to give students a competitive advantage in the world of business now and in the future. As such, the college establishes partnerships with some of the nation’s most innovative leaders to model new and best practices that harness evolving technology. In addition, the college promotes a unique culture of engagement, risk-taking, cross-disciplinary collaboration and data-driven decision making in an effort to ensure students are well prepared to enter a dynamic marketplace.