Community Career Services—23 Years Outside the Box

The Community Career Services (CCS) program at the University of Missouri–Columbia provides one-on-one career counseling using graduate level counselors-in-training and has been in place since the fall of 1978. Community members, faculty/staff, students and alumni have access to Career Center resources such as career planning and job search strategies, graduate practice exams, mock interviews, resume/cover letter critiques and a wealth of printed resources and information through access to the Center's web site. This article discusses the original concept behind development of the program and provides a brief programmatic history. It also provides a demographic overview of the clients participating in the program over the last eight years as well as the benefits of CCS in terms of the community, university, Career Center and counselors-in-training. In addition, it discusses what marketing tools seemed to have been most successful and concludes with possible areas of growth for the program in its future.