Since 1974, the University of Missouri has been involved in providing career planning assistance to its students. The MU Career Center, previously known as the Career Planning and Placement Center, was conceived by a professor of Educational and Counseling Psychology (Dr. Joe Johnston) and two graduate students (Tom Skovholt and Bob Hansen). At first, the Career Center was a simple self-help center with a few books in a rusty file cabinet in a closet located in the Counseling Center (Parker Hall). The clients were assisted by counselors-in-training as a part of their practicum experience. Graduate student counselors-in-training and counseling center clients became the early model that helped drive the need for services for all students and further staff training. Eventually, the Career Center moved out of the Counseling Center and into its own building, Noyes Hall.

As the number of clients using the service increased, it became apparent that the MU Career Center needed other trained staff that could provide services other than individual one-on-one counseling. A call for volunteers was made and so began the first undergraduate paraprofessionals. These early paraprofessionals received some training and were known as CIPS (Career Information Planning Specialists). Today they are known as Career Specialists and they receive more than 100 hours of initial training. The increasing demand drove the growth of the Career Center both in scope and in services, which resulted in the need for more space, resources, staff and further training.

Now, the MU Career Center is a separate agency that is located in the Student Success Center with three other campus offices and provides services to approximately 5,000 drop-in customers per year. The staffing model of volunteer undergraduate students was expanded and other undergraduates were selected, hired, trained and expected to provide front line services to the customers. Now, there are approximately 35-45 paid undergraduate and graduate Career Specialists and Supervisors who work an average of ten hours per week at the MU Career Center.

To meet the demands of today’s student, the Career Center has shifted many of its resources to the Internet. The on-line services, which include career assessments, job search preparation information, job search databases, and on-line resumes, produce more than one million Internet hits per year. To provide the level of technical knowledge required to provide these services, the MU Career Center created a Technical Team of about ten undergraduate and graduate students, once again turning to the student body to provide expertise and service.

The MU Career Center continues to change and grow in new ways. The MU Career Center became part of the Student Success Center in the spring of 2001 along with Academic Retention Services, The Learning Center, and Academic Exploration and Advising Services. This move placed the Career Center in the center of campus with other campus offices that are dedicated to student success. Soon afterwards, the Career Center added a student employment services function, providing on-campus interviews, etiquette dinners, and much more for job-seeking students. At approximately the same time as the move to the Student Success Center, the Career Center began to offer courses for credit, including a Career Explorations course, the enrollment in which has steadily grown over the years. In the fall of 2003, the Career Center added Jumpstart, an opportunity for college students to tutor pre-school aged children, to complement the A Way With Words/Numbers program started several years earlier to tutor elementary aged children. Both Jumpstart and A With Words and Numbers currently provide experiences for approximately 400 students and are examples of experiences we encourage students to have while they are in college.