Building bankable professions

Business Report Correspondent

BOULDER ? Mary Banks is working on building and maintaining relationships with the local business community.

Banks is director of career development and employer relations at the University of Colorado business career center. She came on board last August.

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The center has been offering individual career advice to business undergraduate and graduate students for six years. Prior to the center, business students worked with the university’s general career center.

With Banks at the helm, working with small and large companies in the business community is an important part of her job. She is trying to increase the number of partnerships the university has with local companies.

“Because there are so many small companies without human resources, I feel I can work with a company to make sure their hiring needs are met,” she said. “I have to be out in the community making the CU MBA known as a quality provider of employees.”

Banks focus is advising 160 students working toward master’s degrees in business administration. She not only helps them with the job search process, she sets students up with mentors, internships and brings in guest speakers.

Prior to returning to Boulder, Banks held a variety of positions at Columbia University in New York from 1991-1997, including assistant dean for student affairs at the business school. Before working at the business school, Banks was acting director of financial aid and associate athletic director of Columbia College. At New York University, she was director of admissions for the graduate school of education, health and arts. She has also worked as a learning disability specialist teacher in California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Banks grew up in Connecticut. She received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from CU in 1968. She has a master’s degree in learning disabilities from Dusquesne University in Pittsburgh and an advanced master’s degree in higher education administration from Columbia University.

With her diverse background, Banks brings a new perspective to the career center. Frank Price, who will receive his master’s degree in May, has seen some changes at the career center since Banks took over. “At the MBA level, most of us are experienced in the job search,” Price said. “Mary has taken the center to a new level by making it more personalized and actually getting to know each student in order to make sure they get off on the career track that fits what they want to do. She is working with employers to understand their needs, as well.”

Price, who works at the business center as a graduate assistant, has seen the center go from an administrative type of office to one where there is an emphasis on developing contacts and meeting face to face with business leaders.

Kathy Simon, director of the Robert H. & Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at CU, works with Banks placing students in internships and jobs. “She is reaching out to some companies we haven’t had a relationship with in the past,” Simon said. “She has had tons of experience dealing with large corporations and financial institutions.”

Banks said she is able to provide employers with top notch students, and employers appreciate the personal relationship with the university. “Over the course of the last few years, admissions has completely overhauled their process,” she said. “We have increased the marketability of students by only admitting the top students.”

Elizabeth Hale, e-marketing manager for Sun Microsystems Inc., said she can go beyond a resume and interview because of the personal relationship she has with Banks. “She can give me a clear skills set students have. She has a really good take on people.”

Hale said she looks for intangible skills that include an applicant’s work ethic, leadership and whether or not he or she is a self-starter. Most of the students who enter the master’s program at CU have about four years of job experience. Students in the program are interested in networking and job placement.

Banks asks students to find a clear focus on where they want to go. “They come in here to take their academics to a new level to prepare them for a leadership role that will increase shareholder values in whatever companies they go to,” she said. “We want to make sure that each one of them on an individual basis is getting the attention to build lifelong career skills.”

When Banks was at Columbia, there was a strong emphasis on financial companies. At CU, Banks said it is high-tech and entrepreneurship. “The businesses around here are looking for students with an engineering background, tech background in addition to a student who has solid finance and marketing preparation,” Banks said.

The career center’s budget comes from the business college. While she wouldn’t specify the amount she receives to run the center, Banks said she would like to see it increased substantially.

The career center is free to graduate students. Undergraduates pay a $35 fee to use the university’s general and business career centers.

Last year’s employment report for master’s degree graduates in December 1999 and May 2000 showed that 81 percent of students were placed in jobs in Colorado. The average base salary was $68,500, according to the report. Banks said of those students who graduated last May, 96 percent had found employment by September.