CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Department of Recreation, Parks and Leisure Services

After 40 years of hosting our Summer Job Fair, we have made the decision to discontinue the Job Fair for the foreseeable future. It is rare that a single department at a university would host a Job Fair for their own students and we believe that is what always set us apart. On most campuses, it is the Career Services office that hosts and resources them.

When we first began our Job Fair in 1974, we attracted 40 agencies and most were camps. Shortly after that our recreation department started to change and grow from just a program for outdoor and community recreation majors to one that added commercial recreation and therapeutic recreation programs. Now those two added programs alonemake up the vast majority (70-75%) of our majors today. With that increase, our Job Fair also expanded in those two directions, adding commercial recreation and therapeutic agencies as well. Our Job Fair in the 80’s and 90’s averaged 90+ agencies with a huge variety within our profession but in the last 5 years we have seen a marked decline in the variety of recreation agencies wanting to attend the Job Fair as well as student attendees. The last two years we have only attracted 35-40 agencies, most in the outdoor category and our student attendance dropped from a high of 1200+ student attendees to only about 300 students campus wide. With all the time and effort it takes to host such a university wide event, we thought it better to invest our energy into other departmental programs at this time. So we are sad to make this announcement to those we have built such great relationships with over those 40 years.

Personally, I think the biggest factor in making this decision has been the dramatic changes in technology that have changed the recruitment landscape, all but replacing campus visits. So we have seen the light and willfind other ways assist you and our students make connections.

Some alternative methods that we might assist you with:

  1. We would be happy to accept any of your summer job announcements or electronic information to post for our students to view and respond.
  2. If campus recruitment is still preferred, we can help you connect with our Career Services office:
  3. To discover if they have other campus fairs they host throughout the year that you can attend and recruit at.
  4. Or to set up a recruitment visit on campus through their office as they are equipped to host independent recruiters where we are not.
  5. Or just advertise in the campus paper and have students directly connect with you electronically to apply without a visit to campus.

Attached are the contacts for each method above.

Once again, we want to thank you for supporting our students for 40 years with your summer job opportunities. We still desire our students to have these experiences so we hope to maintain our relationship with you through other methods of recruitment.

All the best,

Dean Wallin

Director, Center for Leisure Services

Central Michigan University

989 774-3984