Pond & Company staff members Camry Bullock and Savannah Lockhart speaking to students 
TCID students and faculty with Pond & Company employees 
Students listening during one of the Roadshow Informational sessions at the Career Center 
World Usability Day celebration 
Students, faculty and Pond & Co. representatives mingling at the social hour 
Participants competing in the usability challenge
In a cross-departmental collaboration, faculty partnered with Pond & Company, a global consulting firm, for campus events to offer employer engagement and resources to Engineering and Technical Communication & Information Design (TCID) students with the help of the T. Rowe Price Career & Innovation Center. Pond & Company is a full-service consulting firm that provides integrated solutions in engineering, architecture, planning and program/construction management.
UCCS connected with Pond & Company after TCID student Taylor Key landed an internship with the organization's Colorado Springs office and demonstrated the potential and value of the TCID department's education and students. Kyle Freedman, Director of Talent at Pond & Company, reached out to TCID Department Chair and Associate Professor, Brandon Strubberg, Ph.D., to further connect with UCCS students.
"That Pond & Co reached out to our department after working with one of our students is a testament to the work our faculty and courses are doing to prepare students to land internships and jobs and immediately contribute to positive change and deliver value to companies," noted Strubberg.
After connecting, TCID and Pond & Company coordinated to bring the latter to campus and join a few TCID events, starting with inviting company personnel to to visit a senior seminar on Emotional Intelligence in TCID on Nov. 12.
The next event, held on Nov. 13, was a TCID department social that had Pond & Company employees meeting and mingling with faculty and students, along with contributing food and raffle prizes for the event. The social also included a usability competition, in which students designed personas to fix a hypothetical usability problem on the Death Star, the fictional space station featured in Star Wars. The following day's function, at the T. Rowe Price Career & Innovation Center, featured two Roadshow Informational sessions hosted by Pond & Company and organized by the University Relations Team.
The firm used the Handshake platform to connect with students and invite them to employment sessions, and offered an information session to answer questions about careers with Pond & Company, discuss internship and full-time job opportunities for students, give resume tips, share insights about company culture and work environment and showcase current projects.
"We couldn't be more excited about this partnership with Pond & Co., and to collaborate with them to further build our program and offer students professional experiences and opportunities," said Strubberg.