“Cooperative Education. This is Marie. Good morning, Jim. Good to hear from you. How is it going with our new interns? That sounds great. I'm so pleased that things are going so well. Oh, really? I see. A new financial project has come up—you're putting together a new group? Gee, that sounds exciting. You'd like to add new interns to this team? Five new interns? That's terrific. Yes, please, send a description. These are wonderful opportunities for our students. And you've passed my name along to your colleague in the new office in Jersey City. She has an interest in one or two accounting interns for this session as well? Positions in the banking operations unit; yes, got it. Thanks so much for thinking of our students and our internship program. I'll be in touch later in the day. Bye for now, Jim.“

“Hello, Angela?”

The corporate world is changing and growing at breakneck speed, and interns are in high demand, as evidenced by our ever-ringing phones and our overflowing e-mails from organizations desperately seeking interns. The success of our community college interns—who demonstrate intelligence, skills and knowledge, work ethic, diversity, and energy—is unmatched. An accounting manager in a major Wall Street financial firm recently stated that he would rather have interns from our community college than interns from any other colleges, and he mentioned some prestigious institutions (even heavy-hitting Ivy Leaguers) in his comment. Now what makes that so? How do we, a public community college in an outer borough of New York, manage to earn such high regard for our accounting internship program? How is it that we can identify the right student at the right time for these desirable opportunities with the speed and precision of a corporate recruiter? We do it through the personal relationships we develop with students and by using a collaborative approach to internship and career advising.

An e-mail announcement might arrive and specify the following job description and desired qualifications:

“The project will be interesting and also very fast paced. We are looking for your best and brightest.”

When the above e-mail arrives, we are set to go. We categorize the requirements from employers into two groups: technical (functional) skills and soft (people/professional) skills. As faculty in distinct departments (the Co-Op Education and the Accounting and Managerial Studies departments), we confer on preparing our students in two of their second-semester courses, Principles of Accounting II and Fundamentals of Professional Advancement, to meet both the functional and personal/professional requirements of this internship description. While students can develop technical skills, such as preparing trial balance, general ledger, filing documents, and Excel models, through regular classroom lectures and assignments, they usually learn and practice the soft skills by way of our collaborative advising. Specifically, the soft skills are developed in the classroom during our new three-credit career development course offered to students in the second semester of their first-year program. Impressed? Yes, it's an innovative approach to assist new students with self-assessment, career research, internship preparation, and on-the-job success strategies. We launched this course with three sections in spring 2003; it has since grown to forty-four sections, making us distinctive in introducing career development to first-year students. This course connects students to faculty advisers and to peers in their major areas of study. In addition, such soft skills are reinforced through practice in the accounting classrooms. Simulation of real-world practice is reflected in students' course grades. In other words, students' academic performance and professional behavior are key determinants of their final grades and their eligibility for corporate internship assignments.

Collaborative advising in higher education is intended to combine the knowledge and skills of professionals to maximize the effectiveness of both educators and practitioners. Collaborative advising brings together professionals with different and complementary knowledge and skills to increase the scope of services to students. When it involves faculty who teach functional competencies and faculty who teach professional practice, collaborative strategies can provide greater opportunities to educate and counsel students to meet the demands of corporate businesses and organizations.

This collaborative advising practice among faculty in our Accounting and Cooperative Education departments provides us with closer connections to students and an opportunity for students to become strategic in their academic and career goals that can actually lead to an elevation in their overall academic performance. For example, many accounting students are not always apprised that many firms and organizations use a high GPA requirement (3.60) to screen students. There is a higher level of skills and accuracy required for students in these positions, and many organizations will use GPAs as one screening device. As students are introduced to this knowledge in their professional advancement or accounting course, they receive a double dose of crucial information. It's quite an awakening for some students. The knowledge can spark changes in attitudes and performance, as students begin to hand in assignments on time and accurately done, complete readings, and prepare team projects for presentation. For accounting majors, this is a serious matter; strong grades are crucial for placement in many organizations. With this knowledge, students can begin to make changes to increase their GPAs sooner rather than later, and faculty from both areas can work with students to discuss study skills, time-management issues, and positive behavioral changes. Faculty collaboration is visible to students; they see us working together, visiting each other's offices, and talking in the halls. This kind of reciprocity can lead to increased faculty-student interaction. Research (Winston, Miller, Ender, & Grites, 1984; Pace, 2001) clearly demonstrates that greater faculty-student interaction promotes higher levels of student satisfaction with the college experience. According to Cain (1999):

The teaching faculty is the key to the community college's work. Other factors in the system, such as support staff, administrators, politicians, and students, might help draw up the route for the trip, but it is the faculty members who drive the bus. The faculty members represent the authority figure, the mentor, and the role model that may not appear anywhere else in the student's life. Because the faculty members are in such a position, their influence over students can be very significant.” (p. 47)

Our collaborative advising model provides us with an opportunity to help students where it matters most—up-close and personal. We can encourage them to participate in pre-internship assignments to build their résumés for corporate America as well as to participate in the intellectual activities of college life. If faculty members collectively encourage students to apply skills by acquiring some practical experience, students tend to listen more closely. Some may have had little exposure to businesses and offices. For example, we recently worked with a very strong student who had strong academic skills but minimal business experience. When we conferred with her, we suggested a pre-internship experience to prepare for a strong full-time corporate internship assignment. Looking at the student's academic workload, it appeared that she might be able to pre-intern one day per week without risking a negative impact on her courses and studies. A pre-internship experience at a local assembly woman's office to answer the phone, fax documents, and follow-up on constituent matters helped the student enhance her skills and her résumé before competing for a position with a global pharmaceutical firm. The student eventually completed several internship assignments with this firm and did such an outstanding job that she was offered a permanent position in the human resources department at a starting salary of $46,000, along with a complete benefits package that included tuition reimbursement.

Working together, we have been infusing collaborative advising into our classroom teaching strategies for star performance in the workplace. In our Fundamentals of Professional Advancement classes, students work on critical literacy projects (critical reading, critical thinking, and critical writing) to meet the goals of our internship organizations. We have looked closely at the requirements of new workers as outlined by Daniel Goleman in his book, Working with Emotional Intelligence. In his writing, Goleman (1998) notes that workers are expected to have the intellectual ability and the technical skills to do their jobs. However, personal qualities such as initiative, empathy, adaptability, and persuasiveness are also key ingredients of star performances. Additionally, in a national survey of characteristics that employers look for in entry-level workers, specific technical skills are now less important than the underlying ability to learn on the job. According to Goleman's study:

Employers listed listening and oral communication skills; adaptability and creative responses to setbacks and obstacles; personal management, confidence, motivation to work toward goals; a sense of wanting to develop one's career and take pride in accomplishments; groups and interpersonal effectiveness; cooperativeness and teamwork, skills at negotiating disagreements; effectiveness in the organization, wanting to make a contribution; and leadership potential. Among other capabilities listed as traits for star performers are the ability to leverage diversity and the desire to act as a catalyst for change. (pp. 12–13)

Students begin to understand these new rules by reading books and articles about workplace change. We select important articles in the New York Times, and our students read columns such as “Preoccupations,” “Career Couch,” “Reframing,” “Home Front,” and others to keep apprised of career and job news. Students are assigned to work in groups of four from the beginning of class; they read the articles that they are assigned, conduct further research on the topic, and present the data to the class through a discussion, a quiz, a multimedia presentation, or a role-play. This career development course affords faculty the opportunity to work closely with students to help them identify their interests, skills, and career needs. It also provides an opportunity for close interaction between faculty and students. Students begin to model professional behavior and practice after exposure to appropriate models in the classroom. This new course invites students to seriously consider career development and start fostering appropriate work ethics while thinking about their future careers. More importantly, professionalism is not only discussed in the classroom but also deliberately practiced and measured on a daily basis. For instance, being punctual appears to be a big issue for our students when various emergencies occur such as bad weather, the delay of the subway train, and sickness. In the professional advancement and accounting classes, students must arrive to class on time just as they would in a business setting. If they are a moment or two late, they must apologize and do their best not to disrupt any initial class activity. Classes begin promptly with streaming videos on relevant topics, daily quizzes to assess knowledge and skill, an “article of the day” for reading, or a low-stakes writing assignment to reflect on prior learning. Also, if students need to miss a class, they must correspond with their professors through e-mail or by voice mail. Again, this business-simulation practice provides faculty with an opportunity to bring to students' attention the appropriate way to leave a voice message and to send an e-mail. As a result of our collaborative advising protocol, students have an early opportunity to practice business skills in the classroom to be better prepared for the world of work.

Good teaching is defined as creating those circumstances that lead to significant learning in students (Finkel, 2000). In our professional advancement and accounting courses, we as faculty members act more as facilitators who work behind the scenes while our students take leading roles in their active learning, as they are responsible for their own development in the classroom. Working together to design a presentation, students become sensitive to cultural differences as they bring their diverse ideas to the classroom. They appreciate that creativity, multi-cultural backgrounds, and complementary skills of team members are valuable assets. The students are also generous with their talents. One may share his technical skills with the group; another, her research abilities; another may share artistic talents. The students begin to learn to partner in developing presentations that encompasses their unique perspectives and talents. Students are continually given opportunities to practice their skills and to create a series of short-term plans that they can adapt to meet changing needs or circumstances. When teaching trial balance and general ledger concepts in the accounting classroom, the professor purposely lets students take the lead. The quickest learners get an opportunity to post their work on the blackboard. Other students come to the front of the class to critique the work that has been posted. This unique setting in which the accounting professor acts as the behind-the-scenes facilitator nurtures leadership, motivation, and teamwork among students, so they are well trained to take the initiative when they later enter the corporate world.

Collaborative advising practice across disciplines plays a significant role in ensuring the success of our internship development and placement. Moreover, the advising can even go beyond our students' internship. Even after graduating from the college or becoming permanent employees of a firm, our students constantly come back to us for more professional advice. Oftentimes they seek our opinions about the appropriate dress code for various occasions, proper responses to their supervisors and peers, the tradeoff between quality and speed in task performance, tactics of written documentation, communication skills strategies, and issues of work/life balance.

Overall, students acknowledge and express their appreciation for our collaborative advising practice in helping to prepare them for their internship experiences. These experiences are transformational in that students' first professional experiences lead to a commitment to pursue advanced education, stable work performance and a desire to acquire new skills and knowledge. They keep us apprised of their ongoing personal and academic development and ask for new insights and assistance when making career decisions. Our faculty collaborative advising practice has created a strong rapport with students and leads them to continue to work with us through senior college transfer and graduation. This rapport brings closer connection between our college and the corporate world, thus strengthening our business internship program and gaining us a competitive edge in internship development and placement. Students and employers call upon us when a new internship opportunity becomes available and recommend our internship program to new contacts. Students' internship experiences cultivate growth in personal conduct and new capabilities to engage in life-long learning.