Modeling CRSM’s strategic plan to “Survive, Revive and Thrive,” the CRSM Corporate Work Study Program hit the ground running this school year. Almost all the 407 students with business and nonprofit partners. Freshmen spent the last week boarding vans to banks, community organizations, financial and business service firms, hospitals, medical offices and dozens of organizations throughout the Chicago area and Wisconsin.
This year, students will travel in vans with student workers headed west to Antioch and down to Rosemont, south as far as the city of Chicago, Evanston, Skokie, throughout Lake County and north to Kenosha and Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
“We already have two percent more paying jobs at this point than we had the last school year and expect to jump to 10 percent by the end of September,” says Brian Weinberg, Director of the Corporate Work Student Program. “Our biggest accomplishment is that 404 of our 407 students have job assignments.”
The roster of business partners includes some exciting return companies (who had put jobs on hold during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic) such as: W.W. Grainger and Woodland Foods and new partners, including: Milwaukee Avenue Eye Center, Kohl’s Children’s Museum, Twain School, Beacon Place, Gigi’s Playhouse, Waukegan Housing Authority and Bluff History Museum.
While the back-to-work rush is on, the hard work of the department was unwavering throughout the summer.
Dozens of organizations’ leaders attended a “Business Partner Kickoff” Aug. 10 and area business partner volunteers and the CWSP staff spent four weeks prepping freshman to enter the workplace.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the CWSP program never stops adapting and innovating to meet the needs of partners and prepare students to be flexible, agile, and technologically savvy,” says Weinberg. “And the program will continue to adapt to meet the needs of the changing workplace.”
Contact Brian Weinberg if your company needs reliable remote workers at: (224) 587-7337 or brianweinberg@cristoreystmartin.org.