Misha Wiley ’25 (left) and Gavin Burns ’27 look through the “merchandise” in Longwood’s new professional clothes closet for students.
From students’ point of view, the new professional clothes closet seemed to be the highlight of the grand opening earlier this month of Longwood’s reimagined and newly named Center for Career Success.
Free and open to all students, the professional clothes closet is stocked with a wide assortment of new or gently used career apparel, including suits, dress shirts, dresses, slacks, skirts, ties and shoes. Students can select five items each semester—and they get to keep them as a permanent part of their wardrobe to wear for job or internship interviews or to participate in an internship or work-based learning experience.
The closet is just one initiative supported by $200,000 in grants awarded recently to the new Center for Career Success, whose mission is to give students the skills and experiences they need to be successful after they graduate.
At the grand opening, students gave the “merchandise” in the closet a big thumbs-up, and they were excited that they would be able to keep what they selected.
“It actually looks like a nice store—not what I expected at all,” said Misha Wiley ’25, a business/management and accounting major from Roanoke. He planned to come back as soon as the closet was officially open to “put together a full professional outfit” that he could wear during his summer internship with Walker-Phillips Healthcare Consulting in Roanoke.
Visiting the closet with Wiley was Gavin Burns ’27, a business/management major also from Roanoke. “This is a great addition,” he said, adding, “I really like that tie.”
Funds from the $200,000 in grants also will be used to help make it financially possible for students to participate in internships, providing stipends for travel, housing and other living expenses, as well as to support alumni networking, job shadowing, career advising, job fairs and résumé building.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read more about the many ways the Center for Career Success can help prepare your student for their future career and encourage them to take full advantage of the programs the center offers.
—Sabrina Brown