Student Center for Professional Development Marks Year of Service and Engagement

SCPD 2009 Senior Class

The Student Center for Professional Development (SCPD) continues to “Engage, Execute and Excel” into its 24th year at CBA. Our core programs–Emerging Leaders, Community Scholars, City Leadership, Business Excellence Certificate and Corporate Mentoring–flourished this year, and new events were added as we served a record 400 SCPD participants as well as hundreds of students from all across the campus and nearly 2,000 residents of the community.

The 2008-09 year began with our kickoff event of connecting over 45 corporate mentors from The Boeing Company, UPS, ADP and others with their student mentees. Corporate mentees and new CBA students in the Emerging Leaders Program participated in separate leadership retreats.

SCPD’s family of students, mentors, board members, corporate partners, faculty and staff celebrated the holidays in December 2008 at the holiday mixer. As part of the festivities, we raised over $7,500 for our annual book drive. The proceeds, coupled with a Target Literacy Grant, provided all 1,200 students at Grant Elementary a book to keep at home, and the school’s library received over 270 books.

The 5k run/walk, our newest annual event, celebrated fitness while fundraising for the center’s programs. Over 200 runners and walkers toured the race course through the beautiful CSULB campus.

SCPD’s pinnacle gala was the awards banquet on May 1. The evening program featured our students, who shared the year’s highlights, thoughtful remarks by SCPD advisory board members, an awards ceremony and acknowledgment of our graduating seniors. The presentation of awards featured scholarships totaling over $6,200, courtesy of Financial Executives International and matching funds from SCPD.

To learn more about SCPD, go to http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cba/scpd.