Career Resource Center Records

The University of Florida Career Resource Center (now the Career Connections Center) opened in July 1953 as the Placement Service Office. The Office was located in Tigert Hall, and then moved to a temporary building, Building H, at the corner of Union Road and Newell Drive, across from the University Auditorium, and the current site of Turlington Hall. The Career Resources Center (CRC) moved into the J. Wayne Reitz Union in 1967.

The founding Director of the Career Resources Center was Maurice Mayberry, who served as Director from 1953-1991. He was succeeded by Wayne Wallace, Director from 1991-2011. Heather White succeed Wallace, serving as Director from 2011-2017. She was succeeded by Ja’Net Glover, who has served as Director from 2017 to the present.

Before the institution of the CRC, employers would reach out to individual faculty members for prospects among their students. The faculty member would then send the employer a list of recommended students that the employer could then contact to set up an interview. This decentralized approach was common to many universities at the time, but frustrations were mounting with the inefficiencies of the system at a time when employers needed more recruits than they could quickly get from faculty recommendations. Dr. J. Hillis Miller, University of Florida President, tasked the Dean of Student Services, Dr. Max Wise, to form a committee and solve the problems that recruiters and students were facing at the university. The result was the hiring of Mayberry and the formation of the Placement Services Office.

The transition from individual Colleges and faculty to the Placement Services Office placing students with recruiters was a long and slow process, but eventually, in 1964, the President’s Placement Committee recommended that the Placement Services Office be recognized as the centralized placement facility for the university.

The first “career day” at the University of Florida was held in the 1958-59 academic year, with 75 federal employers invited to campus to meet informally with students.

The Placement Services Office received a name change to The University Placement Center with its move into the J. Wayne Reitz Union in 1967. Its name changed again in 1971 to University of Florida Career Planning and Placement Center. In February 1975, the Center had the Cooperative Education Program added to its charge, and the Center’s name changed to the Career Resource Center. Its name changed to the Career Connections Center in 2018.

In 1983, the CRC won the Outstanding Achievement for Innovative Program in the College Placement Field from the College Placement Council for its leadership in developing computerized and office automation.

For more information on the history of the CRC, please consult the History of the Career Resource Center booklet, found in box 2, folder 15 of this collection.