The career services program at Eastern hosted a health professions job internship fair for not only health majors, but anyone who may find the opportunities useful.

Shane Davis, a staff member with career services, helped hosted the fair. He talked about what kind of outcome he was expecting with the event.

“Helping students with internships and careers so they will be able to branch out after college,” Davis said.

This was not new for Eastern’s career services program to throw a job fair as there was one just a week ago but there was a huge margin of improvement of participation for this fair.

Davis and the other workers from career service for the event were not aware of how many people were going to be able to come to the event and participate as they ran out of papers of the employers list during the event.

“Our numbers from previous fairs to this one has jumped a pretty huge amount,” Davis said.

Becky Castillo, a senior employee relations recruiter for the CTF Illinois, which is a program who assist people with disabilities in their homes, was present at the event as well. They have nine group homes here in Charleston and five day programs.

Castillo elaborated exactly what her program does to help eastern students.

“We hire direct support professionals here locally, which are majority EIU students who provide daily living assistants,” Castillo said.

Castillo said the program is also very flexible to help those who are in this program be able to come out of it with a career and experience.

Castillo said, “We have students that will transfer home over the summer and when they come back to college, they can just transfer right back”.

Brook Ozier,  a sophomore biological science major, said she really looks forward to fairs that are thrown on campus like this. She was able to benefit from this fair without her major correlating to the event as well.

She says, “My goal at this fair was to gain networking experience and my goal was achieved”.

She was able to be informed about opportunities and events that she is fortunate she went to the fair to learn. Ozier informs me about the Palm Terrace nursing home in Mattoon, Ill. that she felt was a good opportunity she learned at the fair.

Ozier said she learned something new for any future fairs she decides to go to.

“I feel like it also teaches me how to operate in these situations and gain more professionalism,” Ozier said.

Rashaad Jones can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].