Brayan Kabore is a man with many hats on campus. He’s a Student Life Front Desk Worker and the Volunteer Opportunity Coordinator for the Goodman South Campus.
One day when he was working at Goodman South, he received an urgent text message saying that he should come to Truax Campus ASAP. That text was from me, to keep good on a promise of getting him a new suit to look fresh on campus.
We headed over to the WolfPack Closet in Career and Employment Services (CES) to browse the available clothing in stock. Kabore was happy to add business formal attire to his wardrobe, one that he could use in job interviews for the summer. He even wore the suit the entire day to show his friends and family how he was able to get expensive clothing for free from Madison College.
“Don’t let yourself get tricked by the fact that it’s free, and that if it’s free [the clothes] are not good. They have really good stuff over there and that was a good surprise.” said Kabore.
Now Kabore pays it forward and tells his peers that they can also take advantage of this opportunity as students on campus.
The first iteration of the WolfPack Closet began about four years ago and had roots as a mobile pop-up career closet to address the extra costs of clothing needed for job interviews and career advancement. This was the brainchild of Nina Schultz, a former Student Support Advisor at Madison College, who wanted to provide students with a way to “visually put their best self forward and boost their confidence.”
Students can come in and find up to four items of clothing that are theirs to keep for free once each term – they don’t need to return them at all. That part hasn’t changed, but now the WolfPack Closet is a permanent fixture of CES and they have been working on ways to expand their commitment to equity in career and professional contexts.
Sarita Field, a CES Student Support Advisor, is one of the lead architects behind this new rebranding and she cautions against the exclusive use of the term “professional” to describe the services that she provides. Instead, she favors the term “interview-ready” which better incorporates the ever-changing concepts of what it means to show up professionally for people from different cultural backgrounds.
For instance, some career and business forums will make the recommendation that job-seeking hopefuls should dress in a neutral palette to be taken seriously in an interview. However, some cultures celebrate and embrace color in professional attire, so Field said that shouldn’t be discounted.
“We don’t want to lock people into one definition of what it means to show up professionally in a space that can be exclusionary to many different identities,” said Field. “We want to encourage our students to show up authentically with the expertise that they’ve gained in their programs.”
April is Financial Literacy Month and Madison College departments are working on ways to educate students about career development, equal pay and gender wage gaps. By hosting the campus-wide Equal Pay 2024 event, Madison College hopes to convey that “equity is more than pay, it is access, opportunity and empowerment.”
The WolfPack Closet has undergone a transformational rebranding and will be hosting a Grand Re-Opening event on Thursday, April 11th from 11am-12pm with Career and Employment Services in Room D1624 of the Truax Campus Main Building.