After His Chicago Internship Program: Steve’s Apprentice Highlights
Steve Broadwell, Recruitment Coordinator
The Urban Apprenticeship is an exciting opportunity we offer Chicago Center alumni that have just graduated college. More than a job it offers opportunities for learning and skill development in a supportive urban learning community.
The apprenticeship started in 1990 and grew out of the mutual interests of Chicago Center alums to prolong their contact with Chicago Center and the Center’s interest in strengthening its staff and program. It has exceeded expectations in both arenas and has become a great strength of Chicago Center. The Urban Apprentice usually spends one full year in residence at Chicago Center. This month Steve Broadwell, Recruitment Coordinator talks about his experience with Chicago Center:
“My name is Steve Broadwell, and I have been working as Recruitment Coordinator since mid-August, when I joined the Chicago Center’s staff along with the other apprentices. My job at the Center requires me to help bring students to Chicago, whether that be by organizing and scheduling many of the details of recruitment trips to our cooperating colleges around the country, by helping perspective and incoming students complete their applications, through answering any questions or concerns students might have about the Chicago Center or the city, or by going on recruitment trips and speaking with students and professors about the Center.
Much of the work I do is actually behind the scenes, keeping the program running at full capacity. The most important parts of my job come during the months during the times when we have representatives around the country, meaning that during this time I am always planning, scheduling, calling, writing emails, searching through and updating our various databases, and making sure that the trips are all working according to plan. Despite the great levels of work during this time (and stress, too), the results always yield success: there are students presently sending applications and getting ready to attend the Center from trips I have organized—a fact I take great pride in. And, there are even students submitting applications with whom I have personally spoken to about the Center. It is very exciting for me to work with people who are so passionate about both their work and their city, and I am always amazed by our students who end their time at the Chicago Center with that very same passion.
Where does that come from?
In February I went on a week-long recruitment trip to Kansas with Lane. The cities and the schools we visited reminded me of the places where I have spent my life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a small town in Ohio called Oberlin where my mom and dad and family and friends were nice enough to let me explore the always exciting people and things that can only happen in that town. I was also fortunate enough to go to Albion College in Michigan where my Sociology professors, Scott and Len, were nice enough to give me a book or idea and then let me run in whatever direction I could with ideas. When I came to the Chicago Center in the fall of 2007, I was able to use these same ideas and experiences, which were not necessarily foreign to me, but new nonetheless in how I perceived them as related to my own lifestyle. This started around the time I began venturing outside of Hyde Park on my own…
This is what I found myself explaining to students in Kansas: the experience you can have with the Chicago Center does not necessarily have to be new and it doesn’t have to frighten you or your parents, but it ultimately comes down to what you are willing and capable of putting forth towards what you know and what you act on. It is great, I told one student interested in music performance, to hear jazz played in a band at your college—but imagine being able to go out to hear something new when jazz is mixed and played live with Latin music at a festival downtown!
And this is actually the reason I decided to come back to the Center following my graduation: it was an opportunity to continue exploring the resources I have available, and then see what I can make of those same resources to find a job in urban planning. My thought is that the city of Chicago (and the rest of the world, too) is so incredibly complex, that I want to know how the city effects how people and their communities interact and perceive themselves in all levels of society. Learning and working with the Chicago Center has been a pleasure for me, and I hope that I am able to continue exploring what the city has to offer me when my apprenticeship ends in August.”
We’d like to thank Steve for telling us about his experience and letting us share it with our potential students and alumni!