RVC hosts Disability Mentoring Day

Staff Report

Rock Valley College (RVC) is hosting a Disability Mentoring Day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 17, at the Stenstrom Center for Career Education, 4151 Samuelson Road.

This annual event provides employment-related activities and services for people with disabilities, such as interviewing, job readiness skills, and presentations. In addition, area employers will be on hand to provide information and assistance to potential job seekers with disabilities.

The morning session is reserved for adults who will have the opportunity to participate in speed interviewing with 15 local employers. Employers will provide feedback forms for each interviewee that will rate them on appearance, introduction, enthusiasm, eye contact, appropriateness of questions asked, and general impression.

Then, from noon to 3 p.m., approximately 120 students from Rockford Public School District 205 will come for lunch, followed by three breakout sessions about speed interviewing; filling out job applications; and a panel discussion covering job readiness, making first impressions and how to dress for interviews.

Disability Mentoring Day is a nationwide effort to promote career development for students with disabilities through hands-on career exploration. Disability Mentoring Day began in 1999 with fewer than three-dozen student participants as part of a White House effort to increase the profile of National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), celebrated every October.

For more information, contact Lynn Shattuck, coordinator/disability support service, at (815) 921-2356.

From the Oct. 10-16, 2012, issue