The UTRGV Food Pantry is expanding their services. They still provide food for students in need - but they also have a program to provide professional attire for students going on a job interview, or a warm coat now that cold weather is upon us. Donations for food, business attire, and coats are always accepted. The Food Pantry in Brownsville (this image) can be found in the Cortez Building (TSC Campus) room 215. On the Edinburg Campus, the Food Pantry can be found in University Center room 114 UTRGV Photo by David Pike
The UTRGV Career Center plans to relaunch its initiative to donate professional attire to students through the Clothes for Hire program, which will now be called the Career Closet.
Narmeen Tashatsheh, a graduate assistant for the Career Center will run the Career Closet, which will be housed on the Edinburg campus. Plans to establish a location on the Brownsville campus are in the works, but no timeframe has been determined, according to Lourdes Servantes, associate director of the Career Center.
“We’re really excited to get started, but we do need to go through all of the appropriate avenues to actually get it set up and it’s not set up yet,” Tashatsheh said.
The project has been on and off since before the opening of UTRGV at legacy institution University of Texas at Brownsville.
Career Center Program Manager Mario Torres said the program started 15 years ago and closed when the institution became UTRGV. The department then tried to reopen it in 2016 but had to suspend operations because of the relocation of the Career Center last summer from Cortez Hall to the Interdisciplinary Academic Building on the Brownsville campus.
“It’s basically like we’re restarting the project all over again,” Servantes said. “It’s been dormant for several months and we’re restarting it because, unfortunately, when it was done previously, a lot of information was … not across the board for all individuals.”
Servantes said the center’s main goal is to establish a process that is set up for the long run, since in the past the project has taken many different forms.
“The purpose is to teach our students that when they go out and seek employment, to dress professionally,” Torres said.
In previous years, the Career Center would see up to 20 people a day stopping by to pick out and keep free articles of clothing, according to Torres.
Students would sign in to keep a record of who received donations. However, a system for this new initiative has yet to be determined.
Servantes said, in the past, the project was not promoted appropriately, and now the center is trying to promote it in an equitable fashion across all campuses for all students.
“It’s gonna be better,” Servantes said. “It’s gonna be like I said, something that’s available for students all across the board now.”
“Whenever we’d have, like, a job fair is when they would come in,” Torres said. “So, they would come in for a tie or a shirt or a jacket, if available. Sometimes we didn’t have enough but if we had, we would do that.”
Several businesses donated clothing and other items to the Clothes for Hire project. It received clothing racks from the Brownsville Burlington Coat Factory.
After the Career Center relocated to BINAB, Torres said he donated the clothing racks to the Good Settlement House.
All donations are housed on the Edinburg campus due to a lack of storage space on the Brownsville campus.
Asked how he feels about the closet being based in Edinburg, biology senior William Roberson replied, “Honestly, it would make sense to have one in both places ’cause not everybody can get back and forth, even with the shuttle.”
The Career Center will transport clothes to the Brownsville campus on designated dates to ensure that students on both campuses have equal access to the clothes, Servantes said.
The center is focused on getting donations of clothing for men since it has more for women at the moment.
To donate items for the Career Closet, call the Career Center at 882-5627 in Brownsville or 665-2245 in Edinburg.
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