Professor’s site offers career choices, networking

IU’s campus will become a guinea pig for a brand new networking Web site, CultureU, that will debut in September.

The site is designed to be a cultural network for college students, as opposed to one that’s purely social. Kelley School of Business Senior Lecturer Richard Schrimper is fueling the project that he said he hopes will expand across the country.

“The goal is to provide a platform for students to get their talents out in the world in a somewhat professional setting,” Schrimper said.

He said the Web site will allow students to build their cultural profiles and post work based on their specific focus or interests. It will be a place for peers to comment on each others’ work and for employers to seek out new talent or vice versa.

The Web site will have a variety of different aspects, though at this stage nothing is set in stone.

Schrimper said one of these aspects will be a list of internships and job openings from companies in all facets of art and culture.

“The employer and student can find each other,” Schrimper said. “Recruiters can see the type of work they’re interested in and students can find a company that is looking for a specific talent. Everybody comes out ahead.”

CultureU plans to sponsor any unpaid internships, he said, to give students even more of an incentive to join the network.

“Many internships are not paid,”  Schrimper said. “We hope to take a chunk of the money we generate from the site to fund the internships.”

This money will come from advertising, he said.

“Marketers have always had a hard time on the Internet,” Schrimper said. “CultureU builds a very specified network that advertisers could tap into to create a very focused and targeted advertising campaign based on the niches of a college environment.”

Other parts of the site will be a student gallery where the posted art can be sold for profit and an area to facilitate student media.

“Journalists now have to be entrepreneurs. Our platform could foster that,” Schrimper said. “We could create a college news network, with contests to find the best sports columnist, the best business reporter.”

Schrimper is using the students in his A200 Foundations of Accounting classes to gather feedback on the site.

“My classes have spent time giving me suggestions to make it more dynamic and user friendly,” Schrimper said. “Students from many departments are helping me, forming teams in all areas of culture.”

The idea has been in the works since 2004, Schrimper said.

But he said it now has the support it needs to move to the next level. Schrimper has spoken with other IU professors and Kelley School of Business Dean Dan Smith to receive feedback.

Journalism professor Dennis Elliott is on board with the project, though he said he has concerns.

“The idea of having a place where students can post their material and have it critiqued by peers is great,” Elliot said. “That way it could connect different schools hasn’t been done before.”

Elliot compared it to LinkedIn.

“It could create kind of a monster of competition,” he said. “The competitive aspects of it may need some fences.”

Schrimper remains confident.

“The whole world envies things that go on college campuses,” Schrimper said, “and this would be a great way to show them what is really going on.”