John Romano, Jordan Cervantes and Dr. Thierry Thesatus, associate dean of Career and Student Success. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The neat rows of clothing, tucked into a corner of the library's back offices, are easy to miss at first. There's a full rack of blazers, the shoulders padded and broad; pressed dress shirts; dozens of pairs of pants. Sweaters announce themselves in red and grey wool. A steamer stands at the ready. Around them, there is the steady clicking of keyboards, the occasional ring of a phone. Sunlight spreads across the floor.
Welcome to Southern Connecticut State University's (SCSU) new "Career Closet," a project of students in the school's Gold Leadership Program and the Office of Career & Professional Development that connects students with items of professional clothing. The idea is to open up access to professional clothes, which can cost hundreds of dollars, for things like job interviews, career fairs, and that anxiety-inducing first day of work.
Currently, students are invited to take up to three items, which become part of their own closets. Tucked into the back offices of Hilton C. Buley Library, it is open to everyone on Southern's campus; no questions about income or need are ever asked.
"This breaks down barriers for our students," said Dr. Thierry Thesatus, associate dean of Career and Student Success at the school, in an interview at the closet Friday morning. "A lot of our students need to work. If we're able to provide this as they go out into the world," it makes that professional step that much easier for them.
In addition to the Office of Career & Professional Development and the Buley Library, the initiative is supported by SCSU's Sexuality and Gender Equality (SAGE) Center and the Office of Student Involvement & Leadership Development. It has also received financial support from SCSU alum Christopher Borajkiewicz, who made a major gift to the school in 2023.
The idea for the closet was born over a year ago, when a cohort of students started dreaming up their final project for SCSU's Gold Leadership Certificate program. The program is a relatively new part of the school's longtime focus on real-world experience and social justice.
As they brainstormed, several kept coming back to how prohibitively expensive professional attire—business suits, interview-ready dresses and blazers, dress shoes that weren't scuffed or too worn—always seemed to be. A suit, for instance, could easily run between $150 and $200. A pair of shoes, even on the cheaper end, could cost as much as groceries for a week. That was discretionary income that many students on campus didn't just have.
Those first discussions "planted the seed," said senior Jordan Cervantes, who intends to pursue graduate work in educational psychology and was recently named a Barnard Scholar by the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system. The idea struck a personal chord, too: Cervantes has been that student who stresses out over the cost of professional clothing. He's been that person at conferences who is painfully aware that he doesn’t own a blazer.
“We were sort of racking our brains,” and then the idea emerged, he remembered. After identifying the closet as a project, Cervantes sent out surveys to Southern's student body, trying to get a better sense of student needs. The results, pulled from over 100 respondents, told him that the cohort was on to something.
Forty-nine percent of students reported that they were currently looking for work, and almost 40 percent said that they did not have access to the correct professional attire. Thirty-five percent reported not owning such attire either (for instance, they might have access through a parent, sibling, or roommate, but the clothes were not theirs to keep). And ninety-six percent of respondents said they would be interested in an on-campus resource addressing the need.
That research was only part of the team’s approach. John Romano, a senior who plans to pursue nursing, learned that several other Connecticut schools—UConn, Central, Eastern and Western Connecticut State Universities, and even elite institutions like Yale—already had similar programs, making SCSU an outlier. He loved the idea of having something similar at his academic home. With both Thesatus and fellow cohort members, he worked to find space inside the library, which felt like the perfect fit.
“I feel really good about it!” Romano said. Alongside him, Thesatus credited SCSU Library Services Director Dr. Amy Beth, who began her tenure last year. “”I’m just really happy that someone picked it up and ran with it.”
Parker Fruehan: This is about access.
The library was like a puzzle piece sliding into place, all three added. Buley—which sits in the heart of SCSU’s campus, with an oversized clock that feels more like a searchlight—is already working to address student needs, from research and reading materials to the services that the library provides. Just this year, library staff has worked to acquire every textbook in the school’s curriculum, so students can take them out of the library instead of buying them.
“We’re always looking for new partners, especially when it comes to providing access,” said Parker Fruehan, interim head of access services and systems. “Libraries are about more than just books.”
Now, the group has proof of concept. Since launching earlier this year, the closet has received donations from students, faculty and staff, something that Thesatus chalks up to a spirit of campus-wide generosity. On any given day, students can sift through neat, folded stacks of wool sweaters, bright dresses, thick blazers and a rack of button-down shirts pressed and neatly arranged by size. Dozens of ties, mostly from a single donation, weave in and out of each other in a soft packing cube. Garbage bags filled with not-yet-sorted items sit under an unused desk.
The hope, Romero suggested, is that it can quietly change professional outcomes and boost student confidence.
Shelves with student textbooks, which are also part of the library's approach to student access needs.
As students trickled into campus for their Friday morning classes, Buley sprang to life, the library soaked with the morning sunlight. Behind the reference desk and through a door, Thesatus motioned to the closet, which sits in the back of library offices. Among the gentle click-clicking of fingers on keyboards, dozens of clothing items waited eagerly for new owners.
A pink blazer peeked out with three-quarter length sleeves and a kind of perennial blush color that looked like New Haven at nightfall. Piles of pants beckoned, inviting students to see if their size was available. Thick blue and black blazers hung heavy on their hangers, interview-ready right off the rack.
“It’s really kind of highlighting our mission” as a social justice school, Thesatus said. “This is who we are."
Next month, he added, SCSU plans to hold a more public, week-long donation drive to keep building out the career closet. It will coincide with the end of the second Gold Leadership Program cohort, in which students have been studying housing insecurity in New Haven’s Dwight neighborhood and food waste on campus.