For many college students, career development can feel overwhelming. It is not just about finding internships, jobs, or graduate school opportunities, but also understanding what direction they want to take, knowing who can help them along the way, and feeling confident enough to start those conversations.
A team of Alfred University students is working to make that process easier through "Luxworks,” a new platform designed to connect students with alumni, mentors, internships, jobs, and graduate school opportunities.
Developed through Alfred University’s Institute for Experiential Entrepreneurship (IEE), Luxworks brings several career resources into one platform. Students can explore a database of jobs and internships, research graduate school opportunities, and connect directly with Alfred alumni through a mentorship feature.
The idea behind the platform came from a simple problem: while students are frequently encouraged to network, reaching out to someone they have never met can be intimidating. Luxworks is designed to make those connections more natural by using the shared Alfred experience as a starting point.
Another one of the platform's key features is Pathways, which helps students explore possible career and education directions, understand the steps that can get them there, and connect with people and opportunities along the way. Alumni matching is part of that process, allowing students to learn from people who have taken similar paths, but the broader goal is to help students turn an idea of what they might want to do into a clearer path forward. Al-guided introductions can also make it easier to start those conversations.
The project has also given the students working on Luxworks an opportunity to gain experience outside the classroom.
Vladyslava Makarenko, a sophomore finance major with minors in economics and business analytics, worked on the platform’s social media and helped communicate the project to potential users.
“It was an incredible opportunity to go beyond general classroom settings,” she said. “This gave me more free space to explore and show my creativity. Learning myself how to conduct market research along with the environmental scanning helped me to connect social media content to the target audience more efficiently.”
Andrii Maltsev, a senior majoring in business analytics, marketing, and philosophy, led the Luxworks project, coordinating the team and helping move the platform from an idea toward a working pilot.
“The biggest thing I learned from leading this project is that having a good idea is probably the easiest part,” Maltsev said. “The hard part is getting people on the same page, listening to what students actually need, and turning all of that into something they would genuinely use.”
During the current fall semester, the platform will be introduced in the Intro to Management Information Systems (MIS 390) and Current Topics in Analytics (DATA 203) classes, with a goal of bringing at least 50 students and 50 alumni onto the platform by the end of the term. Alumni mentors were recruited through Alfred University’s annual Mentorship Day, held Sept. 25.
The pilot will allow the team to see how students actually use the platform, which features generate the most engagement, and where improvements are needed. If the initial pilot is successful, the team plans to expand Luxworks into a course within another college or school at Alfred University. In the longer term, the concept could also be introduced at other colleges and universities facing similar challenges.
