Teachers and counselors who want to help their students find jobs after graduation have a powerful new resource available through GRAPHIC COMM CENTRAL (GCC). GCC, managed by Virginia Tech, is a comprehensive educational and industry information web portal that has been funded by the Graphic Arts Education and Research Foundation (GAERF) since 1997. Recently, the site launched a new Job and Resume Boards section which can be viewed at http://www.teched.vt.edu/gcc/HTML/ResumePortfolio.html. “This new section is where your students will want to look for jobs and/or post their resumes,” says Mark Sanders of Virginia Tech, who administers GCC. “It provides one-stop shopping for all of the Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation Affiliates’ job boards and resume boards that we could locate,” he adds, noting the GCC site now links to more than thirty state job boards and about forty-two resume boards. Sanders suggests that teachers and graphic arts departments that maintain listservs or mailing lists should promote and distribute the GCC Job Board link. Anyone who is aware of additional state graphic communications, printing or publishing job and resume boards is asked to send Sanders the site’s URL. He can be contacted at [email protected]. GAERF is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote programs that strengthen the graphic communications industry. GAERF was formed in 1983 by the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL), NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, | Publishing and Converting Technologies, and Printing Industries of America (PIA) to channel a portion of the revenue from trade shows owned by the three organizations back into educational research projects. In addition to the industry image and recruiting campaign, the Foundation administers two other programs. The grant-making program has awarded over $4.5 million in funding to support more than 125 projects at more than 45 institutions. PrintED is a national accreditation and certification program for graphic communications courses of study at the secondary and post-secondary levels and currently numbers more than 165 accredited programs and more than forty candidate programs. Further GAERF activities include the staging of exhibits at industry and education events and the presentation and/or funding of Career Awareness Day programs for high school students. For more information about GAERF, visit the Foundation’s web site at www.gaerf.org or call toll free at 866-381-9839.