Career Closet Opens Its Doors to UAF Students
By Amber McCain and Manuel A. Melendez
Career Closet creators Mallory Durkin and Elvie Underwood recently sat down with The Sun Star to discuss their idea brought to life—a new program providing students with the opportunity to get professional attire at no cost. The Career Closet opened its doors on April 1 and is hosting an Open House on April 18, aiming to help students overcome the financial barrier of finding professional clothing and hoping to give them the confidence needed to succeed in job interviews, internships, and other career-related events.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos were provided by Mallory Durkin unless otherwise noted.
Photo by Manuel A. Melendez
Mallory Durkin, left, and Elvie Underwood, right, smiling in front of the new home for the Career Closet in the Student Success Center.
Mallory: My name is Mallory Durkin, and I’m the Operations and Marketing Specialist at Career Services. Last year, when this project began, I was a fellow in the Alaska Fellows Program.
Elvie: Elvie Underwood. I don’t currently work with Career Services, but when we were doing this project, I was the student Marketing Assistant for Career Services. I’ve since moved to the College of Indigenous Studies.
Manny: When did this project, the Career Closet, start? How did it come about?
Elvie: I think it was in the hearts and minds of advising for a very long time, but it took time to find the funding and get people who had actual time to sort through clothes. It really came to fruition last March, pretty much when we were given the green light to use some funding to set up the Career Closet. We also made an Earth Day event to kind of roll into this theme of sustainability, and we hosted a clothing drive, and that was really where we got the bulk of the clothes for the Career Closet.
Manny: So the clothes drive that you had during that Earth Day event was where you acquired the kind of material that you have now for the closet?
Mallory: 100%. Initially, we had dreamed up finding partners and funding and being able to fully source, like, a new comprehensive closet full of tailored suits and things for students. But quickly, Elvie and I realized that that would be very difficult, and we would never be able to fully cater to everyone, also, with the logistics of our timing and budget and us both being part-time employees, we decided to go the route of having everything donated. We had over 700 items donated. We also have partnerships with CTC and the free store to have continuous sources of professional clothing coming in. So we know that the options won't be comprehensive, and we hope, in the future, we have a little form where people can say what is missing. So if there are spaces where we do have the funding to fill those gaps, we'll try. But right now, everything is sourced from the community.
Manny: You received funding of some sort?
Elvie: Just our Career Services budget. I think it was from an annual donor. We did not deal with the behind-the-scenes of money. We were initially told, “Okay, we have x amount of dollars to set this up.” And then it would be pulled [from the budget] and allocated [to us]. So, we did purchase the clothing racks and the mirrors, and then also we have a fully stocked free store with hygiene items and stuff for students to just take. All of that we did purchase with a portion of the budget. Most of it was a community source because the money was tied up for whatever reason.
Manny: It sounds like it was more of an allotment from the budget that was given to you, and within that, you had to make do. Now—700 items of clothing, how and where did you sift through all of this? And I imagine you created a catalog of sorts, some spreadsheet to organize the information.
Heaps of clothing waiting to be assessed for usability in the Eielson building.
Elvie: Yeah, we were in our old office in the Eielson building, which, in the summer, is extremely hot, and we just had like, heaps of clothing covering every surface. We had two big tables. Closet racks were kind of under construction because we had such limited space. So we were just kind of like moving around piles of stuff and boxes and on the whiteboards. We had this huge hand-drawn spreadsheet where we were tallying everything just to kind of get a grasp of what we had and what gaps we needed to fill. It was, I think, over the course of a month when Mallory and I were in there.
The whiteboard that was used to catalog the clothing items received for the Career Closet last summer.
Mallory: A few hours every day to go over there. And there were so many things that had to get tossed and maybe that weren't the cleanest, or pajamas and things that maybe weren't professional.
Manny: This leads to my next question. I imagine you wanted gently used or, preferably, never-used items. What were the instructions you gave to yourself for analyzing the clothing to determine if it met your needs?
Mallory: Well, we had very clear instructions that we put on all of our materials for calling for clothes. “It’s our discretion,” was basically what we said, and then we really just sat there and asked each other, sniffed [items of clothing] to decide.
Elvie: We did have a lot of stuff that got washed. We had things that were still nice but maybe needed a little bit of washing. We had wiggle room for a lot of it, depending on how many pieces we already had in that category. Women’s tops, especially, we just had so many. We were able to be a little bit more discerning and say, “Okay, this just doesn’t fit.” Or “the pattern is tacky.” That was [part of] the criteria that we used. Things that were really needed or that we wanted to offer—[clothing] in a huge range of sizes and, you know, genders and expressions—we kept a lot of things that met those requirements.
Manny: Awesome. Now the space itself, because it has to be placed somewhere. I know you talked about [the Career Closet] opening soon. Talk about the space, the opening, all of the stuff that’s coming.
The Career Closet in the Student Success Center space is being assessed by the design team.
Mallory: So it’s quite conveniently timed, because we were moving into the new Student Success Center, and which was still being actively constructed as this idea was being dreamt up. So we actually got to work with the architects in designing and when they were choosing where the offices were, as well the space, they were allocating a space [to ensure it was] the appropriate size and everything for the Career Closet. And now it’s right here in the Student Success Center by the Career Services offices and the Advising offices. It’s beautiful and bright, and it’s bigger and nicer than either of our offices.
Manny: What is the official opening date?
Mallory: On April 1, students can start making appointments on Nanook Navigator. When they go to schedule an appointment, it’ll prompt them. They’ll say with Career Services, and then it’s called Career Closet Visit. We will have an open house on April 18, where anyone can come through. There will be snacks. Nook may be there, and people can look at what’s there and maybe take some clothes, even without an appointment. More information will be coming shortly.
Manny: You have, I assume, a spreadsheet of some kind, a way for students to sign out or sign in what they’ve taken, so you know that an item, or multiple items of clothing, was/were taken.
Mallory: We have a Google form. So when they go in there, there’s an iPad, and there’ll be someone that unlocks the door for them, and there are rules written on the door, but the person that is leading the appointment will read them through it all, go through everything with them, and then on the iPad, they can indicate how many things they took. They can take up to four things, what they took, and if there was something they needed that wasn’t there, what that was. And then, as we get those pieces of input, we can potentially use different sources of funding to fill those gaps.
Manny: Have you talked about me looking to the future? When you’ll need to replenish the closet because you’re starting to run out of clothing.
Photo by Manuel A. Melendez
Mallory, left, and Elvie, right, admiring their hard work during a walk-through of the Career Closet.
Mallory: We tried to curate the clothes that we kept, and the rest we gave to the free store [on campus] or to Value Village. [As for] what’s displayed—we only have so many clothing racks, so we restock as needed. Hopefully partnering with the free store will be able to assist us as people are taking things.
Amber: Are you still openly taking donations?
Mallory: Hesitantly, we say yes. As we learned last year, even when we posted a million signs on our door that said, “No longer accepting donations,” [and] we kept getting trash bags and trash bags [of clothing]. Specifically, we don’t have as much men’s clothes. We had a separate men’s clothing drive this year. But still, just the nature of who works at UAF and who’s donating, we have a lot more women’s clothes, so we’re always open to more men’s clothes.
Amber: That was my next question: What else do you need?
Mallory: Definitely suits. Not that people in Alaska need them that often, but if they’re looking for something that they don’t have, we don’t have comprehensive coverage of suits, and then, just generally, men’s clothes and men’s pants were lacking.
Manny: Was there a specific event or a moment where you both kind of realized that this was a need that wasn’t being met, or did it just kind of gradually occur to you?
Elvie: Personally, I have never really thought about like professional attire, but as Mallory and I were organizing the Career Fest, especially, and as we were learning about this potential funding that we may or may not have had for opening it, we realized students can really benefit from this. I think Alaska sets a very lax dress code and gets very relaxed, but especially for students who are going into legal professions, we don’t want that barrier to exist for them to have their dream job.
Manny: Will you all be able to track the people who use it through the Google Form, if only as a way to maybe use that information or data to ask for money later? Like a grant or something similar?
Mallory: We always love to have quantitative data behind everything. We do have a few funders that we’ve already talked to about, but it would be, yeah, really good to have this data to back up the reason why we would use their money for this specific initiative.
Amber: What is the thing that you’re most excited about going forward with this?
Elvie: I’m just excited to see it actually exist in this form. Currently, it’s been a very long project, and there were a lot of bumps in the road, and a lot of uncertainties. So you know, even though it may be imperfect, there are some gaps there, it’s just really exciting to be able to offer this to students. And you know, have something that’s completely free and available to anyone who needs it.
Manny: And what was the timeline of this project from beginning to end?
Mallory: March 2024 to April 2025.
Amber: What’s been your biggest hurdle?
Mallory: The tediousness and manual labor, then the fact that we moved because everything that Elvie and I had prepped last year had to get deconstructed, put into boxes, and then dumped into this closet over here, which ended up working out wonderfully because we have such a nice space that works perfectly. But, yeah, I only work part-time, so finding time between talking to employers and taking student appointments and then going in there to unpack boxes and build shelves was challenging.
Elvie: Career Services is a really small department that gets so much done.
Mallory: We need students to know that it exists so we can help with that.
Elvie: We want to encourage people, even if they maybe don’t think they’re the target audience. It’s here for everyone. Don’t be afraid to stop by and make an appointment.
Mallory: [We have clothing] for a class presentation, or for you to just have in your back pocket for a future interview, just a shirt on Zoom, or anything you don’t have to complete the business professional suit.
Elvie: And there is a range of clothing from business casual and kind of even everyday wear for less strict job codes. There are resources and input on how to dress for different occasions on the Career Services website for people who don’t need clothes but just don’t know how to dress.
Photo by Manuel A. Melendez
A handy guide in the Career Closet for students who want to know how to dress for each business or professional occasion.
Amber and Manny: Thank you so much for chatting with us about the Career Closet.
Elvie and Mallory: Thank you for the interview.
The open house is on April 18, 2025, but the Career Closet began accepting appointments via Nanook Navigator on April 1. The future of the Career Closet looks bright. With continued community support, this incredible resource is set to make a lasting impact on the professional journeys of UAF students for years to come. Mallory and Elvie are ready to see the Career Closet make a difference in making sure that success is never hindered by an outfit.