College of San Mateo
Welcome! This year, I hope to provide you with hands on learning providing you with real-world skills. Specifically, I hope to help you build a foundation for problem-solving, life-long learning, business skills, and the ability to recognize opportunities and choose to act on them.
Here, you will be able to explore a range of options equipping you for your future success in college and beyond. You'll have the opportunity to gain valuable experience, college credits, and have fun.
Lastly, you will learn how to make connections and build your network with peers, educators, mentors, and current entrepreneurs!
PGP: He, his, him, él, they
Adjunct Instructor Business / Economics
LinkedIn Address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cockrum/
College of San Mateo / Cañada College / Skyline College
Phone: 650.458.7501
Zoom: https://smccd.zoom.us/my/cockrum
Want to request a meeting? Please book using Calendly (https://calendly.com/guillermo-d-cockrum/30min)
I have been a student and an intern at CSM! I also earned an MBA and a certificate in Public Administration from Stanford. My work experience spans Money Center Banks, the Big 4 Accounting Firms, Tech (lately ML), Private Equity, and Non-Profits. I have served as a volunteer, founder, director, advisor, executive, and mentor at these organizations. Of these roles, by far "Mentor" is my favorite.
While teaching, I try to provide experiences and knowledge that will serve you for the rest of your academic and professional careers. For example, in the context of the course, I will drop in experiential modules in self-advocacy, elevator pitches, or salary negotiations.
I love it when students join a tech company earning a living wage after taking one of my courses or interning at my company. I also love my work with environmental, restorative justice, refugee, and immigrant issues.
Erin Castro studies the community college student and suggests training students in four commonly cited dimensions: Interpretation, problem-solving, the ability to construct an argument, and to help create awareness of the norms necessary to navigate the labor market successfully.
Most of my career has been in the Tech industry, not academia. Specifically, In my tech roles in sales and marketing, I hired, trained, and supervised many folks who were fresh out of college. In this course, I try to provide the training that made many of those folks successful.
I will point out the sometimes oppressive realities that you will find in Business and try to equip you to navigate them. For example, 36% of the American labor force is an independent contractor or works in the "gig" economy. I think it is an issue of social justice to provide you with tools or expose you to mindsets that will allow you to grow your income in this new labor market.
I am committed to your success and here to help. If you contact me outside of the classroom, I will try to respond within 24 hours. If I don't respond immediately, please don't personalize it; reach out again.
My preferred medium of communication is the Canvas Inbox. But I will accept texts that are personalized as I'll show you here. For example, here is a tutorial on how to personalize on iPhone. Here is how to share contacts on Google Phone. At the bottom of that page, Google shows you how to create your contact.
When you create your contact, please put your school name and class period. I ask for this because I don't answer texts from folks I cannot identify. Happy to discuss this further.
The Q&A Discussion is a great place for general course-related questions. Your peers might even answer you there! If your question is personal, please send it directly to me through the Canvas inbox.
This syllabus is designed to be mobile-friendly and provide you with essential information to support you with a successful start in this course. This syllabus is provided as a website so you can easily access it from your smartphone. I encourage you to bookmark it on your phone so it's easy to find and reference when needed.