UBC considers it a priority to address students’ needs and educational strategies at the intersection between academic disciplines and career development. See the dedicated resource about “Career in Courses” (2023) prepared by the UBC Career Centre. (Contact is Kimberley Rawes, Manager, Career and Professional Development). Also in UBC’s strategic plan, the words “career”, “job”, “work-integrated”, “experiential” appear frequently. Preparing for rapidly changing and increasingly competitive world are certainly priorities at the institutional, faculty and departmental levels.
In this section, recommended actions are listed first, then some discussion is provided about balancing academic preparation and career development.
R12. Incorporate career development into courses and curriculum
Some EOAS courses already do this in labs, lessons, assignments or projects. See figure 1 above, and discussion about Current activities targeting career preparation in the report on interviews from summer 2022.
- Make use of UBC’s Career Centre. They are eager to contribute workshops, presentations or materials to support inclusion of career-preparation components into existing courses and curricula.
- They also offer students advice on interviewing, resumes, and other aspects of career preparation.
- ENVR program includes a workshop given by them – ask Valentina.
- Also, UBC’s Career Learning in Classrooms page offers an introduction to tactics, resources and who to contact for assistance (K. Rawes, Career Educator and Manager, Career and Professional Development), including workshops for students that can be given as part of lessons.
- Establish a Department-wide set of objectives and corresponding strategies for incorporating career preparation explicitly and transparently into courses and curricula (see “Transparency of teaching practices” on the Frameworks page).
- Adjust course syllabi, learning goals and maybe even formal course descriptions to highlight how career-relevant learning is occurring next to learning goals that emphasize fundamentals & scientific values. Geophysics students have asked specifically for “More industry-relevant examples, better connections with co-op options” (Jolley, 2018). In fact, to quote McFadden etal., 2021, “… targeted professional development could increase instructors’ use of quantitative and data analysis skills to meet the needs of their students in context.”
- Actively facilitate career exploration (many ideas from day-2 discussions at the EER 2023 workshop). The goal is to introduce opportunities for students to learn about and reflect upon QES careers & how their learning and experiences at UBC relate to these options. Specific tactics could include:
- Make at least one required assignment in each of the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th years (in any EOAS core course), that causes students to explore the EOAS Canvas student advising resource.
- One or more assignments suitable for a second year course; see two example activities plus ways to adapt for EOAS.
- Introduce a careers seminar, workshop or bootcamp. With alumni? (UBC-OK and others do this – ask C. Nichol.)
- Consider having students incrementally build a resume or portfolio. This could be “required” or part of a core course.
- A career planning template could be part of such an event, or an assignment or lab in a core course.
- Weave Linkdin into career-prep activities. Search SERC for “linkedin” (79 results in Nov. 2023).
- Alumni can be inspiring – but we need to access them more effectively than previous attempts. The “ask” needs to be clear, succinct and “easy”. Surveys are “boring”. Interviews are personal and meaningful, and a 30 minute zoom call should be “easy”. The questions driving the interview need to be clear and answerable in 2-5 minutes each. Whether it is necessary to contact alumni through UBC’s bureaucracy needs to be investigated. Single point of contact is quicker and more likely to be followed up. Accessing volunteer executives of societies such as BCGS could be a good starting point.
- Consider an official “course” or “for credit” career-development experiences.
- Such an initiative is non-trivial but several schools are finding it worth while. Georgia Tech’s School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences is one example of a department that has committed to offering a 1-credit career development course.
- Impacts of a purpose-built course all about exploring career options in geosciences are reported in Viskupic et. al., 2022.
- Egger & Viskupic discuss similar initiatives at Central Washington and Boise State universities in their presentation with materials listed under “Tuesday” from the 3-day Earth Educator’s Rendezvous, 2023, workshop.
- Highlight the importance of QES professions in terms of impacts on society. This is “marketing”, but such visibility should be included in core courses like EOSC 212, 350, and others.
- Example of why is in “altruism in geoscience…”, Carter et.al., 2021.
- Example of how is in “Mapping geophysics to the UN sustainable development goals”, Capello et al., 2021.
- Suggested tactics for career development in G. Ng, 2023. For example, as an instructor, ask yourself:
- What can I adjust easily to give my students a greater awareness of what’s happening in the world AND how they fit into that bigger picture?
- What can I adjust to give my students experiences they can boast about in future job interviews?
- How can I give my students more opportunities to build relationships with non-academic professionals?
- Incorporate aspects of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) into all career preparation activities.
- Consider reviewing AGI’s “vision and change” document (Mosher and Keen, 2021), which includes sections and discussions of recruiting for a “diverse and inclusive community”. “Diversity” and “diverse” are mentioned 50 and 47 times respectively in that report.
- The engineering and geoscience professions have high expectations regarding every professional’s attention to the importance and value of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
- Also, engage with local initiatives and aspirations – especially those being run by L. Lukes and S. Pete, and review the Faculty of Science EDI website.
- Improving support for students who need or want to register as professionals within BC is the subject of a separate set of recommendations.
Figure 1. Summarizing the number of respondents who mentioned they use each career-preparation tactic in their courses. Numbered tactics correspond to Table 1 in the 
Figure 2. Comparing interviewees with industry experiences against those with primarily academic experience. Proportions of each group are used to illustrate the extent of agreement among interviewees in each group. Results are illustrative only as no significance tests have been applied. Numbered tactics correspond to Table 1 in the