Current and prospective students will benefit from seeing evidence that meaningful and rewarding occupations exist and are in demand. A list of relevant sources is given separately; see the QES Professions page.

This page summarizes two examples of concrete actions taken at two institutions:
(A) a career-preparation “distributed assignment” (i.e. several parts to an assignment in one course throughout the term) and
(B) an optional course about career options in the geosciences.

Source for both is Anne E. Egger & Karen Viskupic, “Facilitating career exploration early in the curriculum through coordinated reflection assignments“, presentation at EER 2023, accessible via the workshop outline.

A. A 2nd year assignment at Central Washington University (A. Egger)

A 4th year seminar on careers was found to be too late, according to students. Therefore an assignment for 2nd year students was developed. Seven 20-30 minute interviews with Alumni; view one each week and answer one single question. The goal is to reflect on your priorities, interests and opportunities for after graduation, and gain insights from alumni about what steps could be taken to support your journey after graduating.

1. Alumni interviews collected on Zoom and recordings. Questions posed to Alumni:
   • What is your current job?
   • What do you do day-to-day?
   • If applicable: When/why did you decide to get your Masters?
   • How did you go about looking for a job when you graduated?
   • How did you get the current job you have? (And how did you get other geology jobs if you’ve had others?)
   • Do you have any advice for students just entering the geology major?
   • Do you have any advice for students graduating soon?
2. Student assignment: One of these interviews assigned each week. Task: “After watching this week’s interview, answer one of these questions. What did you hear in the interview that could help you…
   1. …decide what you’d like to do after graduation?
   2. …plan how to go through your remaining time at CWU?
   3. …learn what kinds of geoscience-related jobs are interesting to you?
      In other words, pick something in the interview that applies to you (or resonated with you) and tell us about it.”
3. Results: 303 responses (i.e. “reflections”) were coded by instructors to learn:
   • Which question was answered?
   • What were dominant priorities and perspectives emerged?
   • Example of results: counts of coded responses to the question “What to do with remaining time at university?“

A possible EOAS version of this assignment:

• Choose which course(s) to do this in – see the QuEST curriculum map. Perhaps EOSC212? 250? ENVR200?
• Could offer 2-3 cases for each assigned instance, or simply assign one for each instance of the assignment.
• Perhaps 4-6 per term? Must be > 3 so students gain familiarity with the task and see a range of examples. Once a week may be over-kill.
• If not alumni interviews, perhaps search for written career profiles at AGI, AGU, others?
• Final assignment could involve sharing anonymous results of individual reflections with the class and either discussing, or selecting several that are different from your own but that resonate with you.
• A possible final question: “write a sentence or two expressing whether this assignment was useful to you, if so how, and if not why“.
• Later on, use results to showcase student perspectives on careers in geoscience.
• Comments:
  • Needs alumni interviews, or profiles from AGU and/or other sources. Professional societies and non-academic colleagues aught to be sources for 30min interviews.
  • The “view and reflect on a video” assignment is only one of many possibilities.
  • Other skills to develop: networking, LinkedIn, planning or planning templates,
  • What options regarding career profiles, other than videos of alumni interviews? Some ideas are here.

(B) One-credit elective course for career exploration & planning

• Presented by K. Viskupic at EER 2023 – slides.
• Targeting 2nd or early 3rd year students.
• Developed to be consistent with cognitive information processing (CIP) theory (slide 6) and the CASVE model for career problem solving and decision-making originally due to Sampson et.al. 1999, but used widely (google it). 
• Sampson et al. 1999 is rather theoretical but their basic decision making flow chart can help identify what “step” any initiative is actually targeting. Makes career-preparation efforts more “intentional” and targeted.
• Sample Learning goals:
  1. Analyze your interests, values, and abilities as related to potential careers.
  2. Describe career options in the geosciences that match your interests, values, and abilities.
  3. Determine the skills and experiences needed to pursue careers of interest.
  4. Tailor your job/internship applications so that they are competitive.
  5. Write a career development plan.
• Table summarizing the course goals and activities; last slide from the presentation:

• Based on analysis of surveying, focus groups, & reviewing student work (30 students in 3 yrs), results suggest that (in this case):
  • Initially, students knew little about career options for geoscience majors, and did not understand how job titles related to their interests.
  • Students appreciated the guidance provided by the CASVE model. Structuring career planning into small steps with concrete examples of aspects (e.g. networking) reduced feelings of being overwhelmed.
  • Reflection helped students relate to geoscience careers, and increased their confidence with respect to planning for, finding and getting appropriate jobs.
  • Career panelists provided external perspectives and variety regarding career options. They highlighted important courses, key experiences, and details about work environments.
  • This class seems to be working: >Students learn about themselves, >Students learn about career options, >Students connect what they know about themselves and career options, >Students make a plan, >Students feel prepared

Adaptations suitable for EOAS

1. Having a respected framework (CASVE) is likely useful for structuring career preparation experiences even if implemented within existing curricular context (i.e. not building a whole new course).
2. The career awareness and career preparation components of a department-wide Canvas resource for students could be structured in terms of the framework.
3. Short assignments (like option 1. above) could usefully be framed in terms of the CSAVE career preparation model.
4. Comments:
   1. Who in the Department is willing to take on delivery and maintenance of career preparation assignments?
   2. How to inspire colleagues? See workshop notes on getting Buy-In from Colleagues.
   3. Where within the curriculum can this be incorporated? Could be small scale in one or two courses, or a lab activity. Could also be a catered “event” – evening or 1/2 a weekend day, etc. Ideas would need discussing.
   4. Consider choosing which specific activities are most important and implementing them in a seminar or existing course: eg, developing skills related to networking, using LinkeIn, carryout out career planning, or other ideas worked on with these 11 docs.