For an engineer, the career fair is an immense opportunity to network, apply for jobs, and gauge your interests in professional paths. However, for a College of Sciences and Arts major, the career fair is a vast disappointment. Few, if any, opportunities are available for Tech’s non-engineering majors.
Cait Warner, a senior in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has expressed her disappointment in Tech’s career fair. She states, “I have attended both the Michigan Tech wide career fair and the forestry career fairs. The campus wide career fair had no opportunities available, and the companies seemed confused and unprepared when I asked if they had any. The forestry career fair was much better but did have a heavy focus on forestry major coursework… If you don’t have experience in fall camp or field techniques, you will probably not be prepared or get hired.”
When Warner was asked if a separate career fair would be something she is interested in, she said definitely. “Right now I have just been searching for jobs on my own and seeing if they are hiring for internships. This is both tedious and not very successful…” She continued, “I think a College of Science and Arts career fair would be very beneficial. It would help distinguish the opportunities and allow us to not have to wade through the engineering career fair.”
Claire Danielson , the advisor for the Medical Laboratory Science major, agreed with this sentiment. “Fortunately the MLS degree has a 100% job placement, but that is not the case with other science and arts majors. A career fair for our science and arts students would be great for networking, exploring various work environments, and applying for research opportunities.” She explained that she would love to see various types of companies present at such a fair, including pharmaceutical, biotech, research, sales, and hospital systems. Warner echoed this desire for such companies to be present and suggested that a virtual option could be available for companies that couldn’t make it.
Along with giving students a chance to network and find jobs, a career fair of this caliber would offer other opportunities as well. Danielson explained, “Tech’s main career fair charges around $1,000 for companies to attend. I don’t know if this would be feasible to ask for the first College of Science and Arts career fair, but we could ask if they would donate to a program of choice instead.” She further explained that donations could help our lesser funded programs buy
new equipment and offer more opportunities to our students. She said, “100 bucks could buy the MLS lab some new pipettes!”
In the upcoming weeks, Dr. Joshi, the department chair for Biological Sciences, will consider how we can make this a possibility. He has expressed his excitement in making this happen.
