UCVM iDay

Students at any level of post-secondary education face tough questions when finishing their degrees.  What types of careers are available to me?   How should I compose my CV?  How can I market myself and the variety of skills I acquired during my degree?  Luckily for students of the UCVM graduate program and the U of C’s NSERC CREATE Host Parasite Interactions (HPI)  training program, a few of their fellow students had an idea to help get the answers.  Christy Goldhawk, Maria Negron, Barbara Wolfger and Zengina Lee realized the need for a forum for students so took some initiative thus the UCVM Industry Day (iDay) was born. The objective of iDay was to help students get in touch with professionals who would be able to field questions regarding the transition to the workforce.  These intrepid students planned, developed and secured funding to bring in panelists from industry, academia, government, NGO’s as well as job training professionals, to the U of C Foothills Campus.  The goal of this event was “fostering synergy between UCVM graduate students and industry to support graduates in finding the best careers and allowing industries to find the best in UCVM graduate students.”   For some extra funding and organizational help the iDay organizers turned to the U of C HPI group and received both, the latter in the form of three members of the Trainee Operations Committee: Amol Bhargava, Russell Avramenko and Brad van Paridon.  The partnership was obvious as one of HPI’s core mandates is providing their trainees with multiple, diverse career training opportunities.

The structure of the day was unique to most career fair type activities and was designed to be more students driven and provide more personal interaction with the invited guests.  The day was divided into two main parts which took place in the morning and afternoon.   Rather than have the invited guests describe their various fields and career options the morning was set up as a panelist discussion where students had the opportunity to ask the invited panelists questions.  This format gave students direct access to the knowledge of professionals and specific answers to their individual concerns.  The discussion was lively, informative and likely could have gone on all day if it were not for a well-deserved lunch break.

In the afternoon smaller groups of students were matched up with pairs of panelists representing different careers for a brainstorming exercise and more focused discussion.  The goal was to discuss a specific job posting provided by the panelists and come up with words, skills and attributes necessary for said job.  The iDay organizers also provided a word cloud developed from key words pulled from the CV’s of the registrants.  iDay organizers will be comparing words that came from this word cloud and new ones that came out of the discussion to see how the two compare and provide this information to the registrants as a post event follow up.

Overall, the response from all participants was gauged in the form of exit surveys and was largely supportive.   The organizers of this day deserve much praise for creating a unique and engaging day for both students and participants.  The organizing group would also like to extend thanks to the panelists who took time from their schedules to be there as well as to the sponsors, UCVM Eyes High Funding and the NSERC CREATE HPI group. We now expect to see a new wave of graduates armed with information, direction and the skill sets to head out into the work force and apply their hard earned education.

 

For follow up information and information on the UCVM faculty and HPI group please visit the following websites :

http://www.ucalgary.ca/ucvmiday/
http://ucalgary.ca/hpi/
http://vet.ucalgary.ca/