From what I observed, Engineering students have to undergo IA during their course of study in NUS as it is a requirement for graduation. This is beneficial to the Engineering students in their job search upon graduation as they would be equipped with prior working experience related to their field of studies. Although Business students do not go through IA, there is the NUS Biz Career Service, from the School of Business which provides a dedicated suite of professional career-related services to the Business undergraduates and MBA students. What about the Science students?
(Screen shot of full-time job listing provided by NUS eJob Services)
As mentioned, job listings in the science field provided by the NUS eJob Service are relatively few, compared to other fields. Thus, in contrast, Science students who wish to take up a full-time job or internship in the science field have to be more independent in their job search. They are also more likely to face difficulties since, unlike the Engineering students, most of the Science students in NUS do not have any hands-on experience from Industrial Attachment and Internship (with the exceptional of students from certain disciplines such as Applied Chemistry).
In view of this, the general research question on this issue would be: Do the Science students from NUS feel that there is sufficient internship or job opportunities offered by the school? A survey would be carried out to find out how many of the Science students wish to work in profession in science field, whether they feel the services offered by the NUS Career Services Centre and the various departments from Science Faulty fulfil their needs in job search and applications. Lastly, the survey would investigate whether they are in favour of the establishment of a similar career centre as NUS Biz Career Service, which caters specially to NUS Science students to provide them help and support in their internship or job search and to provide the kind of services they wish to attain from this career centre. To meet the objective of the research study of establishing a career centre within Science Faculty, the research report would be submitted to the NUS Faculty of Science, Vice Dean of Graduate programme as a student's feedback for consideration of establishing a Science Career Centre.
5 comments:
Hi Sabrina,
I feel that this is a appropriate research topic, seeing that there is some relation to module ES2007s where a part on Job Search is covered. I too agree that for Science students looking to internship opportunities, they would have some sort of difficulty owing to the obvious lack of positions posted on the NUS eJob Service website.
This may be due to the lack of need for undergraduate help in such research fields. This is especially so if the Science student is not yet equipped with proper technical skills for use in industries. Thus only applied sciences have a fixed semester of IA. On the other hand perhaps the demand for it is not high to begin with. Perhaps Science students are not all willing to take up a lab-based internship.
However, to study this topic, we might have to know the reasons behind the lack of internship opportunites for Science students. This would require us to study the current career trends and also question the school for their choice to omit an internship semester for us. Thus this might not be too feasible since a survey only would not be enough.
Hi Sabrina!
From what I understand, the Department of Chemistry does liaise with companies related to chemistry to provide internships for chemistry undergraduates. However, I believe that they have very little vacancies to cater to the large number of applicants. This boils down to the question whether a more official career centre should be set up to cater to science students. Thus, the topic is quite feasible with many areas of concern which you can study.
I agree that a survey is needed to understand the needs of science student as to whether they are keen in securing an internship or that an IA should be incorporated into their course. A survey can also sound out the interest of science students to pursue a career related to their studies, as many science students may choose a profession unrelated to their studies.
Hi Sabrina,
As a fellow chemistry major, I am concerned with the efforts of the University in helping us find jobs in the our field. It must be said, however, that since jobs in our chosen discipline are few and far between.
For example, the EDB predicted a jobs created in the chemical industry to be approximately 3500 each year, of which, up to 2780 are operator and technical roles. That leaves 720 jobs available to chemistry graduates each year. NUS and NTU contribute about 800 chemistry graduates to the workforce each year and these graduates have to also compete with diploma holders and foreign migrant professionals.
The University, while have some responsibility in helping us take the first step in our career, they do not have wholesale control over jobs in the industries. The benefits of providing us with a Science Career Centre without jobs to go around would certainly be a waste of time.
Perhaps, the faculty can consider mandatory industrial attachment or research positions within or outside of the University to furnish us with the necessary experience. That would be targeting the root of the problem instead of coming up with solutions with limited impact.
Cheers!
Yes, I agree that NUS eJob Services is not helping much for science students to find an internship related to science. It would be good if Science students could get some hands-on practice and get used to the working environment in the laboratory before stepping into the workforce.
It is true that maybe the Vice Dean of Science Graduate programme was not aware of how supportive Science students are towards setting up a Science Career Centre. However, the main reason could be it is very hard for the administration to set up a Science Career Centre as there are not many Science-based jobs available. Most Science-based companies would prefer to teach an employee that is going to stay long in the company.
Therefore, I suggest that making Industrial Attachment available for all Science students would be more feasible. This is because Industrial Attachment is usually a internship over a long period of 6 months. On top of that, students are graded during that period. Thus, students would put up a better working attitude. Therefore, there would be more reasons for Science-based companies to collaborate with NUS Science Faculty. Hence, the research question could be phrased this way: Do NUS Science students feel that Industrial Attachment should be made available as a module for them?
This is an interesting topic to be researched on and I believe all Science students would be supportive of this research as well.
hi,
i agreed with you too. i tired to look for a intern on the papers and the school's job search but there isn't any related jobs. Getting a intern job will let us know what we will be facing when we start working. I felt that when companies select fresh graduates they will tend to look out more for the kind of experiences you have.
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