More Than Just Attending Class
30 Sep 2021
The Pitfall Trap
Like any other field of study, most universities provide detailed degree plans that students can access themselves or obtain from academic staff. This is a great resource for students hoping to understand what undertaking their degree could entail. However, it is dangerously easy to simplify the whole computer science journey to solely taking necessary classes. This is not an attack on the courses required for the degree or the information that they provide. Many lifelong skills can be acquired in courses and the interpersonal relations that networking can provide through professors and teaching assistants, but it would be detrimental and potentially potential harming to not seek more interests and opportunities outside of the classroom setting.
A Resource for Success
Assuming someone understands that they must seek opportunities outside of solely the classroom, where do they look? Do they have to spend countless hours googling for opportunities or leave the future in the hands of 3rd party recruiters? While such an stressful endeavor could build a stronger character and perhaps a better professional it is much easier with the use of the RadGrad program. Furthermore, the program also promotes increased engagement and retention in one’s field. I believe the RadGrad project will have great success as a result of a few main points: giving students a database for opportunities, tracking their past and future skills, as well as integrating their class planners together with their plans for jobs, internships, and professional opportunities.
Ease of Access
When using RadGrad, one thing was immediately a huge positive feature. Many opportunities with various faculty and affiliated organization was at anyone’s fingertips. In the past, when I pursued my first degree, this ease of access wasn’t present for students in the biology department. A student who wanted to be a cut above the rest had to invest a lot of time investigate faculty websites for a better understanding into their focus of research. Furthermore, most of the time it was unclear whether these were available opportunities for undergraduate students or merely a demonstration of projects a faculty member was working on. Many times it felt frustrating emailing faculty only to find out that no more open positions were available or that no undergraduate positions were being offered in the first place. The RadGrad program conveniently groups multiple opportunities into one place. Helpful descriptions are given and resources for pursuing more information are given. This a great time saving benefit and anyone not using this advantage would be throwing away a great resource that has been set up.
Skill Sharing
Another useful feature that ties into the database of opportunities is the ability for students to demonstrate interest in learning new skills or updating what skills they have already acquired. Both of these interact in the same way on RadGrad in that they are highlighted in the database of opportunities. Most if not all of the opportunities are tagged with interests that can be associated with a user’s profile, which can help to identify which opportunities would be in line with their interests. Furthermore, an opportunity might by tagged with a skill or interest that the user is hoping to improve upon or expand into. This would allow them to make more educated decisions about their future and what opportunities they might want to pursue.
Putting it all Together
While each of these features are positives in their own right, what ties them all together is the comprehensive planner. With the planner not only are students able to see all of their major class requirements and plan out their future technical electives but they can also make informed decisions about when they want to seek out specific opportunites. They can plan to work in a specific faculty member’s lab after having finished an essential course. The planner also helps to provide a timeline of accomplishments that highlight one’s strengths and point out which areas need more focus. With the myICE feature of RadGrad students can see what areas they are strong in and which areas they are weaker in when designing their future plans. This will ultimately help them to become more well-rounded and knowledgeable professionals and hopefully allow the department to retain more students on their academic journey.