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so i'd like to welcome everyone this is malaika silcott i'm we're all conferencing in for the tufts career center panel this is one of a few programming that we have during the summer and this one is focused on the state of the industry environmental careers and related skills among the COVID landscape so the way the format is going to work today is i'm going to do introductions for about five minutes of our panelists today and then we're going to go right into the questions we've reserved 15 minutes at the end of today's session to take some questions we've collected some as you may remember when you wanted to rsvp for this event we took some questions ahead of time so we'll try to address as many of those questions coming in also you're welcome we have somebody covering the tech piece so you're welcome to put any questions that you have for the panelists in the chat as they come along as a reminder today's session will be recorded because we know a lot of people were not able to attend today so we want to make it available so if you missed some of our state of the industry panels from previous to this feel free to look on the career center website and take a look at that take a look at that all right so without any further ado um i'd like to introduce today's panelists again my name is malika silcott i'm a career advisor in the tufts career center over here in dowling and it is my pleasure to welcome our four panelists today um one of our panelists and if our panelists can just like wave so that they can see where you are in the screen our first panelist today is eva burke eva is a class of tufts 2008 and she currently serves as an environmental programming manager for the federal highway administration she manages the u.s department of transportation's federal highway aid and environmental program based in maine eva provides support on a wide range of regulatory issues for major infrastructure projects so for example tribal governments noaa u.s fish and wildlife service army corps and the epa and then prior to being in maine she served as a science and education fellow for oris in the u.s epa's office of water and later represented the national association of home builders in washington d.c um again i mentioned that she's an alum and she also pursued her degree in environmental studies and she has a master's degree in city and regional planning from cornell university and then last year eva also was faculty and taught at tufts during the summer session so eva thank you for for joining us yeah um for having me our next panelist is madeline madeline can you wave madeline has a really cool background and i would love for her to you know at some point tell us a little bit about like where that's from madeline is class of 2014 at tufts her her role there is greater gila guardian and she works for an organization called wild wild earth guardians and wild earth guardians protects and restores wildlife wild places wild rivers and the health of the american west in their motto in their mission statement they describe themselves as driven by passion tackling some of the west's most difficult and pressing conference conservation challenges over the last past three decades their major sectors of their organization is divided into wildlife preserving public lands rivers and a significant portion in climate and energy our third panelist is justin justin reingold is an environmental law clerk at gulstan and stores so justin if you haven't waived waived for everybody he performs environmental due diligence on real estate and corporate transactions and assists clients in applying for brownsfield tax credits he's a 2015 graduate of tufts university he also majored in environmental studies but he also added international relations and he just recently graduated law school this past spring justin has previously worked as a litigation paralegal at a law firm and he's interned with the also with the environmental protection agency and then last but not least i'm representing the employer side of things and we have a lot of great questions um to ask miss julie is julie lucas um julie is her title is manager of talent acquisition and programs and operations for cdm smith which is a local organization to massachusetts they are here representing on the environmental engineering sector but if you have any questions related to just like hr um and in general she may be able to provide you insight um she she heads over the recruitment programs including co-op intern and new professionals and the cdm smith's robot re-entry program for those who are returning to their careers after taking a break she's also head of their developmental assistant recruitment and managing recruitment operations she's been at cdm for 13 years and she has a bachelor's degree in sociology and criminal justice from the university of massachusetts at amherst so welcome all of you panelists and your impressive backgrounds okay so we have just a few questions for the main portion but i'm just going to go right in i'd like to ask i guess for the alum and whoever wants to start first can um can you talk about um you know reflecting on on your years as an undergrad or maybe internships that you've had can you please share with our audience any transferable skills that you developed along the way and are you using any of those skills in your current or in recent past positions i want you also to specifically think about like were there particular internships that you had or classes that you felt were relevant to for your industry and sector so anyone can start first i saw madeline unmute first you want to go first sure um and i'll quickly share the story of my baby badgers which is i went on a donor trip to yellowstone national park and we saw baby everything but my favorite were the baby badger kits um so i hope everyone gets a chance to see baby badger kids at some point in their life i i would say two things apply that come to mind for me for this question one is writing i have to write all the time in a ton of different voices whether it's submitting technical comments on on an agency project or writing emails to members or donors or communicating professionally or writing memos for congressional staff and so being able to write well in a variety of voices quickly and competently and accurately is definitely something i've leaned on and i was a biology major so i didn't take a lot of writing classes um but i think that's a skill i definitely you have to write well to graduate from tough so that's a skill and then time management um being a non-profit is like perpetually perpetually being a freshman um everything you have to do everything and you have 120% of what you can do on your plate at any given time so being able to prioritize and focus and manage your responsibilities and commitments is something that i learned at tufts and rely on every day great um i would definitely agree with madeleine about the writing skills i actually just about an hour ago was on the kind of coordination call for a hiring panel um for u.s fish and wildlife service so since federal highway my agency has liaisons with the fish and wildlife service um i'm sitting on one of their hiring panels with our new staff um in the main office and i wrote in my notes because i heard it three times on the panels you know review criteria writing skills writing skills writing skills and it's just you can't underestimate even if someone has a good technical background um they have to be able to produce good deliverables so i definitely agree with madeline there um and just a quick big thank you to um all the panelists were coming today and for the environmental studies department biology department for hosting this because i think that if you're in the middle of the summer it's beautiful weather outside and you're on this uh conference call today it really shows initiative um on your part but also on behalf of those departments for making sure these opportunities are available so thank you on behalf of all of us the second part i'd say for transferable skills at tufts would be those classes that you might characterize as like workshop classes or classes that have a component where you're doing a big project and there it's a real world example and you might have like a client that you're volunteering for or it may just be that you're doing a theoretical you know product for um you know like a policy review or a technical review but you still produce something at the end of the day and you've had to take into account real world issues that are happening at that time you know whether it's at like the project level or a little bit bigger than that um so i remember my um in tufts i went to a class called like water policy or water management with scott horsley at the uep program and it was like a mix of graduates and undergraduates and we had to do a watershed plan and from there you had to call folks up and figure out how to get the right maps you had to go through all those steps so actually um you know getting into a real world issue and being able to put that on your resume that you tackle the problem got results i think is super important so those workshop classes i don't think can be underestimated they were great justin yeah i just go everything that Madeleine and Eva said in terms of writing writing skills are key to being a lawyer even in the transactional sector that i'm in where i don't have to write court documents or those type of materials but i also say research skills i think being able to find an answer to a problem whether it's and it's not just through google but using advanced things like westlaw and other databases is really crucial it's that problem solving that you're always going to be called on to do especially when you're in a junior role and you can get that through classes i know i took a bunch of poli sci classes when i was at Tufts many of them including ones with professor eichenberg had us prepare short four-page memorandum and that's really a lot of what i do so it's not even doing research for a big 20-page paper but doing that smaller complex presentable type of material and then i'd say just relevant experience internships that's really more so than classes where you gain that hands-on ability to problem-solve and to communicate in a professional environment i think that that's been sort of key to how i've followed my trajectory is just being able to be mature and speak with people who are often 20 30 years my senior yes thank you and julie since you have a lot of experience at your firm and prior to that working with recruiting and talent management um are there any other skills that haven't been uh echoed by our panelists that you would also add to this sure sure you know i was looking down my list and everything you all said was on there um you know i think the only ones i would add you know would be teamwork skills you may be working on projects with your peers and these are great opportunities for you to see how how to work you know well on a team as you go into your careers you are going to be uh working on different teams as well as probably a lot of individualized uh projects but when working on a team you're still gonna have even in the corporate world or in any career that you go into you're gonna have some strong personalities you're gonna have some slackers uh you're gonna have all the components that you're seeing here today that does not go away unfortunately um learning on how to really take advantage of uh working on that team and being able to um come together and put your personal best forward to bring the team to the desired result um and i think the only other thing i would mention is just taking initiative that is huge and something that we really um we really notice especially in our interns when they come in over the summer and our co-ops during our spring and fall semesters if you see an opportunity uh you know address it network as much as possible speak up if you have ideas and take ownership of your professional development your managers and peers are there to be resources and help push you but only you can own that professional development piece great thank you so i think one of the reasons again that we're having this panel during the summer is we wanted students to be actively engaged in things that they could do um during the summer i mean a lot of our students some students had internships canceled or their plans changed so my next question and we could even start with julie again if students are interested and if you want to comment specifically on the environmental engineering side if students are interested in pursuing your sector what kind of mindset should they have and is there anything you know i know that we're about to hit into august but is there anything that they can be doing during the month of august or during the summers particularly if they're not in an internship that can help them when they're competitive yeah absolutely and as you just said this is a competitive market uh there's a lot going on so how do you set yourself apart uh from all of the other applicants out there um i realized that it is sometimes difficult to get an internship as a freshman or a sophomore or even just given the current times um joining a student organization is huge um i know sometimes they don't do as much over the the summer but um this is something that that we really love to see on a student's resume but don't just go to the meetings be involved uh do things uh volunteer any little thing that you can take on as ownership within the group without even uh being an officer um you know be the person in the group that your advisor for that student organization um you know is going to want to refer uh you know get to know your faculty see if you can assist them in any way looking at some technical programs maybe there is something in your career and there's a technical program that you're going to need to get to know see if there's any opportunities for you to shadow someone using that program or perhaps even take a course uh regarding that program um try to job shadow if you can um some organizations do allow a one to three day job shadow opportunity it's it's not hands-on but it is a way for you to get kind of get to know uh different opportunities but most importantly my biggest piece of advice would be reach out to your social network put it on facebook see who out there has a connection with someone in the field that you're interested in um because if someone does know someone who can connect you interview them see what their job is like um not only the job itself but the company and the organization that they work for um you know there are so many different places that you can go to work with so many different majors getting to know not only the role but also the organization is is pretty important um all of this together um you know becomes your network of referrals and i will tell you 34 30 to 40 percent of organizations new hire populations come from referrals um so making sure that you network um and take this opportunity during the summer to get to know folks um you know you don't want to be nagging them on linkedin and so forth but sending them one message is fine if they connect great um you know but just networking is is so huge great thank you i'd also like to um throw this question at madeline and madeline if you could explain the background as well but i'm picking you as a person because in your sector at least my vision of your sectors it's very kind of like you have to be present in the environment um and so i'm just wondering um how would you tackle this question in terms of how can students work on preparing for career in wildlife or conservation maybe remotely or if they're not in an internship i think there's two big things one uh i is work on an election campaign um all roads to conservation success lead through the political process whether it's domestically or internationally and just knowing how that beast works even if you're not interested in politics is incredibly important and when i look to hire people that or have volunteers or interns that's one of the first questions i ask and that doesn't have to be a presidential campaign or congressional campaign it can be for city council in the town you grew up in and you're just helping phone bank just you know learning what it takes to actually win um and politicians are incredibly good at asking people for money which is a huge part of working in a non-profit and building interpersonal relationships really quickly which is key to being successful anywhere and the other thing which is a total 180 is to do some field work um so my job right now is is not really conservation biology it's much more policy focused but i all three summers at Tufts i did field work on pika in the jemez mountains in new mexico and that a gives me a lot of street cred with agency folks who i work with and b it lets me be a more effective advocate because i can more easily and readily um look at a proposal or an environmental impact statement and kind of say this this data or this method looks like crap or it's not keeping with the best available science um which is a big part of my job is telling the agencies they think you could be doing better or you could be asking this question differently um and in terms of the place-based work i think uh conservation's funny because some of it is so place-based and some of it is so process-based and it's just it's all about telling your personal story and why you want to be in that landscape working on that particular thing so looking for experiences like the prior two things i mentioned that could give you those stories or saying like ever since i was a kid i was really interested in orcas and i know that i live in kansas but i'm like i'm gonna work really hard on this because i am passionate about it and being able to to tell that story i think there's a longer answer that involves sort of community-led and community-focused conservation um but again that goes back to the the campaign skills if you can go to a community and organize a community and help them learn to self-advocate um that's a key component of any conservation campaign whether you're working as a biologist um or a policy advocate great thank you um we have a couple more questions um i'm not necessarily going to ask each question for each you know for every panelist but justin or eva is there anything that you would add um to that in terms of uh what students could possibly be doing for the summer i guess just really quickly i definitely agree with everything that madeline said especially for those informational interviews um having a personal story is great um and i also agree with getting out in the field and getting you know dirty first you know making sure that you have some level of personal confidence about the environmental issue you're working on and you've seen it play out in the real world that's incredibly important for a policy wonk like me who's worked in dc for 10 years and has now finally gotten back to my home state maine i really want to work in the field first and i did that for about five years um but for those informational interviews it's a hard to ask for what you can do between now and you know august september but i'd say set goals is really important so you don't get um you know so your confidence doesn't start to wane and be confident about um the fact that you're reaching those goals if you set up between now and then three informational interviews that's excellent and if you practice your own kind of pitch for why you're interested in the environmental field and what types of positions you're interested in and why um i think that that's you're going to see an improvement over those three informational interviews and when you ask your questions i think it's important to make sure that you are not just curious about what the day-to-day activities are but you're asking the environmental professionals out there what the big issues are what are the problems because you know we wouldn't need new candidates coming out of great programs like this if all the problems were solved you know so every level of government every type of nonprofit has different um tensions right now different issues and getting folks to tell their career story and talk about those challenges then you can come to your next interview by saying i know these challenges are out there and i think i have the skills to meet them that's a totally different candidate coming to an interview great thank you and just a quick plug or just a reminder to all of our students that are an alum that are listening you have access to the herd which is a mentoring database so that would be a great place to start if you're looking to do what's called an informational interview or some people call it a career conversation so just like miss burke uh just said really thinking about what questions you want to ask ahead of time to make sure that that informational interview is effective for you um i just want to go maybe into the next uh question and i'll have justin comment on this first so my next question is how has your industry sector or organization been specifically impacted by the fact that we're in a pandemic um but not to be negative um i'd like you to focus on something positive that you've seen come about kind of like in your work and then there's a second part to that question but i think i'll start with that sure so the legal sector has definitely been hit pretty hard there's no denying that especially in the real estate industry um there is and this goes actually to your prior question as well there's less work people are less busy these days so now is a great time to reach out to environmental lawyers because they don't i can say in the private industry at least we don't have as much work on the on the plus side though it's meant that we can direct some of our energies to more pro bono clients and to work that isn't necessarily always top of mind i've been working on tax credit applications for several non-profits that recently built buildings and whatnot have put significant time into them that i might not otherwise have been able to do um and then it's kind of also brought about the realization that we can do so much work from home and in a more flexible environment we don't all have to be there in person it still is nice to have a really a community there and to have happy hours on fridays and whatnot but i think that people are really realizing it at least in my firm that there's an understanding especially for parents working from home and whatnot that there's just this understanding that not ever you're not always available when someone sends you an email you don't respond right away and that's kind of nice especially as i'm currently studying for the bar as well um so i think that's been a positive change great thank you anyone else would like to comment specifically also like any two or three sorry my lights keep going off um two to three um trends maybe that you've seen among your co-workers or your organization that is you know has come about because of the pandemic you might have something to say about this too but a large part of my work is getting communities to go to public meetings for pc decisions and all public meetings are now online so it's um and at some of the meetings like around oil and gas leasing we do a lot of really disruptive things and like you can't host a protest outside of meeting online so figuring out what it looks like to be boisterous and disruptive or meaningfully engaged at public meetings especially when a lot of the communities i work in between 50 and 70 of the households don't have reliable access to broadband internet um so that's been both a challenge and something that's interesting and it's also made elected officials a lot more available um so usually i would take a group of ranchers to dc every year and it's always a nightmare because there's floods and thunderstorms and you get everybody there and you're running back and forth and i was able to you know in the span of an afternoon set up the five calls i needed to have with our delegation um so my experience interacting with commerce has been that it's gotten quicker and easier um and people are more available and have more open schedules thank you eva yeah i would agree thanks madeline so virtual public involvement has definitely become something that's in the forefront for us in the department of transportation federal highway in particular we have a great initiative called everyday counts and because we have such a big focus on innovation you know every few years or so we put out there about five or six different you know technol technological or um engineering innovations and then provide small pots of funding for state department of transportation to implement in those innovations and even before the pandemic had occurred we had just launched and deployed the virtual public involvement innovation so we had little pots of money around the u.s for state dots to start experimenting with hosting public meetings virtually seeing whether they got more input less what type of input um and you know hosting peer exchanges um to have different states share that information with each other so that's been a big change is that i imagine a lot of that money it was used very quickly by a lot of state state dot scrambling to make every single one of their um projects for which they need to do a public meeting you know happen online um so that was a big change for us and i think a lot of it has been positive but like Madeline alluded to we definitely you know there's issues that have to be worked through around accessibility so um that's definitely happening um one other and and i i think it's generally a positive trend we're talking about positives and negatives um one other big change is for infrastructure projects that involve a lot of environmental review um especially big um federally funded infrastructure projects like the ones that i work on so i just had an opportunity to work in the boston office and one of our projects had over a billion dollars um you know scoped in their budget and that project um you know recently there was interest in you know is the transportation model still working now that we know that more folks could be teleworking into the future so community groups came to us you know during the environmental process for the environmental impact statement and said i think you need to you know look at your traffic model um and think about in the next 50 hundred years and that's very far out we don't usually go that far for transportation planning um you know what is you know trends and telework gonna do um you know for uh transportation modeling great thank you and um julie from the hr side or just in general at your organization is there anything different that you're doing in terms of like the hiring trends or anything that you've seen that yeah i'll tell you you know on march 16th we decided to go remote fully that's 88 offices in the united states and about 35 more globally as well all of them um shut down to go remote um and so i think the initial response was a little bit of this is amazing and also how are we going to do this um and so i think after a couple of weeks of adjusting people started to realize we can do this we can absolutely do this remotely so to kind of echo what justin was saying earlier um so one of the things we were a little initially nervous about was we had a hundred summer interns coming in uh to cdm smith this summer and our ceo was adamant we were having them this summer we were not going to be canceling any internships um and so we worked with our managers and with our co-op and intern programming group um to really make sure that they were going to have an amazing summer even if it was remote and we shipped out a hundred laptops uh and got them to work so they're just finishing up over the next couple of weeks um so it's been a great summer for them so we learned that we could do this we really could put our heads together and make it happen so there is potential in the future if a manager has a need and a student can't physically be in that location but they're a great student could they possibly do it remotely which has been great and another positive from my perspective in hiring is we've been trying to get our hiring managers a little bit more on board with video interviewing um and so they've been forced to do this now and they love it so this affords us again just more opportunity to interview students who may not be in the state that we are looking to hire somebody and considering more opportunities um throughout the organ uh throughout the the um united states right thank you i'm glad that um you were able to to keep the internship program so that's we were very proud we were really excited the students had a great summer yes very good um so i i did not introduce uh professor orions but i just want to acknowledge that colin orion's uh is with us and and people can see his his video um so i believe that this uh question was kind of from him as well so my next question is if you were to name one thing that current students can do to explore or engage in your industry sector so we've already talked about informational interviewing but like are there certain resources or other organizations that they may want to watch are there new job titles or other sectors that you think are going to come about i ask this question because our audience is not only uh people who are in environmental or bio majors it could be people who are still exploring so if any of our panelists can just kind of talk about like what are some other things other than informational interviewing or that you would recommend based on your experience from the hiring perspective one thing that folks may not think about so this is a little bit outside the box but start to read job descriptions on organizations and companies that are hiring really read through what the job duties are and what the job requirements are um and look at your resume and say is my resume tailored um for this job and this opportunity um because if it is something that you really are looking to pursue um you could be up against 10 or 300 other applicants that have the same exact skill sets so you want to make sure that you're really reading that job description and you may need to tailor your resume for different jobs um and just making sure you have at least two people review it um i can't tell you how many small mistakes from grammar or spelling to big mistakes like putting the wrong company name on the cover letter um so just making sure you're having two people read it but i think you know really investing in some of the job descriptions and what folks are looking for um you know we already talked about networking a little bit but that would be one piece of advice from a hiring perspective thank you julie justin um yeah from the environmental side i'd also say just stay on top of what's going on in this country and around the world in terms of reading the news you'll see certain environmental groups are suing the governments you'll see just various actions being taken by our government and by non-profits i think that's really helpful just to have current knowledge of what's going on and we'll you'll learn about the existence of certain organizations you didn't know existed and that you could potentially have an internship there and i think just the side note i had that fall and spring internships are something that not a lot of people really think about as much unless you go to northeastern where there's a co-op but that's something that you can certainly do and that can present a great opportunity because there's less people seeking out those positions so and there's a and there's if you google just like list of environmental organizations in massachusetts there are so many that you've never heard of and don't realize that they have large offices here great thank you i think the best career advice i ever got was that um was about sort of advocacy and then a gentleman said to me you know like you're biologists you understand niches and ecosystems and the advocacy sector is like that there aren't there isn't a best there isn't a number one it takes a whole spectrum of perspectives and theories of change to move the ball forward and your job is to figure out sort of the intersection of your personal conservation ethic and theory of change and skill sets and where you fit in that so and i was sort of like you know is nrdc the best place to work is the nature conservancy the best place to work and there's just like there is in politics like there are conservative organizations and there are sort of radical uh organizations and that's been really helpful to think about um so like my organization is very uh we sued the us government a lot it makes it very hard to work in collaboratives and we also win a lot but that means that i you know i am always walking into offices is the adversary and having to sort of um when i ask for things they're like why would we do this you're just gonna sue us anyways and that's you know a challenge to go through the world creating change like that even if it's very effective um and then reading the job description thing i think is a great piece of advice um if you're interested in field biology and conservation biology i sort of think of the texas a m job board of being the gold standard there's a lot of um of those positions there's a lot of international positions as well as agency entry-level positions posted there and it can give you a sense of what the opportunities are and i think also you know be uh think of places outside the coasts i'm from new mexico i live in new mexico now i loved tufts uh but i do think sometimes it's a little coast centric in terms of presenting career opportunities and there's amazing opportunities in the rocky mountain west there's amazing opportunities in hawaii and alaska and so be willing to move to a place you've never heard of because there's a lot of cool stuff going on great thank you eva yeah i have to say this is a great panel a bunch of good advice um i i agree with all of it um i think i'll just build off what justin said about um getting your your eyes and ears open to what's happening in the in in the world right now in terms of uh environmental issues um and oftentimes environmental conflicts and i think that that's great advice i think one way to boil that down to what can i do in the next like two to three months um to build up my own confidence and then also a little bit more about um finding where your your niche is like madeline was talking about um is one lucky thing about um the situation that we're in right now is all of the professional um practitioner conferences are online they're either canceled or they went completely virtual so whereas before you had to beg the conference organizer or apply to get one of the coveted you know slots for students or submit a poster and um you know spend your only or last paycheck to get a bus ticket to go to a conference like that this that's stuff that i have done now you can just email that conference organizer and say can you open up one more virtual seat for me and by hearing panelists um talk about issues in practitioner conferences um it's really going to help you get that grander idea of what organizations are out there what their challenges are and what kind of projects they're working on and if you're looking for an opportunity to maybe they haven't advertised an internship but you can do some task-based internship um experiences if there's a major project that's happening and especially if it's a non-profit they may need assistance with it just call them up you know do a cold call or a you know prep email first and then call after um is what i often end up doing and you know say hey i look i heard about that project that you presented at that conference is there any tasks that a student you know at tufts that's a sophomore that's a freshman that's a junior could help you with over the next three to four months give them a timeline give them an idea of who you are what skills you have and see what comes out of it um so i think getting your eyes and ears open and exactly what madeline is saying look at both you know sides look at practitioner organizations you may not have thought of i've worked for epa i've also worked for industry now i work for an action agency in the federal government places like national association of home builders associated uh general contractors they have great national conferences and they have topical conferences just on environmental issues but i think it'd be great to to open up your perspective on the opportunities that are available great thank you that's awesome um so i have one final question before we get to the uh q a portion to hear what questions came from students um so we kind of already talked a little bit about workplace trends since we don't i don't know who's on the call but i know that there's probably uh some recent grads um graduating into a pandemic certainly has its concerns so i guess my last last question is can any of the panelists offer any advice for new graduates or people who maybe are shifting their focus and pursuing an entry-level role at your organization what advice would you give them i would i would say that if you are interested in eventually entering into the environmental law sector be flexible right now you don't need to go work for an environmental organization you don't need to go be a paralegal you don't need to have experience in the desired field immediately having just any general type of working as a consultant working in marketing work just having professional experience i think is the most critical thing and in law school you can definitely tell the people who go straight to law school from undergrad and i would recommend just getting any experience so being flexible and then if you want to be a lawyer if you get that science or engineering background that is so helpful for your future uh work that you'll end up doing i wish i for one had taken more classes in engineering or science when i was at Tufts so definitely i know you've probably heard that array but just you don't have to follow a cert there's no set path to get to where you want to be great thank you if you're interested in non-profits i would ask a lot of questions about what their funding status is and what their funding portfolio looks like so a lot of nonprofits either closed or survived 2009 and readjusted what their funding looks like so we're funded through a mix of foundations major donors who give individual gifts of over five thousand dollars a year and people who give fifteen dollars a month and um foundations aren't are required to give away five percent of what they report on their 1099 from two years ago so there's if and when there is a big dip in the stock market it'll take two years from then until when non-profits who are foundation funded really see a big contraction in their funding and the biggest risk you take on going into a non-profit field because we don't pay highly lucrative salaries and there aren't bonuses um is being at a nonprofit that's not financially stable and there's a lot of ground truth and you can do around that and you can research them and we all have to publish things and get audited every year um and i think that's that is a big thing i'd be looking at right now this um and also asking for non-profits like mine that's been around for 30 years that have been through several financial upheavals asking questions about what you know what did you learn in 09 that you are applying now and what's what's your plan to remain fiscally solvent through the next decade eva okay so um if you're interested in federal government employment i have a typical federal government fashion a bunch of acronyms for you so get your pencils ready um but right now there's a lot of direct hire opportunities i'm at agencies even if there may be um you know not a lot of hiring happening on usa jobs through fellowship programs and professional development programs so they're kind of gateway programs so the first one is the pmf program presidential management fellowship um that's you know i applied to that uh it's it's very rigorous and the deadlines happen at you know they're like a year and a half apart it's i forgot the deadline one year and didn't make it to the final round the next year so that's a pretty rigorous um program and very few people make it so do not feel bad if you do not get accepted into that program but still apply if you're interested in um leadership in federal government in federal highway and our acronym is fhwa federal highway administration and we have the pdp program the professional development program that is a great doorway to federal employment with positions open all around the country and in washington dc um you have to be a little bit of uh a little willing to be geographically flexible but it is a two-year training program that ends up putting you in a you know state office for federal highway and you get to you know experiment you have some time in dc sometime in different states and you work in a lot of different capacities within the federal government while you're doing that next acronym is especially for dc location internships fellowships is the o rise program so it's o-r-i-s-e oak ridge institute of science and education just had to look that up that's the program that i did you'll see a lot of advertisements under recent graduates a lot of them have a lot of technical requirements and background information don't get intimidated by that if you're an environmental studies major and you haven't taken a great deal of lab classes they're just looking for folks that can operate well um and fill much-needed positions right in dc um so definitely check out the o rise website and then the last direct hire program is with the u.s fish and wildlife service and it's dfp the director fellowship program and they are hiring a lot of positions right now great thank you for those resources and just as a reminder to everyone listening this session is being recorded so this will be available um for you and at this time before we quickly take some questions uh from students i'd like to introduce susannah krenn who is one of the staff members in the career center and i'm just a preview to have her preview our website and kind of what changes we're making to it the reason i'm asking susannah to speak is because we're going to organize our website so it'd be easy for you to find some of these resources um should you want to follow up so susannah you're there yeah thank you thank you for the free promo opportunity um we are super excited to be launching a new website this fall and as pertains to people on this call there's going to be i believe the career community name is called healthcare life sciences and the environment and the career communities are going to be just a great place for people with these shared interests to read blog posts to get job listings that are tailored to your interests internships like i mentioned the herd to connect with mentors alumni mentors from the herd who will be piped into that community so um please stay tuned yes thank you for that quick commercial opportunity america thank you so keep keep so everything i guess the point um i'm also that i wanted susannah and and that i am also trying to make as well is that it doesn't end here there's going to be many opportunities to take action steps to figure out kind of like where your niche is or to explore um some of these areas further in the industry great all right so we have about uh 10 more minutes um so i think it's probably a great time to start in um and ask our panelists a couple of the questions that came from students so Susannah i know you have some in maybe do you have any in the chat i do can you tell i would be clearly what's great is i think the questions that have been submitted you all have done a really good job of covering and kind of touching on things that people asked in advance when they registered um another question that came up that i know we've kind of touched on a little bit but um let me see sorry just reading reading my notes um if my academic background does not fit the desired opportunities for example and i'm looking at justin because i know he said ir for example my primary major is ir but i want to switch later on to biodiversity and conservation the question is in this case and i think it's true for a lot of students who might not have an environmental studies major um what do you guys think about uh what's important from the perspective of a hiring manager or just someone working in the field is it necessary to do a master's program or you know what what's kind of the ranking of experiences versus a degree program um versus just conveying your soft skills effectively if people have any any thoughts on kind of bridging that gap i i just hired someone to work for me who finished their bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology um at the age of 35 um and they're working in a wildlife conservation position and um and had spent the previous 15 years working in the restaurant industry so and had one relevant internship so i think a lot it you know at least for the non-profit field and advocacy and policy um it's it's really the writing it's the soft skills and being able to tell a really good story around them and and being able to write well communicate effectively um demonstrate that you can get people to do what you want them to do whether that's a story about babysitting or doing community organizing or being the oldest sibling um i i really think that's the biggest thing like a lot of you don't need to have a master's in conservation biology to come advocate for change or to be able to work with a rural community around um natural resource conflict i think those things can help um but i always tell people it's just important to know what you don't want to do as it is to know what you do want to do um so like what justin's have having those those real world experiences prior to going to graduate school um i say is the child of two phds um who are both professors and i have no graduate degree um i think it's important to just like go out and work and learn what the nature of the work is before you figure out what the advanced degree is um and if you're not getting jobs i had this when i was hiring i had a lot of young people or undergrads who applied who didn't hire who asked me for feedback which was great and i actually had like a follow-up conversation with a couple of them who was like this is you know i can't tell you everything but here's what i can tell you and here's what i'd recommend to make you a stronger candidate next time um and i don't the hr expert can speak to the correctness of that but i thought it was very um showed a lot of initiative and was thrilled no that that's something actually i would recommend you know if you are interviewed and you don't get the job you know we always tell students you know ask for feedback that is such a huge thing to do because you'll be able to get some real insight into maybe why you weren't selected and how you might be able to adjust for the next opportunity that comes your way if you can um you know and i think that coming from a recruiting background of 20 years 13 at cdm smith but also i've worked in academia i've worked for healthcare um you know and there there can be some rigid hiring managers out there who know what they want to see and have very tunnel vision in regards to what they want to see and the recruiter's job is really trying to expand that a little bit um but you know that's where again i think my theme today is networking um you know it's really about just getting to know folks um and getting you know once folks meet you and me and get to know a little bit more about you um you know if you have referrals from a faculty member from uh you know someone um an advisor of some kind those are all the things that are going to help you especially in those circumstances great um susannah i have uh two questions from what was submitted previously but do you have any others that came across the chat you're welcome to take the lead please okay all right and i'm i'm conscious of the fact that um one of our panelists has a hard stop at two o'clock so i want to get in at least one or two more questions um so one student asked uh well there's a lot of talk about being sustainable so it's a two-part question but i'm just going to ask one of the parts um can eva or any other panelists talk about how can we use the covid crisis as an opportunity for environmentally sustainable development that that was the question that's a that's a tough question yeah i think that's a good one i'd say well first from the last question i'll say don't be don't be afraid if you're an ir major i was an ir major too justin was an ir major i think i'm so i'm the old fart on this panel so i don't think you were even allowed to have environmental studies as your only major uh back when i graduated um so it's okay um but in terms of the covid crisis and you know environmental sustainability um i think that whatever you know your take is on that you know when you when you talk about it you want to be able to start using good action verbs right so i've had a lot of informational interviews and a lot of candidates come in and say things like i'm just interested in sustainability i'm interested in um you know big shifts like you know the COVID crisis and what's it going to do so you know i hope that you know the feedback that i'm going to give you is you know you can figure it out on your own we can give you advice but make sure you're using those those action verbs to say um you know i think that the COVID crisis at the local level is going to do this and that's my area of expertise and and here's some you know actual examples of you know what that means so a lot of times you get interview candidates that are just generally interested in sustainability it's like that's generally great but that does not mean that you're going to get hired so i think that for me i'll answer that question in terms of my area of expertise which is the federal level we have great opportunities um for you know improved um you know consideration of environmental impacts and benefits when we're undertaking heavy-duty major infrastructure projects when more folks can get together online faster and easier um so part of the one federal decision process um that's uh that now applies to major infrastructure projects in the u.s um underneath the new executive order is that you have um you know points throughout environmental impact statement where everyone has to kind of get together and agree on where the project is going now that's a lot easier when we're all online being a person is great but for me it's been a lot more comfortable to bring up you know maps charts going through um you know really big technical information with representatives from the army corps official wildlife service that are hundreds of miles away i mean being able to do that and being comfortable collaborating and not just like presenting and listening in an online form um i think has a lot of um you know a lot of of good things to uh to look forward to um and that also from the federal perspective covid you know it has shown a lot of restrictions on um state budgets um as they you know work through this crisis and allocate their funds elsewhere there has been some federal funding made available through the cares act that our partner agency federal transit administration has been administrating um but that means that when budgets get tight state dots and agencies like us just have to get more creative on how to actually make sure that we deliver good infrastructure results so i think that those are both you know promising pieces it's it's just another pressure on the system to continually you know push us in more creative direction great hopefully i would love this has been very active i would love to continue the conversation further i'm hoping that everyone that's still on the call got a lot of good resources of things that they can do right now things that they can do next month which is coming up um but you know this again is not the end but i am conscious of time um so at this point in time i'd like to thank everyone and thank all of our panelists eva uh justin julie and madeline and our guests from the biology department professor colin orions and susannah for being part of today's session again keep an eye out for the website um you know the career center we're still open for appointments during the summer if you want to know how to do an informational interview or follow up or network or things like that okay so thank you again for your time and i have a safe and good rest of the summer and thank you again