The event, known as the Student Sustainability Career Fair, will take place on April 26
By LEV FARRIS GOLDENBERG — campus@theaggie.org
Heads up, environmentally-minded Aggies. The Student Sustainability Career Fair (SSCF) will take place on April 26, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the ARC Conference Center. Registration for the SSCF is free and offers students an opportunity to connect with organizations, agencies and firms in the environmental field and explore positions for summer or post-graduation.
Created in 2019, the SSCF is an extension of the ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC). SSCF chairperson Alana Webre, a fifth-year environmental policy analysis and planning major, was a member of the original initiative and is now in her second year as the head of the committee.
After conducting two virtual fairs in 2020 and 2021, this is the second in-person fair Webre has helped plan.
“I got a ton of feedback last year from people who would just come up to me or email SSCF saying ‘I got my summer internship or I got my summer job through SSCF and the career fair,’” Webre said. “This is at a really opportune time in April, where a lot of students are looking for what they’re going to do over the summer, and a lot of the organizations that come to our career fair offer internships, or for graduating seniors, jobs.”
The SSCF differs from the Internship and Career Center’s (ICC) Spring Internship and Career Fair, which took place on April 19 and catered to a more general range of majors and interests.
At the SSCF, students can connect with 28 groups this year, including California State Parks, CalTrans, Yolo Farm to Fork, the California Attorney General’s Office, Natural Resource Division, SMUD, Bay Area Air Quality Management District and many more.
“We had a lot of returnees this year who said they got a really good crop of applicants last year and so they wanted to come back,” Webre said.
By inviting a wide variety of sustainable organizations, the committee hopes to make their fair helpful for students in all corners of the sustainability field.
“We really wanted it to cover anyone who might be interested in a sustainable career,” Webre said. “It truly runs the gambit. […] It’s a super wide variety, so not only will it attract a lot of people and a lot of different majors, but also, if you’re a first or second year, you might get a look at some of the opportunities that you haven’t seen that are very promising.”
According to Webre, the majority of the organizations will be actively hiring. She encourages attending students who hope to apply for jobs or internships to dress business casual and bring copies of their resumes.
“A lot of times employers would ask for a resume if they really like you as a potential candidate for an internship or a job,” Webre said. “And I had a lot of students kind of caught off guard last year without a resume when they needed one.”
The committee had several goals following last year’s fair. It hopes to attract more underclassmen as well as third and fourth years. The committee also made a concerted effort to reach out to students of many backgrounds.
“We’re trying to attract a lot of students of color, because the environmental field is predominantly white,” Webre said. “My own committee is super diverse and I know that there are a ton of different backgrounds in the sustainability students here and we want to make sure that everyone has equal access to the fair and all these services we provide.”
Webre said that she, third-year sustainable environmental design major Vice Chair Jordyn Kosai, and the rest of the committee have been hard at work organizing and advertising the conference.
Members have reached out to the transfer and cultural centers, tabled, put up flyers and made in-person announcements. They hope to attract sustainable majors of all kinds: landscape, design and architecture, sustainable environmental design, environmental policy and planning, environmental science and management and political science students.
SSCF is also partnering with the ICC to create virtual career fair prep workshops.
“I think something that we would really like to work on this year is that we had almost 300 people sign up to come last year and yet only around 100 actually attended. Which I think is very normal, but we would like to close that gap this year,” Webre said. “We hope that [the workshops] will incentivize people to not just sign up, but also attend because they will already have some of the resources available to them.”
Fourth-year environmental science and management major Mackenzie Field, chair of EPPC, works closely with Webre.
“SSCF has worked tirelessly on this event,” Field said. “Students always come out of it with great jobs and internships, so it’s an amazing opportunity for them to interact with organizations in the sustainable fields.”
UC Davis has long been known for its focus on sustainability, even being ranked the most sustainable university in North America for the last seven years in a row. This is one of the reasons why students interested in careers in this field choose to come to UC Davis, and if you’re one of these students, this April 26 career fair might be just the place for you.
Written by: Lev Farris Goldenberg — campus@theaggie.org
