Many dozens of students and 13 employers gathered on Oct. 14 for Diablo Valley College’s first-ever STEM and Health Sciences Career Fair, where students from diverse majors and interests explored potential employment and program opportunities.
Some students, like first-semester student Sara Gomez, who said she hopes to become an OBGYN, found the event helpful.
“I’m finishing general education and prerequisites I need so that I can get into a program,” said Gomez. “It’s pretty easy to find programs and opportunities when we have events like these.”
But not all students had the same success. Kayla Smith, a biology major who wants to go into dentistry, said she had trouble finding opportunities in her field.
“People wanting to go into things like nursing need the same classes I do, so those classes get filled really quickly,” said Smith, commenting on what she perceived to be a lack of career options at the event.
“There’s so much interest in nursing and not so much interest in dentistry,” she added. “Even here, at a career fair for STEM, there’s no booths for programs that can help me with what I want to do. There’s not enough representation.”
Meanwhile, employers in fields from education to the medical industry searched for students interested in their programs, hoping to find people with drive and goals aligned with their organizations.
A UC Berkeley academic advisor at a booth promoting the Berkeley Extension UC Excelerator Scholarship said their goal was to encourage broad participation from people of all ages.
“It really is a scholarship for students who need it — you don’t have to have an advanced degree, only a GED,” said the advisor.
“You know, the current economy is making folks more interested in going to school, and we want people who may not have taken classes for a few years to have the same opportunities.”
Like the UC Extension program, other employer booths aimed to help people on a deeper level, by finding students with goals that are important to them.
For example, Zoe Reich-Guerrero, a psychology manager for Spirited Play Labs in San Ramon, talked to students about the group’s membership-based inclusive play space for children 18 months to eight years old.
“What we’re looking for is for people to be neurodiversifying,” said Reich-Guerrero. “What’s important is for these kids to have a place where they can come and feel like they’re accepted.”
For some students seeking to connect with a range of employers across industries, DVC’s STEM and Health Sciences Career Fair marked a meaningful step forward in connecting with real-world possibilities.