Career Awareness Committee Update

Web-based Career Advice

By Aaron Shufletoski, BCLS Chair, Career Awareness Committee

The Career Awareness Committee continues to meet monthly by telephone conference, and will likely transition to videoconferencing as this steadily becomes more prevalent in our society. We have had to say goodbye to committee member Dave Rutherford as he assumes his new role as Vice President of the Association, but we welcome new Board liaison Dave Swaile. This decision was not the result of an arcane rule allowing only one “Dave” on each committee, but rather good governance, ensuring Board members are not also voting members on committees they oversee.

The Career Awareness Committee continues to utilize “Chatterhigh”, a web-based career advisor for schools across Canada. Perhaps the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a dramatic increase in participants over the last 6 months. Most participants are grade 10 students and this is their first exposure to a career in land surveying.

There is enough data supplied from Chatterhigh to identify which schools have the most interested students and the committee will be reaching out to those schools for more information. Chatterhigh is a teacher-run initiative, and if you have school aged children, we ask you to see if they are aware of Chatterhigh. If not, you could ask their teachers to check it out in the fall. If you find yourself homeschooling, this could be a useful tool for you. The Association regularly participates in career fairs during the fall; however, all have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation. We anticipate some career fairs to proceed online, and we look forward to seeing how this will be executed. The pandemic has provided challenges to all levels of education, including the University of Calgary, which is looking at a mixture of digital and on-campus education.

To ensure our committee has representation over the entire province, we are looking for a new member from the Kootenay region. If you are interested in joining the Career Awareness Committee, please contact the Association office. ✥

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Photo courtesy of Hydrologica Environmental Consulting Group Ltd.