 computer. All right, so just before I get the PowerPoint running, I'll introduce myself. You should know me, I'm David Hall, the Associate Dean of Emerging Scholars here at UCVM. And the role of the Office of Emerging Scholars is primarily graduate students taking care of graduate students shepherding through the program, etc. But we also engage with undergraduate students who are interested in research and related activities. And that brings us to today's session, which is talking about jobs available for undergrads primarily, but not exclusively in research, as you'll see. Before I go too far, Brenda Moore is also here. Brenda, may I ask you to introduce yourself, please? Hi, everybody. I'm Brenda. I work in the research office as a research advisor. And I've also taken on the SHIR program for the last, this will be my third year doing the SHIR program. So I always enjoy working with the students in the SHIR program because they're amazing and they're so keen. So looking forward to working with you all this summer. Okay, thanks, Brenda. I'll explain briefly what the SHIR program is in the presentation in just a moment, but we're not going to go too much in depth into that because presentation is not intended to be about the SHIR program exclusively. It's about summer jobs. So give me a second here to find my presentation, which I could have sworn ahead. Oh, here it is. Okay, share that. And now I'm not going to, I'm not going to make this as large as it can be because I want to make sure I see your hands and comments. How does that look, Brenda? Is it okay? Good. All right. And we are recording this, of course, but I'm also going to share the slides so that you have them for reference or if you don't, somebody, one of the students doesn't care to view the whole presentation, they can just look over the slides. All right. So this is to inform you about summer employment and some of the application processes you may not be aware of. And here's a couple of contacts for you. Of course, my name and email address, that's my office phone number. If you check my the emails that I've sent out in the past, I also have a mobile phone number there as well. You're welcome to telephone my mobile. I don't always hear or see it, but I do check the messages. So if there's anything urgent, by all means reach out to either one of those numbers. And then there's also the the SHIR program office again, we'll briefly explain what that is in a moment. And as Brenda said, she's taken charge of that the last few years and she does an excellent job on that. There's a lot of administrative work and tracking the students and shepherding them through the summer pre summer during the summer. And then at the last event of the summer, which is a presentation day. So there's Brenda's contact information as well. Mina, Mina Ojaki is the faculty assistant, the administrator in the Office of Emerging Scholars. Her role is primarily with graduate students. But if there's something really urgent, you can't get a hold of Brenda, ask Mina and she can either help you with that or direct her direct you to someone else. Oops, there we go. Okay, there's there's all these acronyms and initialisms that we're tossing around. And sometimes we forget that students are not familiar with all of these terms. So let's just look at a couple of these. Sure is a summer undergraduate research experience. Sure and pure are the programs are of most interest to students and the ones you should be paying most attention to. So summer undergraduate research experience. Sure, that's a UCVM program. And the goal of the program in my words, others may word this differently. It's essentially a framework and guidance for training of undergraduate students involved in research, not exclusively that students, by the way, they're also off, off campus, that's not right, main campus students, science students and biology and kinesiology, etc. And it does not have funding to direct to summer job payment for your salary. But it does have a little bit of funding to help pay for activities, get togethers and some training activities. So it does not have job funding, but it does. You do enroll in the program if you're a summer research student at UCVM. I mentioned that because the people get these confused. That's sure. And then pure with a P is the program for undergraduate research experience. That's a university of Calgary program that is university wide. And that does have funding for students. And they supplement or fund fully a summer position for a summer research student. And as you can see, pure will provide up to 7,500 financial support and undergrads working in research up to 16 weeks long. And I've been fortunate to have success in the pure program about three out of four times with that that I've applied. And it typically looks for cofunding, if that's possible, because that makes the money go further. At any rate, the task for you and for a potential supervisor is to go to that link that you see below, the research Calgary, et cetera, students. That page will direct you to an information page that describes the different programs and then an application where you click on the link and start processing the application. All right. And then for researchers, they are also asked to engage in this competitive process using the Common Application Forum, which is the same link. But a researcher, a faculty member is we're looking to hire students in the summer. And if we want some funding, we can go to this link. And the student that we wish to hire applies through this link by February the 3rd. So you've got, what, three weeks to apply to that. And the supervisor prepares a reference letter and reference for that to support the application of the student a week later. That's due a week later. I don't know why they're not submitted at the same time, but they're not. So February the 3rd, that's the deadline for you folks to keep in mind the students. And that link will tell you more about the details of the various programs available. And you can independently apply to some of them as a researcher. Now, the next slide, I'll show you what some of those, there you go. This shows you some of the programs that are funded to hire summer students. And these are all very large programs, most of them anyway, that do, they have a whole lot of funding programs and a lot of different research programs. Their summer student funding is a small part of what they do. For example, the Alberta Innovates program is very large and has research directed at everything from water to the environment to sustainable agriculture, etc. Summer students are part of that. And they do provide some summer funding for students. Typically, they look to a faculty member who has a large successful track record of research and a large research program that is well established. And they're glad to fund a summer student that is supported by that, what appears to be a large successful program because that is the, has the highest probability of success for a positive training environment for the student for the summer. I've bolded the Alberta Innovates one, pure, and then that last one, and CERC, CERC, etc. And the first two, Alberta Innovates and pure are probably the ones at which we faculty members get much of our funding for summer students. And then the third category is where many faculty, sorry, university wide faculty members get much of their funding for summer students as well. And and CERC, CERC, CIHR, those three are what we call tri-council funding agencies, government, federal government funding agencies, and they provide federal government funds to assist faculty members in recruiting a summer student in research activities. All right, I won't go through the details of what each of those initialisms mean, but just one example, CERC is social science and humanities and not many DVMs apply to that because they're not doing social science. I do because I do conduct social science research and we did just receive funding for a program just notified the other day. We're going to try and parallel that with funding from one of the other agencies to hire a summer student. But here we are in mid-January and we're just now gearing up to prepare for an application process and inform students that we may have this funding. And it's going to take us another two weeks plus before we can get that ready because we're waiting for word from our research partners on whether or not they'd be willing to help with that funding. So my point is we wish we could get this ready in September, but because we're constrained by this slide that you see here, the funding agencies, timelines, many faculty members don't know until at least I'll say mid-February, often March, they don't know if they've got parallel funding to support a summer student, which is a real barrier to getting students hired before January. All right, because of that barrier, we've been trying to think about how can we make this happen sooner for our undergrad students, our DVM students. And what we agreed on was that we in UCVM will fund five positions, at least five, to the tune of $10,000 for 16 weeks. It used to be 9,600. Well, let's just round that and call it 10,000 for 16 weeks. And my discussions with our other faculty leadership council members, leadership team rather, the dean and other associate deans is that we'd be glad to fund at least three research positions and at least two non-research positions. And for that, we've asked the faculty to prepare a description of what that might look like, what their summer student training program might look like, and they fill up the applications and send it off to Brenda. And she has sent out, I've counted, I think it's at least three times that Brenda has made this announcement with links two or three, and I've announced it a couple times and we will continue to announce it. And yet, we still hear some faculty saying, hmm, I'm not aware of that. Well, you should be aware of it because we've told you about it. But anyway, if you as a student are interested in finding a summer job that, and you don't have one yet, and you wish to approach a faculty member, mention this to them, please. Mention these five positions that UCVM will fund and that Brenda has sent out an email to the faculty about this. If they say, hmm, I don't remember that, then they just haven't been reading their emails. Ask them to either contact Brenda or me and I'll be glad to resend that message. I say five at least because we have protected $50,000, so that's five positions. If faculty members have co-funding, they only need half of that funding, $5,000 for one student, $5,000 matched from another agency, that creates another opportunity for another faculty member. Suddenly, we've got six positions available for funding and so forth. So we think it could be minimum five, it could be up to 10 positions based on the co-funding that other faculty members bring forward. At any rate, that's not your worry, that's the faculty member's concern to prepare that. And some faculty members will reach out to students individually and approach them individually and say, David, you seem to be very interested in this topic, would you like to work for me for the summer? And you'll never know the job was even posted or available because it wasn't posted. They go directly to a student. Unfortunately, that's just the way jobs work these days. Sometimes I've been approached independently by the agencies that ended up hiring me. It's just the way things are. We can't force faculty members to post a position and some just have reasons for not wishing to do so. So you won't see all jobs posted that end up being a summer student job. And you may end up wondering, gee, why didn't I know about this work with Bison in Woodbuffalo National Park? Well, it's because David didn't post the position because he already had a student in mind for the position. So I will do my part and I will remind faculty members to please, if you can, make it an open posting so that if you don't have a particular student in mind, students have an opportunity to apply for that. And for that, I think it's on the next page. Yeah, here we go. Before that, there is a website we have where those postings are uploaded. And that's the link right there. And some of them look like they closed in January. But as far as I know, not all positions have been filled that say they were closing in January. The thing to do is go to this website, read through the opportunities and the faculty member who's in charge to contact the faculty member and ask them if the position is still open, can you still apply for it? Where UCVM is a small and close community. So the thing to do would be approach a faculty member if you're looking for a job and you don't have one after lecture or email them if you know of their research program. If you're interested in Neckwine, for example, go through our website and try to find those professors who are involved in clinical or research matters with regarding Neckwine. And just ask them, do you have summer funded positions? Are you hiring etc. Whether it's Neckwine or stem cell research or wildlife or what have you. The faculty members usually quite glad to have emails from students that are expressing interest in summer work. And if they have it, they'll tell you if not, they may be able to direct you to someone who does. But no harm in asking after lecture or by email. The other is, of course, go to the link and check. And when you apply for the jobs on the other link that I showed you, I'll go back to that in just a second here, or maybe I'll show you now. Yeah, okay, that common application form. When you apply through that posting that link, you do need support from a faculty member in the form of a support letter, I guess, in most cases. The pure, for example, you absolutely need a faculty member to support you. And I fill out a separate application and it defines how the student will be trained and so on and so forth. All right, so just summarizing then, there's that common application form site, which is a quite a number of funding agencies. For that, you do need to have a faculty member in mind who's willing to support you and may, in many cases, require parallel funding. Then there's the, within the common application form site, there's one called the pure, which I described, the pure application. I isolate that, I highlight that because a lot of our faculty who do hire summer students have had parallel funding from pure. And that's the University of Calgary funding program again. And then thirdly, UCVM funding. I mentioned that just now and it's a competitive process. And instead of waiting until end of March to review all applications as we've done in the past, this year we've agreed that as the job applications or the job profiles come in from faculty members in the UCVM funding, we're going to screen them one by one. And as we see those opportunities with highest potential for a great summer training program for students, if we see one that is of particular significance or a value and for one reason or another, we're going to approve that and go ahead and say we'll release the funding. Once we know, so yes, we'll approve that and release the funding, we'll tag that. But some of those positions might say, well, David, I've applied for parallel funding, I won't know until the end of March. Okay, fine. But at least you've got us guaranteeing that funding for your position. If you don't get the parallel funding, we still have the 10,000 for you. If you do get the parallel funding, it would only cost us 5,000 and we could offer another job to another student, funding to another student. So I think I'll stop there and I'll leave this open in case you want me to go back to any of the slides, but I'm going to enlarge my... Can I do this? Can I enlarge? Oops. I'm going to try and look at all... There we go. All of your names here. And if you have any questions, just either speak up or raise your hand or ask anything you like. So David, will you be emailing out the PowerPoint? Yes, I'll send out the PowerPoint. And I can probably best to send it to your class president, I suppose. Yeah, Katie is our class president. So I think you can. Yeah. Yeah, you can definitely send it off to me and I can get it out to my class for sure. Okay, good. Thank you. Sometimes I'm never sure of who I should bother. And I was a class president for a while and that was my designated role and sometimes you got stuff that had nothing to do with you. So anyway, thanks, Katie. I'll do that. And we'll also post the video. It won't be up right away, but soon enough. Okay. And was anything unclear? Is there anything that you think I... You would like me to clarify? For me, it was clear. Yeah, I liked it. It was good. The things that I was a little confused about you repeated and explained later. So that was perfect. Okay, good. Were you aware of the different funding agencies or opportunities or this common application site, for example, were you guys aware of that? Not at all. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I was only aware because we've had some emails from profs directly about their research opportunities. But I didn't know that there was more available than just dose few. Yeah, the key thing is all those opportunities, I think there's 10 agencies there, they expect faculty members to A, have a position available and B, usually have some kind of co-funding. Not always, but usually. It makes for a much higher chance of success if there's co-funding. Frankly, not all faculty members have a summer position available. But if you approach them and say, David told me about this, the common application form, have you got something prepared? They may say, I don't know what that is. What is that? And well, it's got Alberta Innovates and Pure and NSERC, et cetera. They say, oh, okay, now I know what that is, but where do I go for that? Explain to them, there's a link for that, et cetera. And then say, could you create a position around this, around your research for me? Because I'm very interested in this. I spent a summer working with an owl rehab center or whatever it might be. And don't be afraid of what I'm saying. Don't be afraid to approach faculty to ask them, have they got a summer job? Have they thought about creating a summer job? If they get this common funding, a competitive funding and UCVM as well has these at least five positions at which we'd be willing to consider co-funding at least, if not more. Okay. Anything else? I just had one question. Sorry. I just had one question about that link under check. So the positions on that, some of them have funding that's like under $10,000. Are those just like, is that from a separate resource or? Okay, I meant to mention something about that. $10,000 for 16 weeks is what we in UCVM of the five positions that are available. That's what I am saying. Me, David Hall, that's what I'm saying will be provided. And whether the 5,000 comes from me and 5,000 from John Smith or what have you, it has to sum to 6 or to 10,000 for 16 weeks. The reason I say that is because that works out to just a little over $15 per hour. The minimum wage in Alberta, I'm going to close the presentation right now if you don't mind, the minimum wage in Alberta is $15 per hour. And if somebody is offering you 6,000 for 16 weeks, they're paying you less than minimum wage. This is a bit of a sensitive issue. When I've raised this several times with faculty, they say, yeah, David, I understand that, but you know, we can't get a grant that pays more than 6,000. And my response is, then why are you hiring the student for 16 weeks? Or why are they working seven hours a day, eight hours a day, because they're working at lower than minimum wage? We haven't been caught out on that. And it's not just UCVM. The main campus as well, I know some faculty members in the main campus hire people to work in a biochem lab or what have you. And the pay is less than works up to less than minimum wage. And the argument is, well, students aren't really working seven hours per se. They work in the lab in the morning and then there's a break and then they may go to the library and I see them chatting with their lab mates, et cetera. I don't care what they're doing. If you hired them, you've hired them. So speaking as an economist, minimum wage is $15 per hour. That's where I got that 10,000. If the posting is for less than that, I'm going to get hot water from somebody over this, but talk to the person who's hiring you and say, what does that work out to per hour? And if you're less than 18, lower than younger than 18, you can pay $13 an hour, but none of you are younger than 18 years of age. So have that discussion with them. It's not meant to be confrontational or anything like that. If they think that that's unreasonable or they just can't afford that, please direct them to me. And I'll also have a peer-to-peer consultation with them on how they can try and make that wage 15 per hour. Does that help? Thank you. Yeah, that cleared things up for me. And historically, profs have paid whatever their grant could support. So it's the environment, it's the research environment in which we work that is to blame. It's not necessarily prosping stingy. They'd love to pay undergrads, grads, more wages, but it's a really tight environment, fiscal environment, research in general. It's hard to get funds. Brenda, would you like to add anything to what I said or anything further? No, I think you pretty much covered it, David. Okay. Well, I'll stop recording in just a second. If there are any more questions, by all means, please direct them to me or a faculty member of concern and again, if you check that website with the job postings and see something you like, do contact the professor involved, the faculty member involved, and don't be afraid to approach faculty members if you don't see anything posted, but are interested in their research program. And there will be at least two non-research opportunities as well for those who are not interested in research, but perhaps clinical, etc. Okay, so with that, I'm going to stop the recording now and those of you who are looking at it later, I wish you luck with your summer employment.