Oceanography | Vol.33, No.2
STRATEGIES FOR RUNNING
A SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL CAREER PANEL
By Janine Barr, Christine Bean, and Janice McDonnell
COMMENTARY
As part of an eight-week virtual Research
Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)
program, oceanographers and outreach
specialists at Rutgers, the State University
of New Jersey, conducted a Virtual Marine
Science Career Panel (Ocean Data Labs,
2020). Instead of canceling summer REU
programs across the United States (NSF,
2020b), the National Science Foundation
(NSF) supported and encouraged aca-
demic leadership to develop virtual pro-
gramming in keeping with each institu-
tion’s organizational policies concerning
the pandemic (NSF, 2020a). Here, we
highlight facilitation strategies for run-
ning a successful virtual career panel as
well as lessons learned that may serve as
inspiration for others working to create
similar virtual experiences in their own
REU programs and beyond.
FACILITATION STRATEGY:
USING ONLINE TOOLS AND
BUILDING MENTOR-MENTEE
RELATIONSHIPS VIRTUALLY
The Rutgers team invited six marine
science professionals from around the
United States to participate in the Virtual
Marine Science Career Panel. They rep-
resented careers from the education and
outreach, federal government, industry,
nonprofit, research, and state govern-
ment sectors. To maximize the time stu-
dents had to interact with each panelist in
the limited virtual environment, the one-
hour panel was structured differently
than a traditional career panel where
panelists summarize their work trajecto-
ries and then respond to questions. Here,
the Rutgers team adopted a structure that
matched small groups of students with
panelists to help make the virtual envi-
ronment as conversational as possible and
foster meaningful connections between
students and panelists. This structure was
implemented using the video breakout
room feature in Zoom Meetings available
through a paid Pro account.
To match students with panelists, the
Rutgers team asked each panelist to com-
plete a questionnaire prior to the virtual
event (see online supplemental materi-
als). The seven questions presented were
geared toward understanding the pan-
elists’ career paths and how their back-
grounds in marine science brought them
to their current positions. Students were
provided the completed questionnaires a
couple days in advance of the panel and
were asked to provide feedback to the
Rutgers team on their priorities regarding
whom they wished to speak with in the
small breakout sessions. Students submit-
ted their rankings through a short survey
created for free using Google Forms.
The panel itself began with the pan-
elists providing brief overviews of their
career disciplines. The panelists were
then placed in breakout rooms where
they each interacted with three different
groups of two to three students for peri-
ods of 13 minutes. With 15 participants,
each student got to interact with three
panelists (Figure 1). Once the three break-
out sessions had concluded, all the pan-
elists and students returned to the main
Zoom room for concluding remarks. For
additional details regarding the logistics
of the panel, please contact the authors.
KEY INGREDIENTS FOR THE
VIRTUAL MARINE SCIENCE
CAREER PANEL
The Rutgers team has identified three key
ingredients that helped make this Virtual
Marine Science Career Panel a success.
1. Recruiting panelists from a wide
geographic range. An advantage of
running a virtual career panel was that
the Rutgers team was able to invite
professionals who work in geograph-
ically distant locations (e.g., Houston,
Texas, and Washington, DC) and
ABOVE. Screenshots of students participating in the Rutgers virtual REU experience.