This sounds like a great way to help new members get a quick (and easy to manage) introduction to EA concepts ! It makes sense that there are multiple barriers to university students joining in for long-term commitments like the 8 week fellowship, as you outlined, and it seems like your group did a good job mitigating negative effects of a shorter program. In your third footnote you mentioned “the career fellowship is taking place in a busier time of the year than our intro fellowship did (halfway in the year versus the beginning of the year). However, as career planning is very popular among students, I think it is still interesting to see how there are less sign ups for this eight week fellowship than we got for our four week introductory fellowship.” I definitely agree that career considerations are really on the minds of students, and I wondered if your university campus has a dedicated career center? Have you tried targeted advertising of the career fellowship through that venue, if it exists? That way you might pre-select for students with career questions or help career advisors at the university gain more awareness of EA options. This is just a quick thought, as you didn’t explicitly mention this as a way your group advertised the career fellowship, though you may have already tried it.
Thank you for your suggestion! I think that would be a very good idea. We had tried reaching out to the career centre last year when we ran the fellowship, but were not able to advertise it there as our group is not recognized by the university yet (at our university a group has to exist three years and fulfill certain requirements in order to be recognized by our university). However, I will note this down for the board of next year to do after our group is recognized by the university.
This sounds like a great way to help new members get a quick (and easy to manage) introduction to EA concepts ! It makes sense that there are multiple barriers to university students joining in for long-term commitments like the 8 week fellowship, as you outlined, and it seems like your group did a good job mitigating negative effects of a shorter program. In your third footnote you mentioned “the career fellowship is taking place in a busier time of the year than our intro fellowship did (halfway in the year versus the beginning of the year). However, as career planning is very popular among students, I think it is still interesting to see how there are less sign ups for this eight week fellowship than we got for our four week introductory fellowship.” I definitely agree that career considerations are really on the minds of students, and I wondered if your university campus has a dedicated career center? Have you tried targeted advertising of the career fellowship through that venue, if it exists? That way you might pre-select for students with career questions or help career advisors at the university gain more awareness of EA options. This is just a quick thought, as you didn’t explicitly mention this as a way your group advertised the career fellowship, though you may have already tried it.
Hi Katrina,
Thank you for your suggestion! I think that would be a very good idea. We had tried reaching out to the career centre last year when we ran the fellowship, but were not able to advertise it there as our group is not recognized by the university yet (at our university a group has to exist three years and fulfill certain requirements in order to be recognized by our university). However, I will note this down for the board of next year to do after our group is recognized by the university.