The basic findings of the survey are as follows. First, 83% of the respondents went on to receive MS or PhD degrees: 40% in physics, 16% in engineering, and 27% in other areas (math, other areas of science, medicine, law, business, education). Secondly, the statistics on the present employment of these students are: 18% are involved in basic research, either in the universities or in the national laboratories; 27% are employed in large engineering firms; and 25% are employed in small technological firms (some of these are self employed). For the 52% with industrial employment, the job descriptions include software, electronic, optical, materials and aerospace engineering. The remainder are high school teachers, or workers in patent law, or doctors, or workers on environmental issues, or are graduate students. We think this shows already that our program has been quite successful in preparing our students for a wide variety of relevant jobs.
In addition, our graduated students seem happy with the training they received; they value the problem solving skills developed as a physics major, and believe that physics is a good foundation for a wide variety of career paths. In their suggestions for changes in the undergraduate teaching program, the major advice is to put more emphasis on computer skills, and to provide more exposure to the laboratory, to real world examples, and to such topics as electronics and optics. These are areas that we are in an excellent position as a department to implement without major change in our core curriculum. There is also a stress on the need for development of writing, communication and teamwork skills, and a suggestion for early exposure to industry.
While the survey suggests to us that our program is doing an adequate job to prepare our students for today's job market, we are already investigating means by which we can do an even better job of training our students for future employment: reasonable changes in the undergraduate curriculum such as those suggested above; creation of a terminal Master's Program with more emphasis on real world physics skills; and more exposure of our students to industry via invited talks by industrial physicists; and perhaps student internships. Ralph Cicerone, the Dean of Physical Sciences, is also excited by, and encourages us to participate in a new project: to have our present students create their own resumes on individual Web Pages that we will bring to the attention of industrial employers. Apparently this is a successful program in the Department of Information and Computer Science at UCI for helping their students obtain employment.
We hope that if you have not already responded to our survey, that you will do so at the next opportunity. We are open to hearing the opinions of all recipients of this newsletter on these issues, and encourage you to communicate with us.