SAMWISE: An Early Career Discovery Platform for STEM Fields

The most expensive college degree is the one that is never used. A great deal of the issues with college debt can be traced to unfinished degrees. Both issues are symptoms of the fact that the current system for career discovery is completely inadequate for the task at hand. It starts in kindergarten and continues through high school, 12 years in which students are segregated from the rest of society. The local support function (teachers and guidance counselors) cannot help much because academics have limited engagement with industry. Thus, for most students, their career choices are often driven by their view of the range of professions from popular media. Unfortunately, only the professions with drama tend to be highlighted in the media, so most professions are invisible to students.Before the internet revolution, it was very difficult to impact this situation. However, with the availability of the internet, it is possible to build an active, engaging, structured information environment that can help students (or even adults) interested in careers explore them in much more detail. Further, it is possible to build connections that humanize this very difficult process. Beyond the functional nature of the platform, the higher-level objective of SAMWISE is to build a mechanism for the transmission of wisdom from professionals to students. For Engineering Management, building the visibility of the possible career choices through outreach efforts is critical to the success of the enterprise. This paper describes a work-in-progress system focused on solving these issues.