CHAMPAIGN, lll. – The 3-year-old Illinois Professional Science Master’s program got its start during a recession, but most of its 2010 graduates are already pursuing careers in the fields they chose. It took most a few months to find work, although some – and at least two of the 2011 graduating class – were offered jobs while still in school.
The Illinois PSM combines a traditional (but thesis-free) science master’s degree with a suite of business courses, and is geared to students “who know they want to work somewhere at that intersection of science and business,” said PSM director Kevin Sightler. In addition to their laboratory and class work, the students do internships in their field of choice, attend industry seminars and get a lot of guidance in professional development and strategic career planning, he said.
The international PSM initiative got its start in 1997 with a series of grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to 14 institutions to support master’s programs in natural sciences, mathematics and bioinformatics. Today there are 244 PSM programs at 144 institutions in 31 states, Washington, D.C.; Canada; and Australia. The program got its start at Illinois in 2009.
The Illinois program draws on the university’s agricultural roots, Sightler said. Students choose from one of five PSM degree programs at Illinois: agricultural production, bioenergy, food science and human nutrition, plant biology, and technical systems management.
“Our programs were the first in agricultural sciences,” Sightler said. “We had the first food science and human nutrition program. There are other energy PSMs but none that are bioenergy programs. We’re capitalizing on our strength in agriculture and life sciences.”
Like most PSMs, each Illinois program is growing but likely will remain small. The first class in 2009 included only 11 students in three degree programs. The class of 2012 has 25 students in five programs. Additional programs are likely.
Many PSM students “are very environmentally focused,” Sightler said. “They are very much concerned about sustainability and renewable resources, food safety and security,” he said.
All of the PSM degree programs at Illinois include a sustainability component. The biofuels program focuses on an industry hoping to develop cleaner transportation fuels. Technical systems management includes course work on “environmental protection during construction, sustainably produced building materials, environmental remediation and environmentally friendly heating and ventilation systems,” Sightler said. “And in the agricultural production program, one of the options that’s available to students is sustainable production systems.”
Most of the students have science backgrounds, and the inclusion of a business focus in their graduate work broadens their perspective and makes them more desirable potential employees, Sightler said.
“They make that transition from looking at everything as an engineering problem or a science problem to a science problem that also has to deal with people and regulations and money and markets,” he said. And the students’ internships are as varied as their interests.
“The internships could be in anything from an architectural firm in a clean energy practice to the mainline agricultural companies like ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Monsanto and Beck’s Hybrids, to students who really want to do research and are working in a university research lab,” he said.
One of the 2010 graduates did an internship as a marketing analyst at Illinois Ventures, Sightler said. The graduate is now a “new ventures” analyst at a bioenergy startup company in Spain. Another student interned at the University of São Paulo and now is a manager at an Illinois-based energy consulting firm. One graduate interned at the Illinois Green Business Association and now works as a sales engineer at an energy company in Taiwan. Another is a research technologist in a cancer research laboratory at Northwestern University, where she also did her internship. Another got a job as a food scientist at ADM after an internship as a new ventures analyst at Fonterra, a multinational dairy company.
The early successes probably have something to do with the way the program was designed, and how it interacts with industry, Sightler said.
“I wouldn’t say employers are clamoring for these students,” he said. “But part of what we’re doing with PSM here and at other institutions is we’re creating programs that we know are in demand.”
Although some of the graduates are starting out in traditional science careers in research, Sightler said he expects their career paths to eventually depart from the norm. They may start out at the laboratory bench, he said, but “they’re going to come in with a different perspective than most scientists, and so I think that’s going to give them an advantage because they also have a business education. Two or three years out is where we expect to see some differential job paths in terms of their mobility within the company,” he said.
Editor’s note: To contact Kevin Sightler, call 217-265-5363; email sightler@illinois.edu
