The Roman-Catholic University of Saint Joseph (USJ) organised Thirsday a “Career Day”, in which 32 companies and non-profit organisations participated by setting up booths to provide students with job information, give career talks and offer employment.
The one-day career fair was held in one of the university’s premises – Cheng Feng Commercial Centre – in Nape.
The companies included gaming enterprises, hotels, financial services institutions, retailers, and IT companies,
Addressing the opening ceremony of the career fair, USJ Rector Peter Stilwell said that about 500 USJ students will graduate this year.
Speaking after the opening ceremony, Cheng Soo-may, who heads the university’s Internship and Career Office, pointed out that the job fair has been organised for several years.
She said that the career fair was useful as it allowed students to better understand the career market and employers’ requirements. “Many students do not seem to have a very clear idea about their career paths, so hopefully the career fair, in which many large companies show what vacancies they have, will help students to think about what career paths they will take”, she said.
Cheng said that, for instance, during the last several years about 50 to 60 percent of students who visited the career fair were given the chance of attending job interviews, according to comments from students and companies that participated previously.
According to an USJ statement, this year will be the first time students will graduate from the university’s architecture degree programme.
Speaking after the opening, Architecture and Design Co-ordinator Thomas Daniell said that the first batch of three students in the architecture bachelor’s degree programme will graduate this year. He said there were about 60 students currently studying in the programme with 15 expected to graduate next year.
Daniell also said he expected his students’ employment prospects to be “excellent” for the next couple of years. “Macau is a very good place to be an architect, [there are] so many opportunities to be involved in exciting large-scale design projects”, he said.
He expected the major employers for the architecture graduates in the next few years to include the resort and hospitality industry, hotels and casinos. “But also we think housing is a very important market: social housing and luxury housing”, he said.
Daniell, who is from New Zealand, said the programme suited the needs of Macau. “Our programme is training architects to be international architects, but is also very specifically focused on the needs of being an architect in Macau. To be an architect in Macau, you must understand high density housing, the resort and entertainment architecture, the Chinese tradition and the Portuguese colonial tradition”, he said.
“We teach about the history of architecture including the heritage of Macau, which means the colonial Portuguese architecture and also the Chinese architecture which are both of those topics. We don’t expect the students to design in that way, and they must understand the history of the place they are working in to do contemporary architecture. It is always very important to understand the place you are in to make architecture that suits the place in a very deep level
”, Daniell said.(macaunews/macaupost)
