Course helps science undergrads design their careers and lives ahead of graduation

On back-to-back Saturdays in the spring of 2023, Daniel Manns helped a group of students figure out what they wanted to grow into next.

The eight undergrads were the first to take Design Your Science Career, a course Manns had spent six months building. Fast forward to today and the pass / fail course is waitlisted in both the fall and winter terms. It’s the first credit course of its kind in the Faculty of Science that combines design thinking with career and life planning.

Jemily Marfil (Biology ’25) is one of the students who’ve taken the course. She calls it life-changing. “Your course shifted how I think about work and identity, and I’m so grateful I took it during a time when I was defining who I wanted to be beyond school,” the freshly minted grad wrote in an email to Manns. “I still carry your lessons with me today. Thank you for all the inspiration you’ve given me.”

Manns modelled the course after one of Stanford University’s most popular electives. Created by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, their Designing Your Life class teaches students how to apply design thinking to their careers and lives. The capstone project has students imagine three versions of life after graduation – a version where everything goes according to plan, a version where things don’t go as planned and a wild card version where students can do whatever they’ve dreamed of doing without being laughed at, judged, second-guessed or told that’s not what Stanford grads do. The final assignment’s a brainstorming exercise in disguise that gives students career and life ideas to test-drive and then weave together.

Stanford’s Life Design Lab runs a five-day virtual workshop for faculty, administrators and staff wanting to introduce a version of the Designing Your Life course at their universities and colleges. Alice O’Carroll, Director of the Science Careers & Experiences Centre in the Faculty of Science, took the workshop. O’Carroll saw the potential for building the centre’s career programming for students around Stanford’s Designing your Life course. She worked with former manager of career development Tara Zabella to secure support through the Provost’s Office’s Strategic Alignment Fund. That funding allowed the centre to launch its Advancing Tomorrow’s Science Careers project, made up of the Designing Your Life course and the Science Professional Competency Framework.

Manns, who worked in the centre as a career development relationship manager, had many questions about the Stanford course. Instead of answering them all, O’Carroll paid to have Manns take the workshop the next time it was offered.

The workshop was a revelation – Manns calls it one of the best training workshops he’d ever taken. “I can’t say enough about how this training impacted my life personally and professionally.”

He knew it could have the same impact on students so Manns began building a made-at-Mac version for the 8,100 undergrads in the Faculty of Science. He specifically wanted to help two kinds of students he was meeting, coaching and mentoring at the centre.

There were the stressed and anxious students who felt pressured to have everything already figured out and locked in. All of their courses and extracurriculars were in service of moving them further and faster towards one goal – it was always the destination and never the journey. They believed there was no margin for error – every mark on every assignment mattered – and no room for second thoughts or course corrections.

Manns had always handled these students with care – “I’m not a dream-crusher.”  But he wanted the students to know that life has a way of messing with even the best laid plans. His course was a way to encourage students to keep their options open and question assumptions and expectations they’d either been given or put on themselves.

“In the course, we teach students to accept where they are. They don’t need to have it all figured out just yet. They should show themselves compassion and empathy, knowing that others are feeling exactly the same way. You can see the weight being lifted off their shoulders.”

And then was the second group of students who worried Manns the most. These were the panicked students in their final year who were set to graduate without any plans. They felt either overwhelmed or hopeless. They were most at risk of enduring years or decades worth of false starts, dead ends and a whole lot of regret. While his course wouldn’t give students the answers, it would ask the questions that could help students find their way to a meaningful career and purposeful life.

Manns had been one of those students who showed up on the first day of classes knowing exactly what they’d do the first day after graduation. He’s a people person who’d always wanted to work in human resources – it’s why he enrolled in Sheridan College’s Business Admin and HR advanced diploma program. He wasted no time launching his career, working at Apotex, CGI and American Express as a manager, consultant and director. He was making good money, doing work he enjoyed and travelling the world.

But then came an overdue reckoning in his late thirties – Manns needed to redesign what had come to feel like an inauthentic life. He finally came out as an openly gay man. He says it was like reintroducing himself. That reintroduction led to major career change – he decided to trade money-making for purpose-making.

He left the private sector and joined the YMCA of Hamilton/Burlington/Brantford as an employment placement counsellor and program manager. He then worked as an employment consultant and coach with Transitions Employment Consulting & Coaching Partners before joining McMaster in 2021 and eventually finding himself in a room with eight students on a Saturday morning.

Along with adopting the Stanford curriculum, Manns wove his story into his Design Your Science Career course. He wanted students to be open and honest and figured he should lead by example. Students were always surprised to learn that careers don’t need to follow a linear path and likely won’t – careers can squiggle and lead to unexpected opportunities. Students also didn’t realize their careers could span the private, public and non-profit sectors.

The eight students who were the first to take Manns’ course gave it rave reviews. O’Carroll appointed Manns to Design Your Career project coordinator. He practiced what he was teaching by applying design thinking to his course. How could he get more students to sign up? Running it on Saturdays was a big ask for students who count on the day to sleep, study, work and unwind.

So Manns got the go-ahead from the Dean to reformat Design Your Science Career as an eight-week, three unit course. Forty students registered for the pass/ fail course in the Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 terms. The classes where students reflected on what they’d learned were the highlight for Manns. “That was always the best 50 minutes of my week.”

His non-linear career path has kept squiggling at McMaster and playing to his strengths as a builder. In September, O’Carroll tapped Manns to be the centre’s Program Manager of Work-Integrated Learning & Professional Experience. He handed the Design Your Science Career course over to his colleagues Laura MacKinnon and Sheema Yousefzai.

In his new role, Manns is taking Faculty-wide the Advancing Tomorrow’s Actuaries Program he helped build with the centre’s team and associate professor Anas Abdallah in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics. That initiative spawned the Actuarial Career Test Drive Program – O’Carroll had forged a partnership with the Business + Higher Education Round Table and secured government funding. Manns coordinated more than 230 work-integrated learning opportunities for mathematics students.

He’s once again applying what he’s taught. Manns has no shortage of ideas to sort through and test out, from internships and case competitions to applied placements, community and industry projects, guest lectures and project-based course work. These opportunities will give science students yet another way to exploring career options and design their careers.