The Naveen Jindal School of Management held a Student Organization Fair Jan. 25 to connect students with organizations and provide networking opportunities related to their majors and career aspirations.

Shweta Shinde, a graduate finance student at the Jindal School and event manager at Graduate Finance Management Council (GFMC), took a turn running the organization’s booth at the fair. She said the GFMC set up a booth and organizes other events because they want the maximum number of students to benefit from these types of experiences.

“There are a lot of students who may not be in the finance program, but a lot of them are interested to work in the finance field,” she said, as an example. “I think that the events we have serve to give them some sort of perspective.”

Sarah Smith and Cory Smith, both MBA students at the Jindal School, organized the fair along with Kent Seaver, JSOM’s director of academic operations. Sarah said the turnout of the fair was successful.

“Between last semester’s fair and this semester’s, we got the majority of clubs that are operating,” she said. “I think everyone got a really good opportunity to see everything that’s available.”

Cory said that involvement with student organizations at the Jindal School had fallen off because of social-distancing requirements during the pandemic.

“Fairs like this one generate more of that shared experience, shared understanding and then shared challenges with just more camaraderie and the impact of some of these organizations,” he said. “I think programs like this fair are great to just increase the potential [number of ] stu-dents involved in them and then overall scope.”

Khoa Dang, a finance junior, was in attendance to expand his network, learn more about the finance profession and get involved. He joined the Graduate Finance Management Council based on his experience at the fair.

“As a transfer student, I decided to join GFMC since I want to learn from the experience of graduate students,” he said. “I am also interested in management roles.”

After joining the GFMC, he attended an event called the Internship Roundtable.

“I learned how to write a good résumé and interview tips,” he said. “The event was well-organized. I have made new connections with some graduate students thanks to this workshop.”

Having transferred to UT Dallas from Dallas College, he said he hopes to learn more about student organizations for newly transferred students from community colleges.

Sai Teja Sunkara, a graduate finance student concentrating in real estate, is a board member in the Real Estate Club at UTD. He said that many students pursuing a degree in one field may want to explore career opportunities in other fields. Since the real estate industry involves a wide range of career opportunities — everything from research to design to investment analysis to managing the construction process and even sales, marketing and facilities management — a booth involving interactions with students from other majors gives them a glimpse into the industry that they might not be aware of otherwise.

“We can give them some input and clear insights about that,” he said. “If they are really excited and want to learn more about it, then they can join our club and they can participate in many events that we organize.”

Sarah Smith said that having fairs that expose students to student organizations are important because joining one or more student organizations provides a good experience for networking on campus and also for employment and career advancement.

“Members of the surrounding community are heavily involved with the clubs,” she said. “They have a lot of them do case competitions and things like that where they can get exposure to things. I know a lot of the people, at least in our program, have work experience. But there’s a small minority of people who don’t, and they’re able to use their experience in leadership positions in the clubs and also in the acts that the clubs do and the projects that they work on outside of the classroom to make up for that and count as experience, if not necessarily corporate experience.”