Contribuições do Programa de Educação Tutorial na inserção e no estabelecimento profissional do graduado em Ciências Biológicas da Universidade Federal do Ceará.

Abstract

The labor market requires from the biologist a comprehensive education, which empowers them for the technical-scientific area as well as social, moral, and ethical spheres. Usually at the end of the undergraduate course, newly formed biologists have frustrated expectations about the labor market, when they encounter its reality. Hence, it is important, during the undergraduate course, that participation in different action fields be stimulated and projects and actions in and out of the university be released. Thus, there is an increase in the chance of the students to take part in those projects, actions, activities, improving their professional education. An example of that is the Tutorial Education Program (PET, acronym in Portuguese), which is composed of tutorial groups which aim to provide experiences to the students with activities that comprise the three pillars of the public university: Teaching, Research, and Extension. Therefore, it is expected that participation in PET, during the undergraduate course, helps to form multidisciplinary professionals better prepared to the labor market. The present work aimed to evaluate if the participation in PET Biology contributed to the entry and setting on the labor market of undergraduate students from Biological Sciences Courses of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC, acronym in Portuguese) who took part in PET during their course. For this purpose, it was made quantitative and qualitative, exploratory, and transversal research, using a survey form built with Google Forms tool. After the protocol was approved by the Ethics Research Committee, the link for the survey was individually sent by e-mail for the alumni who participated in PET Biology (from 1992 to 2020). After analyzing the data, it highlights that participation in the aforementioned program can be considered a factor which increases the chances of professional success for the biologists who graduated from UFC. PET Biology, in the alumni point of view, considerably contributed to the development of almost all the abilities and ethical, moral, and professional values investigated, thus very relevant for the entry and set in the labor market. As PET Biology of UFC was created in 1992, the present research also provides a historical context, marking the 30th anniversary of its creation and releasing the important role of that program in the biologists' education at UFC, and how necessary is the maintenance and the investment in the PET program, national-wise, in order to keep impacting the education of those professionals.