GSA Careers Networking Luncheon - A HUGE Success!

The YES Network co-organized the Geoscience Careers Networking Luncheon with the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and the Geological Society of America (GSA) at the GSA 2011 meeting. Thank you to AGI, GSA and ConocoPhillips for their generous contributions to the event.

We had a total of 241 students (56% Bachelor's, 23% Master's, 19% Doctorates). Five of these students were in high school. Students were from 110 different universities with 24 of those universities outside of the US (19- Canada, 2- Turkey, 1-Nigeria, 1-Australia, and 1-Argentina).

Students networked with 47 US and non-US based geoscience professionals from the following sectors:
Oil & Gas
Minerals exploration
Environmental consulting
Media
Federal Government
State Government
Non-profit
Scientific Instrumentation

Students chatted with professionals and landed job interviews, internships, and found out about a variety of jobs in different business sectors outside of academia. Overall the response from students and geoscience professionals was overwhelmingly positive!

If you were at the luncheon today, please tell us what you thought!

Back to School

Cross-posted on GeoSelim here

In response of Anne Jefferson questions for Accretionary Wedge #38:

If you are a current or future student… what do you want to know about life and careers in the geosciences? Are there things you aren’t getting to learn or do in classes that you think are important? What sort of experiences do you want to get out of school and how do you think school can or should help you prepare for a career?

My respond here focus on the method of studying geology. It’s helpful to study how particular branch of geoscience are developed, like how continental drift theory are become the most accepted theory, but it’s not necessary to study how seismic investigation are developed thorough the time. Students need to know how to interpret a seismic section; not to know who developed that branch of science so the large introductions of any subject in collage is like wasting the time. How is this branch of science work? why it useful? and how can i use it? that what i think is  important in studying any subject. Geoscience professors should focus on hand on experience not the amount of information that students will use it after the graduation. Actually geologists are a storyteller about Earth history. Don’t tell your student the story, teach them how to tell a good story.